When I sat down to talk with the cinematographer, Paul de Lumen, and costume designer, Camille Jumelle, of Propeller One-Way Night Coach, one of the first things I asked was about the tone and aesthetic for the film. Available to stream through Apple, the hour-long film was written and directed by John Travolta, and is based on his novella of the same name.
I knew the family friendly film was based on a book written by the director, and I’d seen that book before. It’s a text-based fable written for all audiences, perhaps especially older children, and though it is not a picture book, it does sometimes include pictures, by both the author and the book’s official illustrator, Anson Downes. I wanted to know what came from the book and what was unique to the film.
“At least from my point of view,” cinematographer Paul de Lumen explained to me, “I looked at Gordon’s Jet Flight, the Golden Book, those children’s books with the gold backing on them. The shot of Jeff and his grandma and mom in the front seat of the car, I feel is directly inspired by that book. And I had talked about that book with John, and we wanted this to feel, in essence, kind of like a children’s book and the film is all from Jeff’s point of view.”
When I had watched the film, I’d noticed how it felt like we were looking at the mother from Jeff’s perspective, and when the frame included Jeff there as well he is seen the same way. Those moments felt like memories, like a way to visually describe how the storyteller was literally looking back over his own experiences in a fictional past. Looking up at mom, the way we do when we are smaller than her, seeing the archetype from the view usually only seen by little kids, it really helped this story come alive. It helped me to buy into the story and it felt like an elegant way to convince the audience to do exactly that.
“When I read the story,” de Lumen said, “I heard John’s voice, like for the voiceovers. I could really feel the nostalgia and the love and affection for his mom through the words. It’s from his point of view, I actually measured from his point of view so that I could film from Jeff’s eye height. The actor, Clark, who did a wonderful job, I tried to always match his eyeline. Because he’s a child he had to do school, so we’d have eight hours with him, but four had to be spent in school. So we’d do all of the shots of him first so we could wrap them out, then we’d shoot everything he was looking at. So his mom, the pilots, any characters, the camera became his point of view. And the audience saw this little adventure through his eyes. And we always wanted to stay true with that. We didn’t have a shot in another room because it would have been something Jeff didn’t see. I felt like that was a good example of staying true to our visual language, which is just point of view, but in the end I felt it really served the audience, both in terms of empathizing with the adventure and also enhancing the magic and curiosity.”
Back When Air Travel Was Elegant
The costume designer was ready to get to work almost immediately, and that was lucky as it turned out she was going to have to make all the stewardess costumes they needed for the film.
“I flew back to LA,” Jumelle said, “I hit the costume houses, and I started to do my research. And it’s period, 1962. And so what happened was, we either didn’t have enough of them or the sizes were too small. I was fortunate enough to find four vintage stewardess uniforms in that powder blue circa 1962 that we needed, but I had to totally rebuild them. Then, for the jet age, so that the newness and color would come through, I needed to make those too as there was just nothing out there. I made them all, and also the uniforms for the ticket agents, all those uniforms and all the patches. That was a big undertaking.”
I could see hints of iconic, mid-century elegance in the ladies who steward the skies, so I asked her if there was a specific someone who had inspired the ladies in uniform.
“My muse was Elizabeth Taylor,” the costume designer shared, “and also Grace Kelly. Those are the two iconic women that spoke out to me. And I had the pleasure of meeting Prince Albert in Cannes with John, and I told them that his mother was a muse for the film. And he was very lovely about that.”
The fancy part, and the production’s dedication to recreating it, really matters, it is a vital part of the look and feel we all associate to these years when we see them on screen.
When Jeff (Clark Shotwell) and his mother Helen, (Kelly Eviston-Quinnett) take their cross-continental journey, the speed with which a person could leave Los Angeles and Arrive in New York were slower than they are today, but they were still a nearly miraculous improvement to previous options. We all know that airline travel used to be a more glamorous experience, but the difference in aesthetic between then and now is never as clear as when it is shown large onscreen in the flat modernity of the 1960s.
This made everyone’s clothing feel more important, knowing that no matter who I chose to look at they would be era appropriate, dressed up to fly in the clothes they wear when going somewhere special. It especially made Helen’s costumes matter, they feature importantly into quite a few important moments of this story, and I was very curious to know about how all of that came together.
