Wide views of the terminal under various stages of construction.

Construction coordinator Steve Callas puts together a steel team that consists of every certified welder in the film industry, and they set up at one end of the hangar. They will create each truss on a gigantic jig and then lift each one into place started at the furthest end of the set and working back. We will build the set from the top down. Once the truss is hung, we set the steel structure below it and then build the floors within the steel skeleton. 650 tons of steel will be used in building the structural frame.

July 7, 2003: Ben Proctor joins the previs team to focus on the 3D model of the exterior airport. He first builds the wing of departure gates that ends in Viktor’s apartment and joins that satellite to the main concourse. This is an area of the airport that will be shown under re-construction, where Viktor wanders to desperately looking for a bed, and eventually makes this abandoned wing his home. In its own way, it is a complicated set — it has to tie directly into a wing of Mirabel Airport, and goes through several stages of on-screen construction, culminating in an elaborate mosaic fountain that Viktor builds for Catherine Zeta Jones’ character, the flight attendant Amelia.

Ben will also start building the high-res model of JFK Terminal 4, in order to combine the elements into a 3D model of the view from both Viktor’s apartment and the Main Concourse set.

July 14, 2003: Air conditioning begins to be installed in Palmdale. To accommodate the amount of cooling the set requires in the middle of summer in high desert we add air vents as a design element throughout the concourse that will be patched in to the air-con units.

July 15, 2003: Todd Coakley of JC Backings travels to JFK to shoot day and night high resolution photography in preparation for the digital matte painting for the backing.