All About an Aerial Documentary That Takes Advantage of Sony's F900 HDCAM for Some Stunning Results

Brian Terwilliger is an accomplished director/producer, having worked in film, TV music video and commercial production for a variety of major studios as well as corporations in his career. His latest documentary, One Six Right, was shot with Sony’s F900 and F950 HDCAM HD cameras (on tripods, with a Panavision Super Techno crane and in the nose of a helicopter) and screened at the recent NAB convention.

One Six Right tells the story of the Van Nuys Airport in California and the history, and current plight, of local airports, which are facing extinction. Terwilliger, who is a licensed pilot and learned to fly at that airport, raised all of the film’s financing, kept all creative license and distribution rights, and made the investment back in record time. The documentary has also become the first independent film/documentary to be released on the HD DVD format.

The 73-minute film features air-to-air photography of 12 airplanes, captured via an A-Star helicopter with a nose-mounted Gyron stabilized F950 camera system, and includes more than 20 visual effects shots. Terwilliger captured 120 hours of raw footage (143 tapes) and took 54 weeks to edit it on an Apple G5 running Final Cut Pro. Editor for the project was Kim Furst and DP was Steven R. Miles.

In Las Vegas clips from the film were screened using Sony’s new 4K projector and by all accounts the aerial scenes looked stunning. The film has been screened in 12 cities across the country in the past year and was projected digitally at 4K resolution.

Q: Being a movie about flying, most of the footage was shot outdoors. How did you manage the daylight to your advantage?
A: Most of the interviews were shot single-camera with a standard three-point lighting set-up. Otherwise we relied on natural light and shot only during “golden hours.” That’s typically the first and last two hours of daylight everyday. The shadows are the longest and the light is warmest, which gives the scenes more dimension. This really works to HD’s favor and enhances the look.

Q: Why did you decide to shoot video as opposed to film?
A: To me high-definition is the best possible system to use for aerial photography like this. Even if I had five times the budget I had I’d still shoot in HD. I like the look of it, the versatility of the equipment and the workflow. I find I’m very efficient with it, when compared to working in film.

I also like the look of HD better than film when it’s projected. Arguably the scan lines are greater than what’s on a film print, depending upon who you talk to, but the 1080p/24 HD images are pretty fantastic.

Q: Did you finish the entire film in Final Cut Pro?
A: Yes, we even color corrected in Final Cut Pro. The most time-consuming part was logging the tapes and capturing the footage into the G5 workstation. That’s why it took us almost a year to edit the project. Though we were very organized, telling the story without a narrator took 54 weeks to edit.

Q: Correct focusing must have been a tough issue on this production. How was this handled?
A: We were lucky to have an experienced DP (Steven R. Miles) shooting for us, which made a big difference. Most of the fast-moving scenes were shot beyond the camera’s focal length, so the lens was set to infinity.

We mostly used Panavision zooms, not primes, and long 300 mm telephotos. It was very important to compress the foreground and the background, to get a minimum depth of field, so we used a lot of long lenses. In the air, we sometimes would be within 20 feet of an airplane, and for other scenes we would be as far as a mile away.

It was tricky because were traveling in a helicopter going 100 mph trying to shoot an plane traveling at 200 mph. At times we were in a hover in the helicopter and the airplanes circled around us, producing fast-action against the background using the long lenses. It’s a very cool effect.

For more information and to see clips from the film, visit www.onesixright.com.