From a Red-Carpet Warbird to the Rose Bowl: Six Years of Aviation Set Pieces for Lionsgate's Biggest Moments
The Moment
January 1st, 2025. New Year's Day in Pasadena — the one day a year when the eyes of the entire country point at the Rose Bowl.
And outside the stadium, in the middle of the game-day crowds, sat something no one walks past: an aircraft. Not a poster of an aircraft. Not a prop. The real thing, staged beneath a Flight Risk arch, parked exactly where no airplane has any business being — three weeks before the film hit theaters.
People stop. They point. They take the photo — and every one of those photos carries the movie's name to a few hundred more feeds. That's the entire logic of an aviation set piece: in a world of banner ads people scroll past, nobody scrolls past an airplane where an airplane shouldn't be. (More from the day is saved in our Instagram story highlights.)
That activation was produced by Experiential Supply Co. for Lionsgate — and it worked because of a relationship with Lionsgate's campaigns that started six years earlier, on a red carpet in Hollywood.
Rewind: 2019 — A Warbird on Hollywood's Doorstep
When Lionsgate premiered Midway in 2019, the film told the story of the battle that turned the Pacific War — a battle won in large part by one aircraft: the SBD Dauntless dive bomber. The premiere needed that history parked at the theater.
Here's the production problem nobody outside this industry thinks about: there was no fully restored SBD Dauntless available. A lesser vendor stops there. We didn't. We sourced a genuine WWII combat type from the same era — an F4F Wildcat — and dressed it in SBD Dauntless markings for the carpet. The right silhouette, the right paint, the right history, delivered on the studio's date. That's not a compromise; that's what production problem-solving looks like when your prop shop is the golden age of naval aviation.
The press did what press do when history parks itself in front of a theater: shot it from every angle, cast alongside, and the aircraft became part of the story of the night. (The full 2019 story deserves its own post — coming later.)
Six years after that, when Lionsgate's Flight Risk campaign needed a moment at the Rose Bowl, the aviation call came again. In this business, the second call is the real review.
The Challenge: An Aircraft Is Not a Step-and-Repeat
Here's what an experiential producer is actually buying when they order an aviation set piece — and what they're trusting you to have already solved:
Logistics that don't scale like normal props. An aircraft doesn't fold into a road case. Transport, permits, escort requirements, load-in windows, ground handling, and reassembly all have to be engineered around the venue's schedule — and on New Year's Day at the Rose Bowl, the venue's schedule moves for nobody. Our load-in window: December 29th, for a January 1st activation. Which meant the entire aircraft move ran through the deadest week of the production calendar — Christmas through New Year's — when most vendors have an out-of-office reply and a beach chair.
Insurance and liability most vendors can't paper. Venues and studios both need to see coverage before an aircraft rolls anywhere near a crowd. We arrive with it handled.
Crowd interaction by design. The whole point is for thousands of people to get close — which means the display has to be planned for exactly that: barriers, sightlines, photo angles, and staffing that protects the aircraft without killing the experience.
The studio clock. Movie marketing runs on release dates and press windows. The set piece has to be perfect on the one day that matters, with no slip. Sound familiar? It's the same promise as a flyover, at zero knots.
Most experiential agencies can build you a beautiful booth. Very few can deliver an actual aircraft, papered and placed, exactly where the campaign needs it. That's why the agencies call us.
The Solution: The Vendor Who Makes the Producer Look Good
Here's a detail that matters if you're an experiential producer reading this: on this activation, our client wasn't the studio. It was Experiential Supply Co. — the production company Lionsgate contracted to deliver the Rose Bowl moment. They hired us to own the aviation problem inside their production, which means our job wasn't just to place an aircraft. It was to make their delivery to their client flawless.
That's a role I know from both sides. I'm not just a pilot — I bring twenty years of live event production experience alongside showrunners, movie and live sports producers, and operational multi-taskers around the world. When a production team talks load-in windows, press timing, and activation footprints, I'm not translating. I'm home. And when the conversation turns to airworthiness, ground handling, and what it takes to move an aircraft through a city — I'm home there too.
For Experiential Supply Co., that meant:
The right aircraft, not just an aircraft. Here's a detail most people watching never knew: the aircraft that starred in Flight Risk was far too large for the activation footprint at the Rose Bowl. So we sourced an airframe that fit the space and looked the part — a high-wing aircraft in the film's paint scheme, reading instantly as the movie's plane to every fan who walked past. If that sounds familiar, it should: it's the same craft as the Wildcat in Dauntless markings, six years apart. Matching the machine to the message is half this business. Sometimes, so is matching it to the square footage.
One phone number for the whole aviation problem — over the holidays. Aircraft sourcing, logistics, permitting, transportation, labor, and California Highway Patrol coordination and escort — all of it planned and executed across Christmas, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day. Somewhere on a Southern California freeway, between the holidays, an airplane rolled toward Pasadena under CHP escort while the rest of the events industry was dark.
Flexibility under a moving show. Campaigns change. Placements shift. Timelines compress. The vendor who treats every change as a crisis becomes the producer's biggest problem; the one who absorbs changes quietly becomes their favorite line item. You'll see which one we were in a moment.
Production-grade reliability. On time... on target... on budget... A studio activation has one shot, in front of cameras, on a date set by a release calendar. That's not pressure we tolerate. It's pressure we're built for.
The Payoff: In the Producer's Words
When the people who produce activations for major studios tell you what it was like to hire us, listen to what they choose to praise. Here's Tamika, Chief of Staff at Experiential Supply Co.:
"Really appreciated your professionalism and keen eye to detail throughout the process! You were easy to communicate with and quick to respond to any changes that we needed."
— > Tamika, Chief of Staff, Experiential Supply Co.
"Quick to respond to any changes" — that's the line every producer reads twice. Anyone can promise perfection when the plan holds. Production professionals hire the vendor who stays perfect when the plan moves. That's the review that wins the next Rose Bowl.
Planning a Brand Activation with Aircraft?
Questions experiential teams and studio marketers ask us — answered straight:
Who typically hires you — the brand, the studio, or the agency? All three, and most often the experiential agency or production company running the activation. We slot into your production as the aviation department: one contact, fully papered, working your timeline. Your client never sees the complexity — they see the aircraft.
Can you place an aircraft at a stadium, premiere, or festival? Yes — that's the specialty. Transport, permits, insurance, ground handling, reassembly, and crowd-safe staging are all part of every set-piece production. We've delivered aircraft to a Hollywood red carpet and to the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day.
Can the aircraft match our film or campaign? Matching the machine to the message is half the craft — up to and including sourcing a period-correct airframe and dressing it in campaign-accurate markings, or finding a look-alike sized for your footprint when the hero aircraft won't fit. If the story needs a specific silhouette, tell us the story.
How much lead time does a set piece need? More than you'd guess and less than you'd fear. Venue windows and transport logistics drive the timeline more than the aircraft does — contact us the moment the activation concept includes wings, and we'll tell you honestly what's possible by your date. (For the record: we've executed over the Christmas holidays. Deadlines don't scare us.)
Do you do flying and static together? We do — a flyover to open the moment and a set piece to hold the crowd all day. For the right campaign, we'll build both into one coordinated production.
Your campaign has a moment that deserves to stop foot traffic. Tell us about it — and we'll put an aircraft in it.
