A fun job filming Spitfires

Work

I had a great time filming these Spitfire planes for Formidable Media. As always with video production, no two days are the same and sometime you get to film a subject matter that really interests you. The Silver Spitfire in the pictures below is flying around the world. An original plane from WW2 could fly a maximum of 1 & 1/2 hours before running out of fuel but this specially modified SIlver one can fly for 4 hours.

The Spitfire was designed as a fighter plane for the Royal Air Force. It wrote history during the Battle of Britain. But thanks to its characteristic, elliptically shaped wings, it is also a genuine design icon.

The shoot was a big crew with 6 cameras on the ground and one helicopter for aerial photography. All the pictures were lived streamed via social media.

This event was filmed for IWC watches. They are taking the “Silver Spitfire” on its longest flight ever. The aircraft has been painstakingly restored over a period of 2 years by 14 specialists. An unusual polishing process has given it a high-gloss finish whilst preserving the patina that history has left behind on the metal fuselage of the plane, built-in 1943.

The big adventure gets started at Goodwood, in the south of England where I was filming. To cover the more than 43,000 kilometres around the world, they will need to divide the flight into about 150 legs. In the course of its journey, the Spitfire will have to cope with a gamut of extreme conditions.

The flight route has not yet been finalised. The details will depend on the weather conditions. However, it will definitely fly from Goodwood in the south of England over Iceland to Canada and then into the USA to allow the crew to take advantage of the comparatively mild weather conditions of the Arctic. It will then fly over Alaska and Russia to Japan and South East Asia before the pilots head towards India. The “Silver Spitfire” will then return to Europe via the Middle East.

You can see a video of the Live Stream of this very cool event below:

More information about this incredible journey can be found if you click here.