Plane Spotting

“Times have changed. It’s like when the first 747 landed at Los Angeles international airport: everybody thought flying through the sky was the greatest marvel they had ever seen - floating through the air, seemingly in slow motion. Today we never even look at 747s.” - Steven Spielberg
In 2014 I submitted this video for one of my Directing class assignments at Biola University. I filmed airplanes flying in three different countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Needless to say my edited result was unusual compared to the other students’ films, but it remains one of my favorite projects to this day and I thought I’d share it with everyone on here for posterity’s sake.
I wanted to edit together footage from plane spotting but ran into the problem of the video feeling like a slideshow. A quick and snappy montage of airplane after airplane wasn’t very interesting. I realized that it could become a bit of a game to guess where the airplane might come from when starting with an empty frame. Taking in the normal surroundings for a few moments made a large flying object feel more unusual when it finally showed up. Plus, it was fun to play around with expectations and show airplanes through shadows on the ground or in the reflections of a mirror.
This was one of the first videos where I learned to let moments breathe, and it’s possible I went overboard on that, but I paid special attention to lining up small moments in the music with the visuals of birds fluttering around or bugs zooming past to help every second feel important. Special “coincidences” between the video and the audio have become a channel trademark. It’s easy to just edit cuts themselves to a beat, but learning to focus on events within the shot, instead of obsessing over the beginning or end of a shot, remains a valuable lesson.
I was inspired by some of George Lucas’ student films like “1:42.08” and “6-18-67” as well as the National Film Board of Canada’s “60 Cycles” by Jean-Claude Labrecque. Also, I very much enjoyed the minimalistic techno house music of Lee Jones, whose song “MDMazing” appears in this video. Check out his social media and music streaming websites!
Spotify open.spotify.com/artist/5auQP...
Soundcloud / leejones
Facebook facebook.com/profile.php?...
Twitter / leejonesmusic
Bandcamp leejones.bandcamp.com/
The song encapsulates the feeling of being interested and amazed at something easily missed, and hopefully my video gives you that experience too.
Filmed with a Sony HDR CX-550V camcorder near LAX (Los Angeles), LHR (London Heathrow), and CYYZ (Toronto).
2014 - 5 Mad Movie Makers