February 10, 2003 — I wrap with The Cat in the Hat and start a short stint production designing a stop-motion animation project, The Corpse Bride (produced by Tim Burton and directed by Mike Johnson), with the idea that DreamWorks don't yet have a start date for The Terminal. As soon as The Corpse Bride starts, I get word that The Terminal is going to ramp up. We decide that I can work half weeks on both projects for a couple of months overlap while the one ramps down and the other starts up. It is not a great plan, but it works, and I'm very grateful that this time has allowed me the opportunity to work not only with Steven but also with Tim and Mike on such a fascinating pair of projects.

February 2003 — We set up The Terminal art department in small offices at DreamWorks, with Chris Burian-Mohr as art director, Theo Sharps as set designer and researcher Amina Dieye. Chris and Theo start generating very small scale models based on our initial thoughts, and Amina scrambles to put together a huge stack of images of airports of the world for my first meeting with Steven.

Within the circle lies the construction task at hand.

First step is to sit down with Steven and show the research that Amina and I have put together. By rapidly skimming through hundreds of images with him — and he gives feedback faster than any director with whom I’ve worked — we establish the rules for the visual direction. Steven responds positively to the majority of the pictures and models that I show him, and we can begin.

Because of the increased national security post-Sept. 11, 2001, it is going to be impossible to attempt to shoot the main Terminal set for the length of time that we need in an existing airport. In addition, the control of large numbers of extras, complex lighting and the ability to design a space that although appearing realistic is essentially fictional, all support the idea of building the set.

To accommodate a set that is as large as two football fields end to end and side-by-side requires finding an enormous construction space. After an extensive location search, there are only two buildings in Southern California that are large enough — an old blimp hangar an hour’s drive south from Burbank, but impractical for many reasons, and a hangar in Palmdale, an hour north of L.A. in the Mohave Desert. Palmdale is the first choice —for the good condition of the space, and it has a second hangar adjacent where we can build the other key set — a closed satellite wing of the airport under construction that Viktor Navorsky converts into his home.

We set to work designing the main set to fit the Hangar 703, and walking into the empty space for the first time, it is impossible to believe we will fill it. And in the end the 70' height of the hangar is barely enough to contain the set and the massive grip and electric rig above it.

The hangar is in a military secure area and is owned by Los Angeles Airport Authority, so there are many regulations to overcome, not least that we have to cut a large hole in the concrete floor to accommodate our practical elevators.

A photo illustration of the terminal versus the finished set.