Sporty's Pilot Shop

Note: this is a guest article by Patrick Carter, President of NFlight Technologies, the maker of the very popular NFlightcam line of cockpit video cameras.

So you’ve seen some cool aviation videos on YouTube and you’re ready to make your own but you aren’t sure where to start. It is not as hard as you may think.  We are going to step you through the process and show you just how simple our fly it, shoot it, share it, philosophy can be.

Fly It

It’s good to think about what you want to capture before you go flying. A video is just another means of telling a story, so you need to think a little about what you want your story to be and how to keep it entertaining. Are you making a five hour cross-country or are you flying around the pattern? In Hollywood this is called storyboarding. I usually don’t draw out a storyboard but I have something in my head before I go flying.

For a flight around the pattern or practicing takeoffs and landings, the story is usually about the thrill of lift-off and the challenge of landing. I like to capture two angles for this: the first angle is over the pilot’s shoulder showing the controls and instrument panel, the second angle is the pilot’s and passengers’ faces.

If I am flying a long cross-country the story usually follows the theme of an adventure or quest and I want to tell each character’s story by capturing the thrilling, exciting and hilarious moments of the trip. I like to get the takeoff shots and landing shots and a face shot or two in the plane but I also like to hand hold the camera and get some footage of loading bags in the plane or tying the plane down. That’s one of the great features of the NFlightcam—it is not restricted to use in the cockpit only. Keep it with you and use it for those candid shots; try to capture the funny things that you will remember forever.

Shoot It

Now that you have thought a little about what you want to capture, you need to figure out how to do it. We try to make this pretty easy. I am going to outline a few basic shots and how I do it.

• The Face Shot
  Gear – Windshield Mount
  This one is simple. Use our windshield mount to attach the NFlightcam to the windshield in front of you and point it back at yourself. Try to take advantage of the wide angle lens and set up a cross cockpit shot if you have a passenger so that you can capture both faces.
• The over the shoulder
  Gear – Shower Curtain Rod/ Bar Mount
  You can use the extending rod tensioned floor to ceiling to provide an awesome camera mount. I like to place it in the middle of the cockpit and just behind the pilot’s shoulder. With the wide angle lens you will capture the entire instrument panel and glareshield with this angle.
• The candid shot
  Gear – NFlightcam; Optional - Headband mount
  This one is the easiest: just make sure you keep your NFlightcam handy so you can capture those priceless silly, thrilling, and heartbreaking moments that add life to the story.

Share It

Now that you have completed your flight, whether it was a training flight around the pattern or a trip across the country, it is time to take that raw footage and turn it into a story. This is where it can get tricky, but thanks to the some great advances in technology, Hollywood-level productions can come to fruition in a matter of minutes with a laptop and some creativity.

If you are committed to becoming an amateur movie maker after purchasing your camera you should be looking at purchasing editing software for your computer. Macs are definitely in the forefront when it comes to editing, offering iMovie as standard with every machine. In addition to offering great editing suites on their computers, Apple also offers a version of iMovie for the iPhone and iPad for $4.99. Roxio and Sony Vegas are decent low cost options for PC, with Adobe’s Premiere Pro available for the user with full featured needs. If you prefer to spend your money on AvGas instead of computers you can use just about any computer out there to upload your files to YouTube and use their basic editing features online to merge clips together and add music (which is often all you need to tell an entertaining story).

For the sake of this article, I am going to discuss how to tell your story using an iMovie trailer template on an iPhone and then upload it to YouTube. The reason I am choosing iMovie is that, not only does it come as standard equipment on every Mac, but there is an iPad or iPhone available in almost every cockpit I get in these days.

1. Getting the files from the NFlightcam to the iPad. This requires Apple’s Camera Connection Kit and a microSD to SD card adapter.
   a. Remove microSD card from NFlightcam
   b. Insert into adapter
   c. Insert into Camera Connection Kit
   d. Insert into iPad
   e. Import files into Photo Library
2. Open iMovie and pick a trailer
3. Insert text into storyboard
4. Drag and drop video clips into timeline
5. Share with the world

You can see that it’s not as hard as you may think to make an eye-catching video. Just have the right equipment and make a plan before you fly.

Here’s one final tip: to look like a pro, keep your video under 60 seconds. The average attention span is 57 seconds.

For more information about the NFlightcam, visit Sporty’s Pilot Shop.