Montague

Thanks to the Monster Nation crew and producers, etc. I thought they did a great job. If you're wondering, there were 2 camera men, one sound guy that followed one camera, and the guy I think is the producer.

A lot of thanks goes out to Lou and the RCCA for making this happen, that's for sure. I know he did a lot to help it come out right. And the camera really does like Lou.

Andy was great. I can't think of someone better to choose for being "featured" like that.

The MN folks were great. Lots of fun to work with.

Seeing how "live" stuff like this is shot is intersting though. Makes you look at other shows you see differnetly. Lots of stuff was staged for the camera, either re-creating stuff that actually happened (like the awards ceremony. Andy getting his trophy was re-done for the camera afterwards, as were several others that weren't used.)

I knew in advance that they would shoot a lot of film and use very little of it, but it's still amazing to see the finsihed product and see how much stuff got tossed. Like lots of interviews with guys were just tossed out. They filmed some of a scale combat demo (new rules testing) (you see the 3 planes, a pair of Mustangs, and a FW-190 on the ground, but they cut all the film of those planes in the air), but they didn't use any of that at all, which kind of surprised me. The scale planes are usually the "poster childern" of RC Combat, but other than that one shot of them on the ground, they weren't shown at all.

I'm not sure, but it looked like they shot a TON of flying, but used only a little bit.

I did like the finished product though.

Having a camera stuck in your face is rather "Intersting" if you aren't expecting it. I got seriously self-consious every time they filmed me, so I was surprised to see some of that footage was used. There I was, minding my own buisness, calling for another pilot, and this *thing* just appears next to my head. It's hard to keep doing what you were doing and not look at it, or change what you are doing.

The camera plane footage was pretty funny, and how they used it was even funnier.

Fwiw, the camera plane was done as part of a rigged bit of flying afterwards. The camera is too big and heavy for anyone to fly it during a real match. (if that wasn't obvious). But the match they spliced the camera footage in to was a differnet match entirely, when the camera wasn't up.

3 of us flew against the camera plane (the all-red plane you see go by is me, fwiw). We were told "don't mid-air the camera plane". And we spent a lot of time goofing around trying NOT to cut the camera plane right off, but instead trying to pass as close to the streamer as possible with out cutting it. Then we decided to cut the camera plane, and I think Mike Fuller go there first. The camera plane was a B class plane, with a .25, the chase planes were SSC planes, with .15's in them. I cut another chase plane earlier (tried to get it on camera, but apparently missed), and had so much drag that I couldn't catch up with the camara plane after that (it was REALLY windy that day as well).

After the camera plane was cut, Mike then says "I'm going to mid-air the camera plane"... And here I"m thinking "hey, they told us not to do that, man, they are going to be PISSED if we break that camera". But he did it. He tried to get the tail of the plane or hit from behind, so the impact would be on camera, but as you can see, he missed, and all you see of the impact is the camera jump to one side.

One thing I think was "missed". The show made it look like there was just one quick thing, I didn't think it captured the fact that we were flying for 3 days (actually 4, one day at another site, a kind of pre-nats flying SSC, then 3 days in Muncie flying B and 2610 scale), lots of rounds, and differnet classes. But that's such a minor thing.

It was a heck of a lot of fun. I'd do it again, that's for sure. If you have a chance to work with something like this in the future, jump on it.