FTS Educational Movie No.6

[AchimEngels]

Hello Folks,

some of you may already have seen some of our short "Educational Movies" showing aircraft construction at our place in a funny silence movie style.

Well, we have just finished the filming of "Educational Movie No.5 - Making of a Fokker Style Steel Tube Fuselage" and are cutting the sequences right now. Although the movie only covers some 15 Minutes it shows the making of a steel tube fuselage in every single step. I think it will be interesting for those who have no idea yet how this work is done.

However, I am going pregnant with the idea of taking all this a step further. Since we have most of the original Idflieg type test records and protocolls for the Fokker Dr.I, Fokker D.VII and D.VIII, I wonder whether it would be of interest to produce some movies in the same style (silent movie) showing the load testings and the most important meetings of the staff there.

I have to see how this could be realized at all.

[jumpinjan]

Achim,
If its meant to be educational, the film needs a narration to say what is going on and that requires a "good" script. Writing a good one is the real challange here & the most time consuming of the whole project.
Here's an idea, I think you have compiled a lot of old film stock and I would show clips of how the Fokker workers actually performed the work and then move to the next clip of you doing the same thing in more detail? That would be pretty neat, wouldn't you think?
Also, I recommend putting more "meat" into the education. The last film that I viewed had you hammering a rivet head for over a minute. When watching it, I wasn't sure if was education or humor?

[AchimEngels]

Hello Jumpinjan,

Well, It is supposed to be humorous education.

I am not sure too many people ever have seen somebody hand hammering a rivet head. But it is a way to get it done.

The idea with these movies is to establish a series of many movies of which hand hammering a rivet head only is one very small part. It becomes educational in the moment you want to see how it is made and how long it takes close to life time.

If you are not interested in it, it certainly is more boring than educative. I absolutely agree from that point of view.

Just take a few moments and imagine a series of lets say a hundred or two hundreds of movies of that kind. A complete library. Whatever you may be interested in is covered there. This is certainly more than one single movie with a compilation of such sequences could provide. And it would be more easily accessible.

This does not mean that a compilation of selected movies to one single movie in the future is out of mind....

Doesn´t that add a interesting touch.

I agree with you on the idea of taking original footage and hanging closer details on its tail, but that would mean that you have enough of it available. And of high enough quality to include it in such a movie. This again would limit the number of movies to what is available.

However, the most interesting point in making these movies is to show how we make the planes and to show others who have no idea how it can be done and of course, last but not least to have fun making them.

I also agree on the script part you mentioned. But Remember I am by far not a movie maker and my interest is not laying in thinking hours and hours a day about a good script.

I for one like to see how people laugh when they see any of these movies for the very first time.

I enjoy even more when I hear people say: "Wow! That´s the way you do it? Never thought it could be done that way."

You think "educational" is improper? I can clearly see your point of view, but mine is a bit different here, since many of the original footage shows less and shorter sequences and still I am happy to have seen them. And these have been really educative to me.

Anyway: Thanks for your comments I will considder your thoughts.

Cheers! And Happy holidays.

Best

Achim

[jumpinjan]

From what I gathered in your reply, your audience (that you will be making these for) are non-technical viewers and not so much for the WWI replica builders? If that's true, I don't get the point of making these movies. I suppose there are more non-techs that would get a kick out of seeing them for entertainment value, but I don't think I would (from an engineering standpoint).
How about this approach, could you record ALL your original Fokker & other firm's film clips on a DVD and sell that?

[AchimEngels]

Hi Jumpinjan,

obvisously you are not one of those who are interested in seeing how a rivet is hand hammered. And you are not one of those who are interested in seeing how an airscrew is made or how a Fokker seat is build. Or at least you are not interested in seeing how I do it.

Well, I can understand that :-)

There are three reasons I will not sell original footage. First of all: Why shall I sell something that is already public domain?

I just want to sell what I have made on my own. Or at least I want to make these available to those who are interested in seeing it. I sell quite a few per year and the response ranges from "What a bullshit!" to "Such a great stuff!".

