90210 star glad to be home even if it lands her in plane trouble

It’s All About Big Emotions in a Small Space for the Cast of the Airborne Thriller Altitude.

B.C.-born 90210 star Jessica Lowndes and her co-stars are spending 18 days in the sawed-off cabin of a light plane, mounted on an airbag gimbal, surrounded by a 50-metre semicircle of green screen in an Aldergrove soundstage.

First-time feature director Kaare Andrews, in a grey hoodie and baggie jeans looking the same age as his 10-years-younger cast, leans into the open back of the cabin next to the camera and offers some final directions before the camera rolls.

The 20-year-old Lowndes plays a rookie pilot taking some friends to an out-of-town concert when their plane is caught in a freak storm. The freakiness continues as the plane is targetted by a supernatural force.

“Our whole movie is informed by old Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episodes,” says Andrews. “You put a cast of people in a pressure cooker and just see how each personality reacts to the environment.”

During lighting and camera changes, Andrews gets the cast out of the cabin and they work out their moves on folding chairs set up nearby. The thriller tension is broken up by a lot of laughing.

“I’m trying to keep it loose,” the director says. “Allow them to improvise, explore character. We have to feel out the set — you can’t even stand up full height in there.”

For Lowndes, the movie marks a welcome trip home after an intense season in Los Angeles as the drug-troubled, latterly pregnant Adrianna on the U.S. hit series 90210.

She had been in L.A. since she was 17, and the 90210 producers came calling a year ago.

“They wanted a girl who was a singer to sing in the school musical, and possibly have a little bit of a drug problem” — the character, not the actor. Lowndes, raised in a non-showbiz family in Surrey, herself had a lead role in her high-school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat at Pacific Academy.

Her 90210 role was originally a guest part. Lowndes thought the run was done when her overdosed character flatlined in episode seven, but they brought her back Pulp Fiction-style with a shot of adrenaline to the heart. The season ended with Adrianna facing teen motherhood. She’ll be back in June for the show’s second season.

Lowndes’ performing gene came out at age 14 during a downtown shopping trip with her mother, when they saw a sign promoting tryouts for an international search for the Wendy in a live-action Peter Pan remake. Lowndes tried out, didn’t get the part but impressed an agent. Steady work in Vancouver followed, and Lowndes headed south after finishing school online.

Since coming back for Altitude, she’s had her younger sister over for sleepovers at her downtown hotel. “I’ve been homesick and I haven’t had a lot of time off since 90210.”

Not that she gets a lot of time off on Altitude.

“I’m a fan of Kaare’s. I love his art and his short films, the way he sees everything, ” Lowndes says.

“We were just looking for the right person,” says the director. “It just happened that the best person for us was from Vancouver. Someone with a bit of a profile, she has to have an intelligence, you have to believe that she can fly a plane.”

A section of Altitude’s soundstage wall is plastered with dozens of Andrews’ hand-drawn storyboards. Andrews has a parallel career as a comic-book artist and author, starting out as a kid doodling in Saskatoon, and eventually drawing and writing stories for Marvel Comics’ Hulk, Spider-Man and Wolverine.

“I’m definitely drawing on my comic-book background in terms of framing my shots,” says Andrews. “It’s such a constrained space and there are only so many angles..”

Alongside his comic work, Andrews moved to Vancouver and made short films. He met Vancouver producer Ian Birkett at Toronto’s Canadian Film Centre, and the pair teamed up to make this script by Birkett’s brother Paul.

Producer Rob Merilees (Stone of Destiny) helped come up with the under-$5-million budget.

“Kaare shot a teaser for a movie we were putting together a couple of years ago. It didn’t end up going but I thought he had real visual style and commercial attitude.”

Storms and other exterior perils will be added digitally after filming is done, and the producers are aiming for a fall release.