Arka Mukhopadhyay
South African director Gavin Hood, who dazzled the world with ‘Ender’s Game,’ brought an enthralling thriller film to life in the 2015 movie ‘Eye in The Sky.’ It follows Colonel Katherine Powell, who wakes up to find that a British-Kenyan agent working undercover in Nairobi has been killed. The accused are the notorious Al-Shabaab group. With the development, she embarks upon a deadly mission to capture three of the heads of the alleged terrorist group, who have scheduled a meet in Nairobi.
Helen Mirren, Alan Rickman, and Aaron Paul take up crucial roles in this chilling tale of international conflict. While its indictment against war and terrorism characterizes the movie, it also posits an ethical question surrounding drone warfare. Most of the film unfolds in Nairobi, the densely populated capital of Kenya, while oscillating from Nevada to Hawaii. If you are curious to know about the locations where the movie was filmed, you may count on us.
Eye in The Sky Filming Locations
‘Eye in the Sky’ was filmed in its entirety in and around South Africa, especially in Cape Town. The director cleverly chose locations in the city that can be doubled as other parts of the globe. Principal photography commenced in September 2014 and was wrapped up by November 4, 2014.
Director Gavin Hood chose to film the movie in his home country for logistical and emotional reasons. As the director knows the country like the back of his hand, he could provide invaluable inputs in location scouting. Barring minor glitches, the production went smoothly. Let us now take you to the specific locations where the movie was filmed!
Cape Town, South Africa
The movie was filmed in and around Cape Town, as the South African capital features diverse locations that can stand in for any part of the globe. While the story unravels in all parts of the globe, from Hawaii to Surrey and Nairobi, the director showed remarkable intelligence in choosing different parts of South Africa as backdrops for the far-flung locations. However, the South African Civil Aviation Authority did not allow filmmakers to fly a drone in the country’s airspace.
Thus, the director, therefore, had to opt for CGI for the sequences. Cape Town Film Studios, a vast 200-hectare movie studio located at Film City Boulevard in the Dreamworld suburbs, around 30 kilometers away from the city center of Cape Town, lent their premises for filming sequences for the movie. Most interior arrangements, especially the bombed town square, were built from scratch in the studio.
Some scenes were filmed at Beaufort West, a town in the Central Cape province amidst the arid Great Karoo region. The film crew apparently found a part of the town that was an ideal chameleon for Nevada. According to Hood, the production team also found an area in the country that looked like Surrey, while local clubs stood in for Las Vegas locations.
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