I watched a piece of the action in the movie Iron Eagle. They climb into the cockpit of an F-16, taxi down the runway and the blast off into the sky.

I was impressed with the simplicity of the scene, especially the part where they taxied down the runway. All you really saw was Louis Gossett sitting in a aircraft seat with the roof line of some hanger-type building out of focus in the background. Then a plane took off at the end of the runway.

Most viewers would assume he really taxied down the runway and was in the plane when it took off. Well, yes, we saw them climb into the plane. But that was it. Taxiing down the runway could have been done by putting the flight seat in the back of my pickup and driving down the road in front of some non-commercial hanger buildings. It would take longer to drive to the location than it would to make the shot. And then some stock footage or some air show footage would have covered the take off.

I mention this because looking at a film from an audience POV is much different than looking at a film from a filmmaker perspective. The next time you watch a movie, notice how little is shown in many of the shots and how easy it would be to reproduce it yourself.

– Rich Pulham

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Dailies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.