Betty, you guys were shooting each other down all the time!
Dugy was a tad hyper, always wanted to shot someone down. Condor seemed to like flying into a few trees. Nisky's first try at taking off ended up hitting his prop on the side rail before he could even get airborne(shot of Doolittle's b25 moving into position before takeoff). I think Nisky augered on the 2nd try too! A few others augered into the sea (it was as tough for us as it was for the real pilots, since we also had 100% fuel and 2k worth of ord during takeoff). Wannab always flying in a circle over that one island was hilarious...."you better not still be over the island wannab, I'm not going to film you unless you find a better shoreline!"..."Damnit!, alright, I give up, lets just film what you got". (shot of b25 with red sky and island off in the distance) The time I augered into the tree while filming a side shot under the tree line...editing is wonderful! Or the time I had a few good shots, then someone would talk on range "did that look good, Kermit?" and ruin the audio...don't worry I had fun dubbing that out...
Oh, almost forgot about HB augering his zero seconds after takeoff! And also, "Betty, the other hanger...get over there...no, the other hanger, not next to HB, get next to the other hanger!". I didn't even use that shot...
Okay, last one, "alright nisky, lead the way for the fly over shot, I'd like you to fly slightly left of the CV". "Uh Nisky, I don't see you guys in the view yet". (He lead the entire group to the right of the task group!). Oh lag was a factor as we all saw each other in different positions so lining up was fun too. Those that didn't know how to backup, as well as taking off in fully loaded b25s on a CV, were taught and practiced for a few minutes before we started to film. Most of the sound effects came from game sounds and other sound packs. The sounds were either ran through an equalizer a few times, slowed down 10x and sometimes mixed together to create new sounds. Many of the sound effects were added in and you'd never know any different. Everything you hear and see is there for a reason. I'll explain what each scene means later on in another post for those that are interested.
The idea started as a 5 minute film for promoting the then FSO event, but ended up as a loose documentary film. The energy those 13 other pilots brang that first night, was tremendous and pushed it into a bigger project than even I expected. We had fun making this and we hope you all enjoyed the film. I find myself tearing up a bit (on the inside of course) whenever I watch this film as I think about the Doolittle Raiders, just as I felt when I was first reading about them on various websites the weekend before we started the film project.
I hope you learned about who Jimmy was and also his experiences he had in life that made him the right man for the job at the right time. I hope that you could see why this mission was done, the message it had to say to Japan and the various ups and downs the mission had to go through. If you ever have a chance to meet the surviving Doolittle Raiders, I hope you can shake their hand and know what they had to go through on that particular day, and yet, many continued to serve fighting the war after that event. Many of their life's accomplishments only started on April 18, 1942.
