Airshow Videos - What do you like to see in them?

[Dave Homewood]

This is an important question because Bruce has asked myself and my friend to film the SportAvex airshow, and though both of us have trained at university in filmmaking and are both aviation buffs, we are not too experienced in filming airshows.

So right now I am trying to think up the plan for how we'll put it all together. And I suddenly thought I'd ask the airshow-viewing-public what they like to see in airshow videos.

What are good innovations? We're doing it on a shoestring budget and so won't be able to mount cameras in planes, etc. But do you reckon it's a good idea to have, say,
- interviews with a few pilots who're displaying (Simon? Ryan? interested?)
- Shots of behind the scenes, the organisational side, like in some of the earlier Wanaka videos?
- Use the airshow commentary from the loud speaker? Or dub it out, add music and a voice over?

Whatsorts of things do you like to see? And what do you hate or what irritates you in the airshow vids you've seen in the past?

All suggestions will assist I'm sure. Please help.

[turboNZ]

I personally would like to see a dawn to dusk approach of how the day's organised, like setup, briefing, flying (in flight too) and then the post analysis and pack-up. Could be interesting.
Like a fly on the wall approach.

[Dave Homewood]

Reality TV style...

Not a bad idea but a lot of work for two guys to do. I have already been thinking about a dawn approach actually. I was inspired by a really good BBC doco I have on DVD about the Confederate Air Force. It opens with their lovely hardware (fighters, bombers etc) silhouetted against a dawn sky with moody music. I'm hoping we can get across to Tauranga on Saturday Night and get up early to film the dawn silhouettes. So long as it's not raining it should be cool. Have to see what happens though. We may be around for the sunset too i guess...

[Bruce]

It wont be raining - we've booked the good weather!

[Dave Homewood]

Sweet. Good forward planning there Bruce. ;D

Are you home tonight, we need to organise a meeting about the film sometime.

[Allan Udy]

>aviation buffs, we are not too experienced in filming airshows.

How did it go? Filming airshows is nowhere near as easy as many people assume it is (not that I'm saying you assumed it was easy).


>And I suddenly thought I'd ask the airshow-viewing-public what
>they like to see in airshow videos.

Our experience in putting together the Classic Fighters videos is that there are primarily two types of people who will buy the video:

i. The person that wants to see a blow-by-blow account of the airshow as it happened on the day. That is, your fly-on-the-wall type, and

ii. The person that just wants to see the aircraft in action again. This sort of person is not too concerned about the show itself, but just in seeing the aircraft in action.


A further complication is that there are people who want to have all the gory details of the aircraft -- specifications, max airspeed, gross weight etc etc, and those that are not interested in that -- all they want to see and hear are the aircraft.

In general terms our videos/DVDs have catered for those people who want to see the aircraft in action, and from the feedback that we've received over the years we've done a pretty good job. As an aviation ethusiast, I'm very happy with the airshow videos we've produced, and while we haven't had the same budget that Wanaka has to create their video, I believe that ours are better! Not just my opinion -- I've had plenty of people tell me this.

If you still haven't checked them out, you can do so at

www.classicfighters.co.nz/shop/videodvd_05.htm

Cheers,
Allan

[Dave Homewood]

Hi Allan,

Well it was certainly an interesting and worthwhile experience. We did have several problems that would have to be addressed if we did it again, but all in all we think we have enough reasonable footage to make a reasonable DVD. The editing process has begun, but may be another few weeks at least till it's completed as this is a soare time vocation.

One problem was the cameras we used, Sony PD150's, really did not have quite enough range on the zoom lens so as some of the displays were done fairly high or fairly far out away from the crowdline, it was often just too far away from us to get good footage. This is not the greatest worry as most displays were close enough in to film.

It is true that it is NOT easy to film aircraft, especially the faster ones. My friend Mike chose to use a tripod for his shooting and this went ok for most of it. I chose not to as the tripod I had was sticking in the pan a bit, and I felt restricted by it. So I went to hand held fairly early on. This of course produces a little shakiness in parts but combining the footage from the two cameras will eliminate most of this I hope. The major problem, whilst I had the freedom to manouvre and follow the aircraft, was my arms became so sore as the camera had no rest for the shoulder, it was a case of taking all the weight on my arms. So by the end of the airshow it was all I could do to hold them up. I was also getting dehydrated after the 13 hours of shooting and that didn't help.

The biggest problem was following white planes on the brightest blue and white glarey sky using a crappy grainy black and white eyepiece. The coloured screen on the camera was hopeless because of the reflection on it from the glare of the sun. The weather was great for the punters but not us filming. I kept following what I thought were planes and then found they were seagulls or spots on the eyepiece!

If we do it again we want two more people - one with each camera operator, to act as spotters (you lose sight of the plane so easily when looking through the camera) and as gophers for water, etc. And there are other things we'd do too, better lens length on at least one camera, etc.

But considering all this, considering it was out first time, with borrowed equipment, and all the issues, I think SAANZ will be very happy with the result when we get it all together I hope.

Once the DVD is ready I'll post a message here because a few of you members here starred in the show, and I'm sure a few others will find it of great interest.