Finding Success by Looking for the “No”

Personal story

At first, the people in charge of running the client's business said no to putting a camera in the plane. That made me realize that getting the camera in the plane was the key to making a successful film.

If everyone else had been told no, then getting a yes would allow me to film something no one else had done before.

That's why you should pay attention when you get a "no", it’s often a clue about where success is hiding.

Working with big companies

When you work with big companies, the people in marketing who hire you to make a film are not always the same as the people who run the company.

So, when you need special access to company resources to make your project special, you might step on the toes of the people responsible for keeping things running.

I’ve found that in those cases, you need to help both your client in marketing and the people running the business by explaining and offering solutions to win their trust. Show them your vision and why it’s important. Prove that if they go the extra mile, you'll go even further, which will benefit everyone in the end.

Prologue

In 2022, I was asked to direct a commercial featuring fighter jets, an opportunity I felt really excited about!

The brief I got described a vision with 90% midair shots inspired by footage from various high-end productions, like the Top Gun- Maverick trailer, with dynamic angles and cameras mounted on the wings. Really cool stuff (and big shoes to fill 😅), but on top of this, the client wanted to reuse footage from a documentary about the fighter jets that had already been filmed.

The problem was that the documentary footage had documentry quality, mainly midday shots, captured using GoPros, handheld, and overexposed. 😬

My first thought was to tell the agency and client that it wouldn't work. We can't use overexposed GoPro footage and make it look like a Top Gun Hollywood movie. However, this was my first time working with this group of people, and some might misjudge my arguments as being negative. I was afraid of losing the assignment and knew I needed to build trust first because this was our first project together.

Step 1: Building Trust and Keeping the Momentum Going

To not lose momentum, I kind of did what the client wanted without getting the official sign of to start working, i requested the contact information to access the previous documentary material. I obtained all the necessary material from the documentry crew, and spent 2-3 days meticulously going through it, compiling an edit. In this edit, with my own voice-over narration. I then forwarded it to the client, outlining the steps I had taken and expressing my enthusiasm to proceed with the project.

After about a week of silence, client replied that they could see that the vision everyone had and the material from the documentary just wouldn’t match, and informed us that funding had been secured and the film needed to be produced. It was a moment of celebration - yay!

Step 2: Rewrite the idea using the Mona Lisa approach

Now that we had secured funding, a modest budget, I would need to produce, direct, edit, and grade the film to make it work.

The pitch still included epic flight scenes and tricky camera mounts, and I felt the client wouldn't let us use a fighter jet freely. In the next meeting with the agency and the client, I explained that great films need control over things like light and repeatable movement. For example, you can't shoot a great car commercial with the driver filming himslef while driving and only going around the racing track once. Since the breif mostly had midair shots of planes, we wouldn’t be in control of them. We would have to rely only on GoPro footage filmed by the pilots! It would be hard to keep the dramatic style we wanted.

The Mona Lisa approach

My idea was to make the project smaller.
I call it the Mona Lisa approach: the Mona Lisa is considered a small painting with a big impact. We would create a smaller frame for our film and then do an amazing job within that frame.

I suggested focusing on shots from the ground, we could include shots of the engines starting and a long intro, followed by a fast, exciting sequence of midair shots filmed with a GoPro by a pilot, leading to a smooth landing just before the graphics and logo appear on the screen.
It was only 30 seconds.

This way, we would have more control because the fighters would be on the ground for most of the film, then show as few midair shots as possible, making sure they were short and sweet. That way, the GoPro footage could work. Everyone liked the idea, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Step 3: Not Settling for the GoPro

As mentioned, the film still had a few midair shots that needed to be really great. I had won some small battles so far, but I really didn't want GoPro footage in my film. Since the intro was going to be shot on a nice camera like the Alexa, I wanted all the footage to look great.

As the project went on, we got the chance to meet with the people in charge of the fighter planes. These planes are not toys, they are very expensive and have strict rules about their use.
It was impossible to even think about attaching anything to the plane or even being near them during takeoff because of the many rules and noise levels.

The only way to capture footage in midair was with a GoPro held by a pilot from inside the cockpit. However, I believed that the GoPro footage was the weakest part of the film at the time. It just wasn't good enough.

Step 4: Asking Questions - I Saw an Opportunity

I started asking questions: Why only the GoPro? Does anybody know? It turned out there was a special holder for the GoPro in the cockpit that had been approved through a complicated process. After asking more questions, I found out that the approval wasn't for the GoPro itself but for the size and weight that could fit in the holder, holding the GoPro in the cockpit. So I asked, "Are you saying that if I could fit another camera in the holder, it would be okay?" (I saw an opportunity.)

Step 5: The Blackmagic Micro from 2015 Is About the Same Size and Weight!

