The dramatic final cockpit moments of plane crews in emergency pre-crash situations are brought back to life in “Charlie Victor Romeo,” shown at the Sundance Film Festival.
The film, made by Bob Berger and Karlyn Michelson on the basis of black box recordings recovered from aircraft, was presented on the sidelines of the festival, which brings together independent filmmakers from around the world.
“Charlie Victor Romeo” is the only film at the festival that was shot in 3D.
It was adapted from a 1999 New York theater play created by Bob Berger, Patrick Daniels and Irving Gregory, who used almost verbatim conversations of six airline pilots on the point of suffering a deadly crash.
A control panel and a handful of actors surrounded by a black curtain are the only decor used by the authors to “lock” the viewer into the cockpit and make them concentrate on conversations.
“Popular culture fills our heads with all sorts of ideas about these things,” Bob Berger told AFP.
“The expectation of the audience before they see it is filled with preconceived ideas. The elimination of the spectacle lets the human struggle take the center. And when that happens, it’s an amazing testament to what professionals do in a crisis.”
Karlyn Michelson agrees that the public knows little about how these professionals behave in real crisis situation.
“You don’t see much emotions in these pilots,” she said. “What you see is the core of human struggle in the most revealing of circumstances.
The idea of adapting a theater play to the large screen developed very fast, the authors recall, but subsequent conversations with several potential producers had initially cooled their enthusiasm.
“In that process, what we realized, is that in that case, our participation is not only not required, but not desired,” Berger pointed out. “Because an artist, especially New York downtown artists that (producers) don’t know, might be a liability in terms of raising a lot of capital.”
With the help of digital technology, they finally decided to make the film themselves.
Shot in real time during theater performances, “Charlie Victor Romeo” includes most of the show, but 3D and the big screen help make the movie even more powerful.
“There is a quality to the work, within a theater, which we knew we couldn’t lose,” explained Karlyn Michelson. “It is a claustrophobic feeling — you’re trapped in a small space in the way that you would be trapped in an airplane if this were happening. And the power of that experience was something we knew we wanted to translate to the screen.”
She said it was important for filmmakers to establish a connection with the public.
“One over-urging concept behind every shot, every decision: bring the audience closer than the audience wants to be,” said Michelson. “It’s a very difficult thing to be so close to people struggling in that kind of crisis. But the humanity of that is the core of the play. And using the power of film, we could use people so much closer than, they could have been even in the theater.
She noted that the 3D aspect makes the film more human and more real.
“A lot of 3D is about coming out at you, this sort of flashiness,” the filmmaker stressed. “And for us, it was like creating a room, you were right there, you could sit right next to the pilot.”
Extolled by aviation professionals, the film has become a movie of a new kind, one that creates more hope than fear by showing composure and professionalism of the pilots.
“Part of the hopefulness and part of the power of the film is how hard these men and women work, how they are trained to deal with crisis, with the idea that they can prevail, doing everything in their power to get that plane on the ground,” Michelson said.
Sundance film revives plane crash final moments
