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It’s the Plane
It’s the Plane
A century ago, flight in a man-made craft was considered an impossible dream by
most. Yet today, it is a commonplace event in our busy lives. But pause for a minute to consider just how far the aeroplane has come in these few short years and the very act of flight can
once again be the source of awe and wonder. Bristol-based Green Umbrella films will doubt-
less inspire similar emotions with their documen- tary, The Ultimate Guide: Planes, as they set out to record the rapid evolution of the cardboard and cloth contraptions of yore to the supersonic, hi-tech jets of modern day reality.
Scripted and associate produced by Martin Cook, the 50-minute documentary is directed by Nigel Ashcroft, who also serves as executive produc- er for the whole Ultimate Guide series.
“We ask how does a plane work, how does it get up in the air and how does it stay there,” says Ashcroft. Having begun his career filming aeroplanes 30 years ago, this project brings him full circle, but is a quite different beast from so many other, rather static and dull examples of the genre.
“My idea was that everything we show should be flying,” he continues, “because after all planes look nice when they’re in the air. That was a chal- lenge. We managed to get replicas or original old planes and actually do things with them that would have been done when they first flew. The film starts with a reconstruction of the Wright Brothers on their first flight at Kittyhawk in 1903, which we filmed with a half scale model with a 20 foot wing span suspended it from a crane.
“We also reconstructed a World War One dog- fight, which was quite complex. The planes were both replicas; we had a German Fokker triplane and a British biplane flying above Salisbury Plain, and we choreographed a fight between them. This is quite a tricky thing to do, because you obviously want to make it look dramatic but you also had to bear in mind safety. And not only did we have those two planes up there fighting each other, but we were up in another plane filming them as they did so.”
Shot on Super 16, the documentary crew divided the time between UK locations and
America, filming various planes flying in various situations, often contrasting aircraft of varying size and speed. At all times the key was to keep the visuals interesting, which accounts for the involvement of US aerobatics champion Patty Wagstaff, and a few other surprises achieved through skilful post production.
Focusing the evolution on a handful of key mile- stone planes, the film recounts the stepping stones to what we know today, from the Wright Flyer, via aircraft such as the DC3, the Constellation, Boeings’ 707 and 747 and Concorde.
Photos above left: Nigel Ashcroft, Director of The Ultimate Guide: Planes and Executive Producer of The Ultimate Guide series; main: The Wright Flyer
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