Brian J. Terwilliger: Runway Romance
For modern travelers the romance of flying has devolved into a bad blind date. After a perfunctory setup via phone or website, we show up expecting at best a timely span of passable transit, at worst a slow anxious dance through security and a middle seat.
Brian J. Terwilliger interviews actor-director Sydney Pollack.
“That isn’t flying,” says indie filmmaker and pilot Brian J. Terwilliger, who describes standard air travel as “like getting on a big bus. There’s just nothing beautiful or sensational or romantic about it.”
Which would qualify as no news at all if Terwilliger had not managed to resurrect and validate all three adjectives by showing us precisely what flying is in a high-definition documentary with an unlikely star, Van Nuys Airport, and a strikingly odd name, “One Six Right,” which refers to the famous coordinates of its main runway.
While a movie starring Van Nuys Airport might not suggest romance to you, it has certainly sounded that note with tens of thousands of viewers — both veteran aviators and casual passengers — who have seen the film projected in HD in a recently completed 12-city theatrical tour or on DVD. Many audience members, moved to tears by the film’s evocation of the airport and by the testimony of aviators who learned to fly there, have written Terwilliger to thank him for the film. “There are even a few people who had their first flight lessons after seeing the film and are now private pilots,” says Terwilliger. “It’s incredible.”
Although the film comprehensively documents the airport’s rich history — Amelia Earhart over-flew its runways for a then-world speed record; Marilyn Monroe was discovered working in its hangars; parts of “Casablanca” were filmed there — the key to its cultish appeal is in the emotional charge generated by the personal testimonies of the pilots and the stunning high-definition aerial footage of restored vintage planes in flight over and around the airport.
Besides documenting the passionate history of aviation, the film also makes a case for the plight of general aviation airports, which are disappearing at a rate of one a week in the United States. Among its tour stops was a special screening on Capitol Hill for members of Congress, where, Terwilliger reports, many minds were changed about airport preservation.
But Terwilliger, who fell in love with airplanes as a boy and earned his pilot’s license at Van Nuys Airport, says the genesis of the film was very simple. “I really had no agenda other than wanting to relay a feeling — what I loved about flying and what I loved about the airport. But while I knew the feeling that I wanted the audience to be left with at the end of the film, I had no idea about how to get there.”
His first challenge, like any first-time indie filmmaker, was raising money. “I went around the airport trying to get support,” he says. “I got a lot of ‘Great idea,’ qualified by doubts about who might be interested in seeing this movie outside of the Van Nuys Airport community. They were afraid I was going to make the most expensive home video ever made. And I’m proud to say I think I’ve done it.”
After three years of trying to raise the money, Terwilliger decided to produce a 5-minute DVD teaser trailer to jumpstart investment.
So after scoring generous donations of crew time and shooting equipment, Terwilliger purchased a Power Mac G5 with Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro. After teaching himself to use the applications, he cut the trailer from HD footage and pressed 1000 DVDs.
“Less than 6 weeks later, I had raised all the money I needed from 12 investors,” he says.
Fully budgeted, Terwilliger shot the rest of the film over the next few months in HD (1080p). Then he used the same Mac on which he’d cut his trailer to edit 120 hours of footage, including 85 interviews, in 54 weeks, collaborating with editor Kim Furst.
Terwilliger unintentionally ratcheted up the challenge when, on the advice of a filmmaker friend, he decided to make the documentary without a narrator. “I didn’t think it was possible,” he says. “How could we possibly weave together all these random people in interviews? But my friend argued that the film was really about the stories and passion of the people we were interviewing, and that we didn’t need an off-screen narrator to explain the stories. He was right.”
Because of the protracted schedule and the large amount and variety of his assets, which included rare archival footage and stills, Terwilliger used Final Cut Pro for much more than he had originally planned, from frame rate conversion to color correction.
“We made this whole film on a Mac, start to finish,” he says. “From the producing standpoint, what sold me was that it was very inexpensive, and I could work anywhere. As a director, using Final Cut and DVD Studio Pro allowed me to make changes all the way through post production, all within the same timeline. I was able to change picture, audio, color, or even content right up until the last second. This flexibility was very important to me.”
By all measures, Terwilliger has landed his project smoothly. Not only has “One Six Right” drawn impressive audiences, both on its theatrical tour and in its brisk DVD sales, but it has fulfilled the filmmaker’s creative vision from inception through completion. “When I needed more time, I extended the schedule, and when I needed more money, I raised the funds,” says Terwilliger. “There were no compromises made or corners cut. Creatively, I’ve achieved everything I set out to accomplish.”
Brian J. Terwilliger frames a shot with the HD camera.
For real-world confirmation of the film’s effectiveness, Terwilliger consults regularly with his friends in the Air Traffic Control tower at Van Nuys Airport. “The film has actually caused a small problem,” he says. “People now come in from the East Coast not to visit the airport or for any other reason than to enter into their logbook that they landed on runway One Six Right. And if they get diverted to One Six Left, a parallel runway, they refuse to land. They go around, enter the traffic pattern, and come back until they get their clearance.”
