The Rigging

To rig the long-term (ish) cameras in the ceiling, we climbed aboard the cherry picker and using a combination of L-Brackets, 3-axis heads, ratchet straps and 400m of mains cable, we put a camera to cover each position as requested by the client. I kept the two 17mm tilt shift cameras as far away and as high as possible to reduce lens destruction and placed a wide at the front and one at the back to cover the tail painting.

Once I'd set up each shot, I taped the lens up (to stop paint etc) then placed a big bin liner over each camera and taped it up. Once they were installed it wasn't possible to get access to them again until the job had finished so cleaning wouldn't be possible.

I'd been given a few hours to install the cameras as one plane had recently left and the one I was shooting would be coming in the next morning. The only 'pressure' I had on me to rig was the guy operating the cherry picker had been at work since 7am and it was now 4pm and I could sense he was itching to get home. I, on the other hand, having worked in tv for a number of years, have no actual concept of the 'shift pattern' any more and as expected, you stay until the job is done!

The shoot

For a shoot spanning seven days, you need to extend your time per shot, as in you need to capture shots over a few hours. This does vary however dependant upon what is happening and without witnessing this exact plane being painted previously, things do change. The ground cameras I had set up were set to shoot 300 frames over 2-3 hours. Some shots were longer - sanding off the paint on the engines seemed to be a straight-forward process but after two hours of shooting, they were only half way through so I left it running. I'd been armed with a rough schedule but it was essential to keep an eye on progress in case anything ran late or changed.

The only other issue I was worried about was the scaffolding surrounding the plane which gives the guys access to paint it. It's all attached together in segments and considering there's a few tonnes of it, the majority of it isn't solid when people are walking around it and it moves and sways - perfectly safe for human action but a timelapsers nightmare. The best solution I could use other than a stabilised head was to use a wide 12mm or 14mm lens and grip the cameras to the scaffolding . The wide lenses are a bit more forgiving when it comes to slight movements!