I do not force anybody to buy these and the trailers available clearly show what can be expected. No one is required to come back. The point is that these movies are made for those who are interested in them.

I admit the number of those folks is relatively small, but hey I do not follow the line of commercialisation of the world and the reduction of the content to what the broad stupid masses will buy. I do not depend on sales numbers.

The second reason for not selling original footage is because my idea is to establish a online archive of historical documents to be downloadable for free. The movie footage I have collected will be part of that. Unfortunately my day also only has 24 hours. The development of this archive seriously suffers from the fact that I have to get other things done first line.

The fthird and most important reason is that original footage hardly can show more than my movies do. In the end there have just been camaras filming people at work. What is the difference?

My audience by the way, and I seem to repeat myself here, are those who are interested in seeing them. First of all those who are interested in how these things are done, regardless whether they are builders or not. Several of the forumities building planes asked for copies of these movies and some are quite pleased with the content.

Certainly there is a part in the audience that is far ahead of what any of these movies could teach them.They just watch them for entertainment and that is absolutely O.K. with me. This is one of the reasons why I make them that old silent movie style.

And then there is another reason for the movies. The build is documented. Wulffo certainly is pleased to see how his seat was actually made. The same holds true for others who ordered planes from me.

What about future titles. I can well imagine that seeing how I do the radiator for instance is of interest to some out there. Or making a fuel tank or covering a wing or doing load tests....

Do not judge these movies by what they are by now, but by what they might become. Each of these a part of a huge collection.

I am sorry that you do not get the idea behind it or that you do not "get the point of the making of these movies".

Happy holidays.

Achim

[AchimEngels]

Hello Jumpinjan and all!

Happy holidays!

Thank you Jumpinjan for your ideas. I was thinking about all you said back and forth and started to playing around a bit with one of my future projects.

First thing of all I have decided to change the series title from "Educational Movie" to "FTS Movies". There will be no more ongoing number for each movie, but it will be numbered by the numbers given in the parts list for our drawings or construction units. This way the whole thing could also serve as some kind of construction guide. It just starts making a bit more sence that way.

For instance: The fuselage of the D.VII is construction unit 200 while the plane itself is identified by the number 3. For this reason the general arrangment drawing for the D.VII fuselage is labeled "3200". The movie of the making of it will therefore be labeled "FTS Movie No. 3200".

Movies of single parts will be identified by the parts number.
The movie I was playing around with today will be "FTS Movie No. 46002", reffering to wing construction unit 600 of the E.III, part No.2. It will show the load test of the Fokker E.III wing rib.

I have considered what you said about original footage and added some nice shots of original rib wing loadings done at Fokker. Although these are only 8 seconds they really spiced up the whole thing amazingly. And abart from that it shows that Fokker did it the same way.

I will overwork the fuselage making movie the same way and think this indeed was a good idea of your´s. It just took me a night to see how to realize that.

As you know this is all far from being professional. I just do this for fun and like playing around with the computer, although I do not even have a slight clue of what all can be done using Pinnacle which I use to cut the movie sequances....

Take care and thanks again for your suggestions.

Cheers!

Achim

[jumpinjan]

What would really help you, is to find a book on how to write a research paper. The historical evidence, for example old film clips & stills, are just a part of the whole video. The photos may clear up some questions, and may create more questions. Understanding of the problem, the scope of your effort, information & data gathering, hypotheses, and designing of experiments should be included. An outline, results, conclusions, recommendations for further study, all this needs to be considered and all or some of it applied if you think its necessary. Then after all that, you really have something that people really want to read or see. Well, have fun at it.

[AchimEngels]

Again, I agree with you.

Happy holidays!

Achim

[AchimEngels]

Finally the movie is finished. It will be available soon.

It runs 16 minutes comes on DVD with a German and English version that can be selected from the main menu.

In case of interest to get an idea what it will be all about, feel free to download a trailer here.

This is a low quality 35MB zipped MPEG file with a run time of 1:30 Minutes.

Enjoy!

Achim

[Ross_Moorhouse]

Just watched the trailer. Loved it. Very well done and love the whole 'old' feel of it. Well done.