Can I Make a Movie On an Airplane?

What you're looking at right now is not a real airplane. You see, in Hollywood, they rarely film inside real airplanes. Instead, they build really expensive sets that look like airplanes, which makes the production much more efficient and safe. Unfortunately, I don't have the money to build a fake airplane, which leaves me with just one option. I cannot believe I'm about to do this. That's right. I'm going to attempt to make a movie on a real airplane while flying through the sky, which means I need to write a script, direct, act, film, and edit the movie all before reaching my final destination. So fasten your seatbelts, because we got a plane to catch. That was stupid. This might be the hardest challenge I've ever done, but it's also the most special. You see, 10 years ago, my brother David moved to Singapore, and I've never visited him. Not because I don't like him, just because Singapore is literally on the other side of the planet from my house. But today, finally, I'm making the trip, and as a special surprise, I'll be premiering my movie for David once I arrive in Singapore. And now the only thing left to do is pack my bags and head to the airport. We made it. I've never been this nervous to film a video before. On the drive over here, my Apple Watch asked if I was working out because my heart rate was so high. I don't think that's a good sign. Anyway, I have a flight to catch, so I'm gonna walk to my gate. I'm gonna go. I'm going. As I made my way to the gate, I started to feel a subtle sense of dread. I've wanted to make this video for a long time, but I've just been too nervous to actually try it. Most of the time, I'm just filming movies alone at my house, so the thought of filming one on a crowded airplane is actually terrifying. But that being said, I already bought a ticket, so I guess I better write a script. All right, here's the deal. My plane boards in two hours, which should give me enough time to write the script. And like any good airplane movie, I want mine to be a thriller because, let's be honest, airplanes are just kind of scary. So with that being said, here's the concept for my movie. A man, played by me, wakes up on an airplane with no memory of how he got there. As he searches for answers, he soon realizes a terrifying reality. Boom. Isaac whips open the seat door, buckles in, yanks the strap, whips the window shade open. Outside, we see an ocean of clouds zipping past the plane. Isaac closes the shade and turns towards the camera when we hear the pilot one final time. All right, so right now, I'm actually just downloading sound effects because I don't know how good the Wi-Fi is going to be on the flight. I'm a little nervous that I'm not going to be able to get all the sounds I need, so I'm literally just looking for like plane crash sound effects, which is a little spooky to do right before you board an airplane. But I have to do it because I'm trying to make a thriller on this flight. There are countless Hollywood movies that have really intense airplane scenes. And my goal is to make my movie feel similar, just on a much smaller budget. But if I can somehow pull it off, I'll probably be the first person to ever film a crash scene while flying on an actual airplane. What is this seat? Oh, yeah, I almost forgot to mention the seat. Qatar Airways has these business class seats that are way more private than a regular seat. And since I need to set up film equipment, I knew that sitting in economy next to strangers just wasn't going to work. Best case scenario, it would be really awkward. Worst case scenario, I'd get in a lot of trouble. And the last thing I want to do is make someone's 13-hour flight miserable. Thank you, Opera, for sponsoring this video and helping me pay for this. Also, isn't this virtual seat map insane? There's literally a VR flight attendant in here to ask questions to. Hello. Oh my gosh. I'm Sama, your digital cabin crew member. How can I assist you with your Qatar Airways journey today? Do you think that I can make a movie on this flight? Hello. Okay, I don't think she understands. All right, in order to get to Singapore, I need to take two separate flights. This first one is 13 hours long, and I'm hoping to get all of the filming done on this one. The second one is seven hours long, and that's the one I'm hoping to get all the editing done on. Should be easy. Shoot. Anyway, my seat's very nice. How about a quick tour of my movie set? First things first, we have the seat, the hallway, and the bathroom. And that's literally it. I'm on an airplane, so not much space. And what's difficult is I want to make this movie without anyone else on the plane noticing. However, I did have to tell the flight attendant that I'm planning on staying up all night. Man, this guy really thinks I'm going to fall asleep on this plane. Well, guess what? It's not happening. All right, it's time to start filming the first page of the script. And unfortunately, I'm already running into problems. The main one being that this is the darkest plane I've ever been on, which normally would be great for sleeping, but I'm not sleeping. The only way to combat this darkness is to use my own film lights. But this cabin's so dark that my lights are bouncing off the ceiling and then lighting up the hallway and the seats around me. And if I get told to turn my lights off, I won't be able to film anything. But so far, no one said anything. So for now, it's lights, camera, action. Real quick, I just want to give a quick shout out to the flight attendants on this flight. They're all just the