As I climbed into the tiny box, with the tiny wings, I was reassured slightly by the fact that the pilot had to be in there too. His shirt was a little baggy, but he didn’t appear to be wearing a parachute, so at least he’d be going down with me.
It was a fairly non-descript day, cool and overcast, and I was off on my first aerial scouting excursion. My boss, let’s call him Sally, got it into his head that we needed a bird’s eye view of all of our filming locations. We priced out various satellite, blimp and plane photo options and all of them proved either sadly inadequate or hilariously overpriced.
The solution? The two of us would hire some half-crazed WWII Air Force vet to fly us around in what I can only assume was his homemade version of the Wright Brothers’ Model B. Then, once we had gained the proper altitude, we would throw open the window and hang outside the plane with our cameras while Mad Dog barrel rolled the plane sideways. Sally was thrilled. I was guardedly optimistic about surviving.
Ultimately, it all worked out. After about 3 hours, airsickness had us eyeing each others camera bags as possible receptacles, so we stared plaintively at Mad Dog until he took pity on us and returned us to solid ground with only minimal showboating and hardly any bleeding.
We did get some great shots. Austin looks real spiffy-like from the air and Luling, Georgetown, and Lockhart aren’t that bad either. The shots posted here are of downtown Austin. I was going to post the photos of all of our highly confidential sets, but I figured that might undercut the bidding prices on EBay. Check back tomorrow for details about my firing and pending arraignment.
-L. Pants
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