Today has been the practice day for the teams at the Formula One Bahrain and we have been able to get some good footage of the action at the race track. Although the conditions were a little hazy, with visibility at around 3km, this did not affect the quality of the images in any way and Lieven was happy with the shots. The first practice session was at 10 am local time and the second was at 2 pm. Both ran for about an hour and half which gave us time to refuel and have a lunch break between the sessions.
Filming the F1 is very much like shooting a movie with the director on the ground communicating with Lieven in the air for the shots he wants. Most of the time we are flying at between 150 to 200 feet but we also have to go higher to around 1000 feet for wide shots at times. We were occasionally asked to go lower to get panning shots or follow a driver a little more closely. All within safe limits of course. Every bend on the track has a number and so we know where to expect the car that the director asked us to follow. Sometimes the shots required us to follow a car and sometimes we were required just to hover over a section of the track to film the cars as they came through.
The live feed images that we get from the aircraft are relayed to the huge communications centre on the ground and are then relayed to the satellite links for the broadcast media around the world to pick up.
The picture is of our aircraft fitted with the camera.