By Kate Lieb, News Correspondent

‘Up in the Air’:’ a movie about Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a man whose job is to fly across the country to fire people, and in the process, racks up hundreds of thousands of air miles. About to reach his ultimate goal of 10 million American Airlines miles, he has met his match in a fellow traveler, Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga).
There’s one problem:’ A young upstart, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), who has just proposed a new cost-cutting strategy which will force him to stay grounded, wonders if he’ll ever get up off the ground and back into the airspace.
Director Jason Reitman told The News he began writing the script about eight years ago. Like in his other movies, including 2007’s indie, Oscar-winner ‘Juno,’ he humanizes someone who would ordinarily be frowned upon in society.
‘I don’t try to form a genre, but it seems to come out that way,’ he said. He mentioned he is ‘drawn to the anti-hero to try to humanize the character.’
Reitman said he began by writing ‘eight characters for an actor specifically and working with actors who share qualities with the character.’
He said he thought of Clooney when writing the character of Ryan Bingham.
‘If you’re going to make a movie about a guy firing people, he better be a darn charming actor,’ he said.
When the movie began filming, he said he used his crew ‘- most of whom he’s known since high school ‘- because he said he wants to be surrounded by people he trusts.
Because Reitman decided to film in practical situations, he said he filmed in five cities and inside of some airports. For airport shots, crew members couldn’t interrupt normal activity because of post-September 11 filming standards, so they worked in partnership with American Airlines. The crew also had to undergo background checks and pass through security each time they began filming.
In the movie, there are many bird’s-eye-view shots that make it appear as though the viewer is flying.
To achieve this, he said he had to attach a camera to a Cessna plane, a small, piston-powered aircraft, with a trained pilot who had to wear an oxygen mask and had to dive to get the shots.
Reitman said he wanted the shots because the main character, Ryan, ‘sees the world in two ways:’ up high and from hotels, airports, and rental cars.’
The movie also features clips of real people getting fired. Reitman said the subjects in these scenes responded to advertisements in St. Louis and Detroit, two of the five cities in which the movie was filmed (and two of the cities hit hardest by recession), to tell their stories about being fired.
‘It was sad how many people responded to the ad. We sat down and interviewed them about losing their job,’ he said. ‘The emotions in those scenes so real and honest. It’s now one of my favorite scenes in the film. It made me realize the worst part about losing a job not the loss of income, it is losing a sense of purpose.’
Reitman said he was single when he began writing ‘Up in the Air’ and was a husband and father by the time he finished. He said his change in marital status was the reason why this film has a different feel.
‘My first films were black and white satire descriptions of the intricacies for human behavior,’ Reitman said. ‘But this movie is more about discovering the gray area.’