Ok, I understand many of you wonder about the new movie coming out? When live shows will begin? What else we have planned? ...but most importantly when all this will happen?
Just to take a minute and let everyone in on how we function. We have 10 pilots currently on the team (mind you, that's two open positions). Between all of us we work irregular schedules as pilots, engineers, firemen to name a few, most have families, commitments and so on. I am not using that as an excuse, but you'll understand soon how that plays a factor in the time needed to accomplish what we want.
To answer question #1: When is the new movie coming out?
Still cannot give you an estimate, due to real life circumstances, but I'll tell you how far we've come. There are 36 maneuvers to capture, edit, enhance. Most maneuvers are captured from as many as 15 different camera angles before editing and that takes time. Add on sound FX, narration, true to life music score and of course making sure that it's authentic the entire time. How far along are we? There's 1 more maneuver to complete, and roughly 1/3 of the footage to capture, then it's on to the editing room and it's anyone's guess how much time will be spent there? It could go fast, it could take many hours, days and weeks to come up with a finished product. If anyone knows how badly we want this done it's us, but true to real Thunderbird motto; "We will not settle for anything less than the best".
Question #2: When will live shows begin?
We're practicing in parallel with shooting for live shows and although an event like this relies even more on continuity and pilot's availability, we're getting close. This is the most amazing part about what we plan on doing! You've all seen various virtual teams fly, produce videos and screenshots, even perform live; however, we're practicing to do all of this live, over an airport, with minimal time between maneuvers. That means in short, that the Diamond will leave after one maneuver and be back on speed and low altitude for the next in a very short time with two solo passes in between each and every time. We're working hard on timing and comparing it to the real world timing. We have timing patterns, turnaround times to adhere to, all without giving up the integrity of any maneuver or pass, but it will give the spectator a non-stop airshow for the duration of a live performance. Is this demanding? You bet ya! This years real Thunderbirds perform their entire High Show in 29 minutes. We've managed to fly our entire High Show in just over 40 minutes in Lock-On without losing anyone from formation or running into internet related problems such as lag and not being able to pull as many G's compared to real life. Think about that for a second! In just over 40 minutes, we fly 36 maneuvers in Lock-On, each and everyone perfectly in the aerobatic container, on speed and altitude in front of the crowd line. That my friends takes tremendous practice! So, when will we start live shows? Once the movie is released it won't be long! In the mean time we're working hard to narrow down the timing patterns, so that there's minimal time between any two maneuvers.
Question #3: What else is planned?
This is a big question, too encompassing to answer, but I'll give you a something to chew on for a while. This is only a small bit of all the future plans, but can you say "Vintage and Rhino"?
To sum up. The movie, live demo's and all the research put into making it complete. Not only the flying, but the entire show, with narration, music, comms, parameters and timing takes an insane amount of practice and coordination. We do this on our spare time, but the end results will look eerily similar to the real Thunderbirds. Is that worth waiting for, we think so!
Lastly, my personal best guess about the movie right now would be a late Q2 release '06. That's all I can say and no one really knows more than that. Too many factors play in to being able to determine more closely when? I sometimes wish I could to this full-time and that way be able to estimate these things much better, but between real life and the Virtual Thunderbirds and the way we always uphold our own "highest possible-lowest level" and don't settle for "Just OK", release dates are elusive. Just know that we have 10 individuals working extremely hard and we will not disappoint ourselves nor you when the time comes!
LD
Behind the scenes with the VTB
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Airshow fan
- Posts: 282
- Joined: Thu Mar 23, 2006 7:02 pm
- Location: Evansville, IN USA
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