More than a safe landing

"Thanks to the staff from the airports in both Chengdu and Lhasa. They provided us with a lot of help and also all the information we needed to replicate the actual scenes," Lau says.

A model of an Airbus A319 was built for the movie. Lau says he wanted the audience to feel how real it was.

"People told me to make the inside of the plane wider because it would be easier to shoot, but I insisted on the plane design being similar to that of the real aircraft," he says.

Lau says he used to be a cinematographer, so he used his experience and skill to manage the shoot in the narrow space inside the plane. The original event took place over the course of around half an hour. To make a cinematic portrayal of it, Lau asked the scriptwriter to add more obstacles in the captain's way while landing the plane back in Chengdu.

"The clouds in the film are like a monster that stops the plane from flying back home, and the entire crew needed to fight together with determination," he says. "I want audiences to feel like they are sitting on a roller coaster to experience the whole landing process."