Acro Camp» Jim Rodriguez

Sneak Peek 01: Jim Rodriguez’s Hammer-Spin

Stephen Tupper — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 03:43:00 +0000

The editing is really coming together! Above is an example of some of the footage and audio that we’ve been working on. It’s a sequence showing Jim Rodriguez’s “hammer-spin” in the Pitts with IP Don Weaver. Jim figured out the exciting way that a Pitts doesn’t need as much forward stick at the top of a hammerhead.

We’re editing our heads off whenever we can to get the film out this summer. And the music is coming along well, too. Ace audio guy Scott Cannizzaro just dropped an early mix of his take on Acro Grass and it’s stellar.

More news as it happens!

Wing Cam footage of Jim’s Botched Hammerhead

Stephen Tupper — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 23:57:00 +0000

More slaving over a hot Mac this evening. But eminently worth it. I think I’m about 80% of the way through cataloging the aerial footage.

I found the wing camera version of Jim’s botched hammerhead. About the same level of drama as the cockpit camera, but a different angle.

Here’s a pretty good frame grab of Michelle and Don in the vertical. The footage is becoming much more Pitts and Super-D heavy with the Citabria only doing two flights on Day 3.

Jim’s Botched Hammerhead in the Pitts

Stephen Tupper — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 01:44:00 +0000

Think Acro Camp is all about beautiful and coordinated flying? No-sir-ee bob!

In this outtake, camper Jim Rodriguez botches a hammerhead. Ugly, ugly, ugly!

But how are you going to learn how to do it right if you don’t do it wrong every once in awhile? And, perhaps more importantly, you’re going to botch a maneuver every now and then. You might as well see what botched maneuvers look like and learn how to recover from (and eventually laugh at!) them. I can’t think of another IP or airplane that I rather have it happen to me in. Jim is in great hands with Don and the Berz Pitts.

Folks, Acro Camp is about real people who are a lot like you hanging it out there on the edge and getting a good snootful of what’s up there. It’s a genuine story of transformation and growth. Botched, beautiful, and otherwise. I can’t wait to share it with you!

A Fine Day’s Cataloging

Stephen Tupper — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 02:40:00 +0000

Another fine day of editing here at Airspeed Studios. I got most of Day 2 (15 May) cataloged and ready to link up with alternate camera angles and the cockpit audio. And I found several of the Easter eggs that the cast left for me. Like this shot of Jim Rodriguez and Don Weaver giving the thumbs up, er, down, er up.

The tech frame evolved when Roger Bishop gave in to the ham that’s in all of us and gave the camera a wave. Being a guy with a true sense of lighting and composition, I’m sure that he couldn’t resist stepping out into the near-perfect lighting of one of the early flights of that day.

A nice shot of Paul and Barry in the vertical. Do I need a further reason?

Nicholas “FOD” Tupper stopped by and I got him in the frame of the rear-facing camera on the Super D.

Paul “Gump” Berliner mugs for the camera during a Pitts ride later in the day.

Cataloging, Taking Notes, and Jim’s G-Face

Stephen Tupper — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 02:51:00 +0000

Hey! Bet you’ve wondered where we’ve been! All over the place, to be honest. I’ve hit several airshows, toured the American Champion plant, and been to Beale AFB capturing footage, and other stuff for the movie.

With the airshow season winding down here in the northern part of the United States (or at least the northern part of the midwest), I’ve begun to have time to really sit down and systematically go through the video and audio that we captured in May. Tonight I got all the way through Jim Rodriguez’s first flight in the Super D with Don Weaver on 14 May.

The flight went 0.9 Hobbs and consisted mostly of stalls and spins and then a couple of rolls and a couple of loops – Jim’s first. The lead frame grab here is from just after the first real spin had become fully-developed.

The thing you don’t get in the frame grabs is the vertigo-inducing effect of the sun whipping by every couple of seconds and the shadows tracing an ever-tightening ellipse around the interior of the cockpit. I’m noting a few of those for a montage sequence for the trailer.

Here’s Jim on knife-edge in the early part of the first roll. Nice view outside the cockpit. These shots are from the ContourHD that I mounted on the right side of the cockpit. There’s a Panadonic on the left side, too, but I ran a redundant Contour on the first few flights before I needed to mount one out on the wing. Given the shake that the Panasonics inexplicably developed during principal photography, it’s good that we ran the ContourHDs in parallel in the early going.

Here’s Jim at the top of his first loop. Again, the stills here don’t show the whole story. The first loop was decidedly stop-sign-shaped. With the stall horn sounding in the middle of the second quarter. But he got it around!

By the way, if I’m criticizing as I go along, it’s not mean-spirited. I didn’t do much better (and, in many ways I did worse) than the campers when I flew this stuff for the first time.

Do you have a G-face? Jim has a G-face. This is Jim’s G-face. Check out his neck and jowls. That’s were I feel it most and, especially when you see it in motion, Jim gets the effect there, too. And it’s accentuated by the extent to which Jim pulled. This is most of the way around the back of that same stop-sign-shaped loop and he’s cranking about 4.5G to get her pulled up level.

Jim took the little white bag seriously. As did all of the campers. I’m pretty sure that he was the camper who least needed to worry about it, but there it is under his shoulder strap as he’s egressing from the airplane. Just one of the reminders that this is a new thing for each of the campers and that the experience was full of the strange and unknown.

I continue to be amazed that these people showed up and flew their hearts out for this film. We had all of the issues that you might expect in a first project. There’s some blown footage and some missed audio. But I’ve long since established for myself that we have more than enough material to tell a compelling story and to really turn some people on to aerobatics.

The cataloging is ongoing and I’m whittling away at it. The harder i work on the completeness of the cataloging, the easier and better the actual assembly and editing is going to be.