“I made that,” costume designer Camille Jumelle shared. “I had about two rolling racks of women’s coats and two rolling racks of men’s coats. We tried a few coats and things and then I said I should make it. right away it was a time crunch. I ran to my fabric shop in LA, got a wool and cashmere blend. For a costume designer, everything is about the fabric, the fit and finish. That was an expensive coat to make, but it really made the film.”
“To your credit,” de Lumen added, “when we were doing the color timing session, usually, in the end, I have to adjust a lot of things color-wise. But John and I were so happy with what we got from that day on the stage. It was very minimal adjustments because of your hard work and your discerning taste. Like, it really showed up on the screen. And what we captured with the lighting was perfect.”
“I always cross my fingers,” Jumelle replied with a grin, “I always want to make my DP and my director proud.”
Inspired By Aviation History
To make sure that the film didn’t lose any of the book’s magic, and to maintain the level of the standards of the project’s department heads, there were times and places where absolute historic accuracy was sacrificed when to do so would serve the film. Like when the costume designer was choosing the color of the uniforms that the steardesses would wear.
“My color palette had to be exact,” Jumelle told me, “the whole movie, there is no color that is going to jar you. I had to keep it in a proper hue balance, and I’m very tough on myself with that. I was very accurate with the design. It’s exact because I actually purchased a Don Loper jacket, 1962, and reconstructed it and made a muslin. My seamstress, Cheryl and I were at it for hours. But I went back and I said to John, ‘Believe it or not, the uniforms were brown.”
Beginning in 1959, Pan Am’s uniforms were designed by Hollywood costume designer Don Loper (1906-1972); a tailored wool suit jacket and matching pencil skirt, with either a box or kick pleat venting the back, and a custom designed cap with jaunty white piping. The name of the airline’s blue was Tunis, and it was given in honor of the woman who had selected it, Elizabeth Tunis, the airline’s first chief stewardess. Loper did TWA’s uniforms too, a little later than he began to design them for Pan Am, and perhaps the drab brown look was part of the reason why.
“Our stewardesses needed to be seen,” Jumelle said. “I didn’t think brown would work, it would have looked muddy. Even TWA got rid of that right away. And we both looked at each other, e didn’t want that. So we discussed how, for the color palette, we were going to take that powder blue, TWA, Pan Am color that everyone knows, and use that. Then for the jet age, just go brighter, because right after that, the uniforms went back to that blue.”
Framing, Perspective & Composition
I try really hard not to read much about a film or series before I see it as someone else’s perspective isn’t always helpful. I went into watching this one knowing only what I’d gleaned from the preview and poster art, and long before the credits rolled I was dying to know how the actual filming of this movie had happened.
This is a film which benefits from its use of practical effects, which are essential in-camera illusions created with real physical objects and materials instead of later making those changes to the film during digital post-production. And while there are many things that digital does do easier or more efficiently, physical making almost always adds to a production an intangible ingredient without which magic is not possible.
So… Was this filmed on a set? Was a model built of each plane? How did it work? There is not a lot of space in a passenger cabin, they have never been roomy spaces, not even 60 years ago. How exactly did the cinematographer catch all these angles and bend around so many corners? It seemed like figuring all of that out could have been a very real logistical nightmare.
“It was all real,” de Lumen told me, “it was all practical. John owns one of the few Constellation propeller planes, the plane that the boy is in love with and we filmed in Kansas City, where he stores it in an aviation museum. We couldn’t break it apart for film reasons, with cranes and stuff like that, which actually dictated my use of smaller cameras. I used a Sony Venice with a sensor that could come off the body, and I could use a smaller version with a cable. It helped a lot with the small spaces.”
Were there era-appropriate inspirations for the cinematographer the way there had been for the costume designer? Maybe related to the composition, or a certain look or feel he’d wanted to be sure was communicated.
“When first talking to John about this, we both fell in love with Edward Hopper’s paintings. And if He has a lot of these beautiful scenes that have a lot of green in them and with these warm light sources above. We felt that the Constellation really embodied that look and feel, especially with the greens. The plane, as you can see in the movie, has these beautiful rectangular light sources that lie in the middle. I embraced that as a cinematographer, and that set the look for the propeller plane. In terms of the progression, you can see how, as we get closer to the jet plane, it gets brighter, it’s cooler. And with the interior of the planes, the cloth of the seats, in the jet it’s yellow now, so are the headrest covers. Progressively it gets brighter as we get further into the jet age.”