Pop Pictures

Our second to last day of shooting (day 25) was at Suvarnabhumi Airport.  Through all the different drafts of the script over the years, this was the only scene that never changed.  The image of the airport at night was always a key image of the movie, and to finally come out and shoot it was very satisfying.  We needed only one single shot but it had to be in the right light.  So we set up the camera at 4 pm and promptly took a two hour nap, waking just in time to press the red button at sunset. 

After that, we moved inside and shot in international terminal F.  Fortunately, it was a quiet night for flights so nobody really bothered us.  It probably helped that foreigners don’t recognize Ananda because had this been at Mor Chit bus station for instance, the crowds around him would have made it impossible to shoot.  All in all, it went very well which was a relief as this location was initially very worrisome.  We wrapped at 4 am at which time you could hear a pin drop inside the terminal.

Suvarnabhumi Airport is very beautiful, especially at night.  The pride of Bangkok (and the Thaksin administration, which for all its faults, you still gotta thank for completing the thing), it has a futuristic cathedral-like quality about it which we wanted for the film.  Why do airports figure so prominently in so many movies?  Maybe because they’re places of perpetual transition:  nameless people coming and going, the ultimate metaphor for modern life etc.  Or maybe they just look really cool.

Anyway, it was nice to be there but not actually be going anywhere.  At 5 am we packed up the vans and went home, slept in our own beds, knowing there was only one final day left of production.

~ by admin on February 21, 2010.

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