In April 2003 I volunteered to film a video of the weekend flyovers of White Rock for the Canadian Museum of Flight in Langley, BC. I remember the biggest challenge was that due to the cost of operating the aircraft and the high demand for the limited number of available seats for passengers I would have only one chance on Saturday to get all of the air-to-air footage.
On Sunday I kept my fingers crossed that the weather would be similar enough that the ground sequences would match the look of the aerial footage.
If you mouse over each photo you can learn a little bit about the process of making of this video
The Canadian Museum of Flight in Langley, British Columbia is dedicated to restoring, preserving and showcasing Canada's rich aviation heritage.
Their mission is to bring British Columbia's aviation past into the future.
The museum has 7 aircraft that are flyable however since two of the aircraft are single seaters the opportunities for people to be a passenger in the aircraft are quite limited.
I got to be a passenger in 2003.
The challenge in creating this video was that I had only one chance to get all of the aerial shots.
The following day I watched three other lucky people get to go up while I captured the ground sequences.
I decided to omit any narration since I know many aviation enthusiasts like to hear the sounds of the aircraft engines. Unfortunately the only sounds I picked up from our open cockpit were wind noises which is why I switched to music for the in flight segments.
The wind also made it quite challenging to hold the video camera steady.
However I managed to swivel around to get a few shots looking back toward the tail of our aircraft and the other aircraft in formation with us.
From the ground the movements of aircraft in formation look very smooth but in reality the aircraft are getting bumped around by the air.
To compensate I applied slow motion playback to the air to air sequences.
I had to be carefully to find the right amount of slow motion to apply in the computer software to smooth out the look of the formation flying without making the propellers of the aircraft look unnaturally slow.
Before you know it we had to head back to the Langley airport.
I especially enjoyed the formation break as each aircraft peeled off to make their approach for landing.
Thank you to all of the pilots, crew members, staff and volunteers at the Canadian Museum of Flight for making my flight and this video possible.
Canadian Museum of Flight website