I felt excited and started searching for lightweight cinema cameras. I found the Blackmagic Micro, an older camera from 2015. It only records in 1920x1080 resolution and doesn't have image stabilization, but it uses a micro four-thirds mount, which means smaller lenses. It also records DNG-raw files with a decent bitrate, and the size was very similar to the GoPro!
Intrigued, I decided to buy it along with a wide-angle lens.

Blackmagic micro 2015

It was time for the official location scout—the last chance to meet with the client and the people responsible for the planes before filming - I brought the camera with me. With everyone gathered, I gave a short speech and explained why we should switch from the GoPro to this camera, which I held in my hand. It was almost the same weight and size. I asked them to reconsider, offering to leave the camera after the scout for them to test or at least think about using it instead.

Step 6: Shoot Was Delayed, But the Blackmagic Micro Got the Green Light!

After about a week, an issue came up that made the client postpone the whole shoot. It was originally scheduled to happen just before the summer holidays, but now it was rescheduled for right after the summer break. That was a bummer, but there was good news: they agreed to let us use the Blackmagic Micro in the cockpit!

Step 7: Shoot Was Delayed—Could That Be a Good Thing?

Okay, great, I got a better camera into the cockpit! But I was still nervous about one thing I hadn't really thought about much. The pilots also used the GoPro because it's an automatic camera. It sets the exposure by itself, and you just press record. However, the Blackmagic is different. It's very manual, has no built-in display, has a tricky menu, and uses small batteries that drain quickly.

Now that the shoot was postponed, I wondered how this could be a good thing. How could the film benefit from this situation?

Then I had a positive thought: since the shoot was postponed, we didn't have to film the midair shots on the same day as the rest of the shoot.

These important shots with the Black magic micro would be the only angle in the midair scene, so they didn't need to match the footage captured on the shoot day on the ground. For instance, if it rained on the ground during the shoot, it would always be sunny above the clouds.

Then a bold idea came to me: if I could find the right pilot, maybe I could train them to become a camera operator! We could then capture the necessary scenes before the actual shoot during the summer. This would also free up more time on the scheduled shooting days. So, I started asking questions again.

Step 8: Finding a Pilot Who Was Ready to Be a Cameraman

I started reaching out to the client. By now, I had connected with many people there to see who would be flying during the summer and who might want to film extra shots for the upcoming movie.

One person responded, and I had a meeting with this pilot over Teams to explain the idea. He was up for the task!
Later, I sent a small package in the mail with a camera, monitor, batteries, and even an ND filter.

A few days later, we had another call on Teams. We unboxed the package together, and I helped the pilot put all the gear together, press the buttons, and adjust the settings. It was strange explaining how the camera works and how to use histograms to make sure the image wasn't too bright to a fighter pilot holding my gear on the other side of a Teams call.

Even though the pilot was not a filmmaker, he was really enthusiastic.

The big challenge was flying through the clouds while keeping the right exposure for the sunny blue sky.
He would need to fly up above the clouds, set the correct exposure for the blue sky, then go down and start filming before breaking through the clouds.

We agreed that during the summer, the pilot would fly and try to capture some shots, then upload them to a shared cloud folder. The footage was in DNG sequence format, so I had to download it, put it together, review it on my computer, and give feedback.

Step 9: 6 Hours of Footage - Like Looking for Gold in Sand, I Found 4 Seconds of Treasure!

I think we had 3 to 4 online meetings over the summer, and I received about 6 hours of filmed material. On one of the last flights, I found what I was looking for—a few seconds of perfect exposure, flying through some clouds, creating a sense of speed and energy. I stabilized it in post-production and increased the speed by 20-30%, and there it was: 4 seconds of crescendo.

A whole month before the scheduled shoot, we now had our most challenging shot captured. This took the pressure off the shooting schedule on the actual day and prevented a potential disaster if we hadn't gotten it on the day of filming.

The extra time in the shooting schedule allowed us to make all the other shots even better, resulting in a more exciting filming experience. Here is the final film—enjoy!

Step 10: The Final Movie and What I Learned

Even though in many aspects, it’s a low-budget film, that I produced/directed/edited/color graded my self, the film was still very well received.

Offcourse one of the most common pieces of feedback I got was:

"How did you film those shots in the air?!"

After the film went live, other high-end productions working for the same client reached out to me and asked to reuse the 4-second shots in their films.

They said things like, "We couldn't get access to similar shots," or "We haven't been able to film those shots, so we need to reuse your shots." When I heard that, I would think to myself that they had no idea how much work we put in to achieve it.

My takeaway is that when someone says it can't be done, it is often true. But if you push and figure out a way to actually do it, you will be the first and have something unique.

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