Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) sitting in his plane in The Aviator. 

The VFX supervisor for The Aviator details how the film’s iconic plane crash was created. The Aviator is a 2004 Martin Scorsese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as real-life Hollywood talent and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes, chronicling his life from 1927 to 1947. The Aviator was the second collaboration between Scorsese and DiCaprio, after the two first worked together on Gangs of New York in 2002.

Speaking with Corridor Crew, VFX supervisor Robert Legato speaks on how the plane crash was created in The Aviator.

Legato explained that crazy camera moves were made impossible by the fact that he used miniatures, but he could “create the sense of rhythm and speed” through editing. Through this method, he prioritized evoking the feeling of losing control of a plane in a moment like this, rather than an expensive effect. For the actual crash, Legato used a “cable cam” to basically drive a camera into the house.” Check out the full quote from Legato below:

We had very little money to do it in, and I decided that I coudn’t compete with like a Michael Bay movie or these incredible CG shots.

Look at the little propellers [on the rig]. Bob Richardson, spectacular cameraman, and he was like ‘what the **** is that.’ And I said, ‘you have to look through the camera.’ Because that’s a hanging miniature, it’s all set up for this vantage point for the camera. The miniature that it really is looks like it s a big thing over here. So only through the viewfinder of the camera, and he was not looking through the camera. I was like ‘just, look through the camera.’ But you have to you know, mathematically measure, and those are quarter scale things.

Scorsese & DiCaprio’s Collaboration History

In addition to the visual effects behind this scene in The Aviator, DiCaprio’s stirring performance is part of what makes the scene believable. The Aviator did well for the careers of both DiCaprio and Scorsese, earning them Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and Best Director, respectively. Part of what led to the greatness of The Aviator was likely the existing rapport that Scorsese and DiCaprio had developed from their collaboration in Gangs of New York.

DiCaprio’s work with Scorsese was initially influenced by another of the director’s main partners: Robert De Niro. In a 2023 interview ahead of Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese revealed that De Niro informed the director about DiCaprio’s talents after the two actors worked together on This Boy’s Life in 1993. After seeing what DiCaprio could do, De Niro told Scorsese “he’s very good, you’ve got to do work with him someday.” After the production of Titanic and the passage of almost a decade, DiCaprio finally worked with Scorsese in 2002.

Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon in a hat

After Gangs of New York and The Aviator, Scorsese and DiCaprio have gone on to be collaborators on four other feature films. These films have included The Departed, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Killers of the Flower Moon. DiCaprio also acted in Scorsese’s 2015 short film The Audition. As compared with The Aviator, the budget of Killers of the Flower Moon was comparatively larger, with a $200 million budget as opposed to $110 million. Even with higher budgets and VFX capacities now, it is fascinating to look back on the unique visual work on The Aviator.