most friendly people. And this food that they served me for dinner was incredible. I did not know that you could get food like this on an airplane. But I'm not here to do a food review. I have a movie to make. All right, small problem. We have been flying for well over an hour now, but I can't film. Look at this. It's completely taken over my seat. I genuinely need the flight attendant to come clear all this stuff so that I can set up camera gear because at the moment, I can't film. Oh, sorry. No, you're good. Filming a little video for dinner was so good. I thought he was coming to clear my dishes, and then he brought me dessert. I think this is the last thing. I'm going to eat it and then film. All right, this is scene one, take one, shot one. Marker. So what I'm filming right now is the very start of the movie, when I wake up on the plane. Eventually, I'll be introducing the pilot character into the story, but that comes a little bit later. For now, I'm just getting the opening shots. Everybody around me is starting to go to bed. Meanwhile, I'm just filming a movie. I'm kind of jealous. I wish I was sleeping right now, but maybe if I film fast enough, I'll get a chance to. I probably won't. It was at this moment when everything started to go wrong, and it started with something small. Watch closely and see if you can tell what changes. If you guessed that they turned off the colorful lights, you'd be correct. And if you're wondering why that little lighting change made me look this distraught while searching the internet for answers, well, let me tell you. Cameras have something called ISO that electronically boosts the brightness of your video, and this is really helpful when filming in dark environments. So when the colorful lights turned off in the airplane, I cranked up the ISO on my camera. But here's where it gets tricky. The higher you turn up your ISO, the noisier your video becomes. Luckily, my camera can shoot really clean images even at a high ISO. However, it can only do that if I enable a specific setting, and it took me a long time to realize this, but I didn't have that setting enabled. I filmed for over three hours capturing noisy footage, and I didn't realize it until I checked on my computer. At this moment, I genuinely thought I wouldn't be able to finish the movie. Every clip from the past three hours looked nearly unusable, and I was exhausted. I was left with two options. I could start over entirely, re-filming every shot that I messed up, or I could call it quits and go to bed, which is what I ended up doing. Just kidding, you just got pranked. I ended up just re-filming all the scenes that I messed up, and this time, my camera settings were correct, thankfully. All right, the laptop is out, which means it's time to start on post-production. Before I start editing any movie, I like to find the music that I'm gonna use, and I'm using Opera Browser to help me out. Right now, I'm searching for reference music on Spotify, and Opera has this player feature which lets me control my music from anywhere on my screen. I can also split my screen like this, which is perfect for finding reference images. For this movie, I'm getting inspiration from Inception, so I have reference images and storyboards all on one screen. Look, I'm a simple man. I like to see everything on one single page. However, if I do need lots of tabs open, Opera creates tab islands for me, which groups together all my related tabs to keep my work organized. All that being said, my favorite feature of Opera is Aria. Aria is kind of like that VR flight attendant that I talked to earlier, except Aria actually answers my questions. When I was storyboarding the script in the airport, I typed in simple prompts, and Aria created images from scratch, and I used these to shot list my movie. So basically, what I'm saying is that Aria is an absolute legend. If you want to try Opera for yourself, click my link in the description. Okay, the time has come. I think we need to venture out into the hallway to get some shots. I don't really want to go out there. There's something intimidating about going out into the hallway. It's very scary. My last video, I filmed in a hotel, and it felt high stakes, but that was child's play. Filming in an airplane when everybody else is asleep is terrifying. My social anxiety is at an all-time high. That being said, let's go out into the hallway. This is it. The last shot I need to finish the movie. I'm in full stealth mode, moving like a shadow, silent as a mouse. But then, the tiniest mistake. The light from my seat is just a little too bright. Just like that, I was spotted. I panic and stop filming immediately. But basically, here's what happened. When I opened the door to step into the aisle, light spilled out. And because I needed to get the shot, I had the door open for a really long time. So long that a flight attendant spotted me and ran over, asking if I needed anything. And not wanting to blow my cover, I panicked and just said I was looking for a bottle of water. That was terrifying. But I'm not stopping, because I need to edit. And I'm definitely not going to sleep, because I need to prove to the flight attendant, once and for all, that I don't need sleep. Alright, alright, relax. I didn't actually fall asleep. I just rested my eyes for a little bit. Suddenly, several hours passed. This is the closest thing I could get to a shower on the airplane. And let me tell you, it wasn't that good. I'm really craving a nice warm shower at the moment. That would be amazing. Also, I'm now 11 hours into this flight, and I haven't even started editing. 