It took us two evenings to get all the footage and a loooooooooooooot of time to sort through it and create this new video.
When selecting clips for a film it's not only about what is shown, but it all has to fit into the context of the video, has to suit the music (or vice versa) and the image have to be good looking, not too shaky etc.
With this post, we'd like to give you an insight of how this movie was created.
1. At the beginning...
...was a request by a friend, owner of D-EERA, who knew my films and who told me about his plane. I did some research myself and found, that it was really a rare and unique plane. The owner asked me wether I would shoot a film about his plane and without hesitation I agreed.
We arragend a date and met at the airfield to do:
2. The Filming
As usual, Tim was my camera guy - a pilot himself he shares the passion for aviation and flying and also has a good eye for the right perspectives and angles. Another friend met up with us - he supplied the GoPro Hero 2 camera that was attached under the fuselage of the Gepard - and we were complete. Additionally I borrowed a Canon EOS 60D from a friend, so in total we had:
-One Camcorder
-Two DSLRs
-One GoPro Hero 1
-One GoPro Hero 2
First of we took some footage on the ground. The airplane itself offered quite some details and we first inspected it and took a look at some of the unique spots - that includes: placards of origin, small details/stickers, panel features, airplane features (air intakes, landing gear struts, mechanisms) etc.
Details: Placard on the tail
Once we had all the details spotted, we planned the flight with the pilot.
Formation flight isn't that easy and requires a lot of concentration as well as good coordination between the pilots flying. Although unusual, the Gepard was the stationary target, meaning the pilot would just maintain a speed, altitude and heading and we would work our way around the aircraft. Normally it's easier if the Photogpraher-Plane is stationary and the "target" can move around, but since the Gepard-Pilot had never done formation flying, we agreed this was the best choice.
Perspective: Finding the right camera angles to showcase the airplane on the ground
After all evasive manouevers and the route were planned, we equipped the Gepard with one GoPro Hero 2 and filmed it taxiing out in several perspectives. After that we boarded our own plane, a Cessna F172M and started towards the runway.
The Gepard is much faster and higher rated than our chaseplane, so we took off before the Gepard and agreed on an altitude and landmark to meet over. Actually a person on the ground managed to film us as we were on the way to our meeting point:
3. The Flight
After our rendezvous in the air, we flew a straight line, keeping close to the river rhine. It is not as simple as flying next to each other and taking photographs. The lighting has to be right, you also want to have the sun behind you, illuminating your target but without seeing your own shadow on the aircraft. Also for some shots you want an intresting background, not only green woods, but maybe a village or a river - some landmarks that make the photo (or film) even more intresting. Unfortunately, what was a blue sky when we arrived at the airfield, turned into a high overcast when we departed for flight. The light was against us, but we managed to shoot some good pictures anyways.
First we started with film. Tim was sitting on the right hand seat and filming while I was flying. After we got some good footage, we swang over to the other side of the Gepard. Then Tim, himself holder of a valid Pilots License, would take control of the airplane and I would photograph the aircraft through an open window with my cameras. The EOS 60D had a 18-200mm lens, while the EOS500D had a 70-300mm. One camera was on my lap, the other in my hands.
Light: Even though an overcast stole the sunlight, we still managed some good shots
Sun-Light: As we rerturned from this one hour flight, the sun was coming down below the clouds and gave us this nice shot!
Then we would fly turns together, also going for good footage and finally we would tell the Gepard (we were always in contact via radio) to swing over one wing for some more dramatic footage. We also would vary our position so that we could get some shots from next to the Gepard, from above it and so on...
In total we took around 600 photos during that flight and 23 minutes of film. Additionally we had another 11 minutes of film from the ground.
After the landing, Tim left the airplane to get into position and film the Gepard vacating the runway and get some shots during taxiing, while I parked and shut-down our chase-plane. Everything was coordinated with the airfield personal of course!
4. Post-Flight
After a good cold beer in the local airfields restaurant it was time to download and save all the footage to my hard-drive and then sort through it. This would take some time, sorting out shaky movies, blurry photographs and so on.
Actually during the sorting of the media, I found that I needed more footage. So I called the Gepard Pilot and we agreed for another date, at which he would fly the Gepard and I would take footage from the ground - just sitting next to the runway and filming Take-Off and Landing - this would bring us an additional of 30 minutes of ground footage.
5. Music
In my opinion the most essential part for a movie is the music. It's really hard to find good music. An aviation film normally is perfect when you can hear the pilots in the cockpit talking and the engine sounds. But on a formation flight you won't hear much besides a loud engine and wind roaring through an open window. The music has to fit to the images shown, but not dominate them. It has to go hand in hand with the pictures without beeing over-dramatic - it simply has to fit.
This isn't that simple and I spent nights browsing the web for the right music...because: It also has to be licensed so that I can use it for videos. Soundcloud.com is a good website to start looking.
But I wanted more then just music for this video. This video is portraying a french airplane, a classic airplane. The music should somehow have a "french touch", something close to a "chanson", it should be unique - but then I also needed some music to fit the formation flying and something maybe that highlights the character of the airplane and gives it a personal note.
It took me about one month to find the right pieces that you can now hear in the video.
6. Editing
Editing is easy and hard at the same time. Once you have a framework for the film (music, selected scenes etc.) you can start putting everything together. But it's not as simple as cutting a few clips in line. In my opinion everything has to be a flow, it has to fit, no sudden ends etc.
So you start piecing stuff together, tearing it appart again, piecing it together - it's a timeconsuming task till you have everything as it should be.
Sony Vegas: A view into my editing studio - I use Sony Vegas Platinum for the editing
During this phase I'm working close together with Tim - he get's to see small pre-rendered clips and helps me to decide what's cool and what doesn't look that good. Actually, the color-saturation fluctuation at the engine start-up - that was his idea.
Last is the post-processing. The video has to be rendered to an useable size - the raw-images from the camera just look awesome but are way to big. As during the compiling some of the quality vanishes, and videos never really give a 100% true picture of how it looked, I added some filters to the video, to boost the color saturation, increase sharpness a tiny bit (for the Gepard-Video it was by 0.3%) and adjust the white balance.
When everything looks good, it's time to render and my PC takes about 1 - 2 hours to render 10 minutes of video.
Oh by the way: The Gepard-Video was the first time we used image stabilisation software. This reduces the resolution in some clips, but on the other hand gives us very clear pictures - because it is really hard to get shake-free camera clips from a flying airplane!
And that's a very short summary on how the Gepard-Video was born! I hope you enjoyed the read!