13 hours might seem like plenty of time, but between takeoff, filming, dinner, sleep, and now breakfast, I only have two hours left before we land. Editing these movies usually takes twice as long as filming. So if I even want a chance at finishing this movie, I need to start editing right now. Otherwise, I'll be showing up to David's house empty-handed. And that would be absolutely tragic. Side note, does anybody else think I look like that meme of the sweaty guy who types really fast? I don't know how I feel about that. I don't really like that. Also, who is that guy? Guys, this has been a long night. My sense of time is all over the place. I have no idea what time it is, where I am, or really where I'm going. Hopefully, I end up in Singapore. Here we go. All right, I made it to- All right, I made it to Doha. This airport is insane. It's like a city in here. I took a shower. I've never done that at an airport before. That's insane. But back to the movie. Apparently, I haven't slept in over 30 hours, besides that 30-minute nap I took, which is not ideal. So my plan is to edit as quickly as I can and hopefully take a nap on the flight to Singapore. I have two hours until that flight boards. And so, let's finish this edit. You might be wondering, how do you make a perfectly smooth flight actually look turbulent? Because unedited, my footage looks very uneventful, which I'm very thankful for. However, for the movie, we need to make it feel more intense. Kind of like that scene from Castaway that I showed earlier or this scene from the movie Flight. As you can tell, the camera is bumping all over the place, which makes the footage feel chaotic and it instills a sense of danger. My footage looks like this. Very smooth and calm and peaceful. I don't think anybody would feel any sense of tension watching this footage. So in order to make it feel intense, I need to use something called keyframes. I know, very exciting stuff. Everybody loves a good keyframe. But if you don't know what they are, they're essentially little checkpoints that allow you to set a start and end point for things like movement, opacity, and scale. For my situation, I'm using them to animate artificial movement. Because I was by myself, I was filming on a tripod. So all the shots are static. So I'm going to use hundreds of keyframes to move the shots up and down to mimic the look of turbulence. And if none of this is making sense to you, don't worry. Here's an example. At the moment, this shot has no keyframes. And because of that, it doesn't even look like I'm moving. And here's the same shot with keyframes. Now the plane looks like it's bouncing all over the place. And if we really want to sell the effect, we can add some sound design. And now suddenly, our once boring scene now looks like this. This is a critical emergency. Assume a brace position now. We're going down. Brace for impact. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We're going down. Brace for impact. This is my brother Seth. You might remember him from my last video where he played the mysterious guy on the phone. Well, I got him back. And this time, he's playing the pilot. I texted him the script super last minute. But luckily, he accepted the role. And since we're working remotely, he's just recording his lines into his phone. So as he sends them over, I'm just putting them into the timeline. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Looks like we're going to be experiencing some rough air shortly. Please take your seats in. Passenger seat belt. We need all passengers seated immediately. I repeat, all passengers seated immediately. That means you, sir, in the bathroom. Yeah, I can see you. Return to your seat right now. We're going down. Brace for impact. I like him. I just wasn't going to say, this is the captain speaking because that's obvious at this point. I thought you did one about it. Maybe I did. Okay, cool. Let me just say... Okay, after my brother hung up on me, I boarded flight number two. And this one's going all the way to Singapore. Hello there. I am in bed on an airplane. The past hour or so, I've literally been laying here editing. I am so close yet so far away. But luckily, I have a few hours left on this flight. And I am hoping that we will have a polished, finished, beautiful movie for my brother David to watch. And just like that, after over 20 long hours of travel and about two hours of sleep, I arrived at my final destination. If I'm being honest, this moment feels incredibly surreal to me. I've been thinking about visiting David for so many years and it's hard to process the fact that I'm finally here. Okay, I know what you're thinking. Isaac, did you actually finish the movie? Well, you'll see in a little bit. Right now, I have someone to say hi to. After Dave showed me around his apartment, I sneakily snuck into my room, grabbed my laptop, and surprised him with the news. I was actually terrified that I was not going to be able to finish the edit this time, but somehow we got it done. All right. David has not seen the movie yet. Keep in mind, I made this on an airplane. I heard. Making any movie in general is hard, but on an airplane is insane. I told him my limitations before showing him so that he wouldn't expect Hollywood-level production, okay? I still expect Hollywood-level production. I'm very nervous. And action. If you want to watch the movie, you can click the link right here on the screen. Even though it was incredibly stressful to make, it was definitely worth it. Because hey, I'm in Singapore with my brother and that's pretty awesome.