Search - American Fighter Pilot on DVD

A great program, polluted with some annoying editing

Mark Brown | Rockdale, TX United States | 04/28/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I originally found out about this program when viewing a Google Video trailer for a documentary that used to be called "Eagle Drivers". The trailer included various briefing shots, small insights about life in a squadron, and some vary nice aerial and flightline footage. I was thrilled that someone was going to release a documentary that actually went into some detail about the training procedures and life as an aspiring military aviator instead of a dull narrative dubbed to dated, stock footage of military flying.

I did a little bit of searching and discovered that the project had turned into a "reality" TV show which was unfortunately canceled after a few episodes had aired. I wasn't able to find any more footage online than just the trailer, and I was very intrigued to check out the show. I found it here and was a little put-off by some of the reviews, but I decided to take the plunge.

It is a 3 DVD set and spans 7 one-hour episodes an an hour-long interview. The show follows 3 Lieutenants who are beginning training at Tyndall AFB in Panama City, FL to fly and fight in the F-15C. A big part of what drew me to the program is how much I like that plane. 2 of the pilots, Todd Giggy and Marcus Gregory, are straight out of Undergraduate Pilot Training and only have a small amount of flying experience from the airframes there (the T-37 and T-38). The other pilot, Mike Love, has former experience as a B-1 pilot.

They are filmed during various briefings and debriefings, simulator and centrifuge training, at the squadron bar, at home with their families, and there are a lot of shots with comments and personal insights from the pilots themselves. There are also numerous commentary shots from instructors and family members of the pilots, and it is really a great way to get a personal view of what is going on.

There was a lot of great aerial footage in the trailer I watched, and I saw that great aerial footage again. The only problem was that this footage was all I saw in pretty much every flying scene. It becomes increasingly obvious with each episode that they had a small amount of aerial and cockpit footage and they had to reuse it in as many different ways possible, such as reversing the image, using high-contrast filters on some shots, etc.

There are also some staged cockpit shots in which the pilot jerks the stick and throttle around, complete with exaggerated "clanging" sound effects. It was a little cheesy, but it's understandable that the camera crew probably would not be allowed to film a ton of flying footage. However, there are a lot of great shots of the flightline at Tyndall, and it's a pretty awe-inspiring sight to see the groups of planes all taxiing together at Tyndall on a sunny day.

All this talk about the footage gets me to the complaint that I'm sure you've already read about numerous times. The editing. The show is edited in the cheesy, short-attention span MTV style. Camera angles change rapidly every few seconds and random parts of dialog are emphasized with cheesy echo sounds put on the voice and a caption of the words placed on the screen. Although it is disappointing, I can understand why this editing might be necessary on the flying scenes since they apparently didn't have a lot of footage, but it gets pretty annoying after a while. Some of it seems really unnecessary though, like the captions during simulated training missions stating whether each pilot passed or not, as if the viewer really couldn't tell by watching the show.

Although all of the episodes are abundant in this cheesy style of editing, it seems to cool down a bit after the first few episodes. There's a lot less of the "emphasis on a particular phrase" thing. The thing that disappoints me the most is just that I wish they would have spent more time in each episode on each particular part and not jump around so much, but this is understandable because most average television viewers would not be looking for a very in-depth look at what goes on.

A lot of people claim the show was canceled because of its editing style, but I disagree. A majority of the "reality" shows you see on major-networks have editing just like this and they seem to do fine. I think the show was canceled because the average viewer isn't too interested in military aviation to begin with, and because there actually isn't really a ton of drama going on throughout the program (which is what most of these average viewers want). It's a real shame, but at least those of us who do care about what happened can now purchase this DVD set.

Anyway, if you can look past the editing, there is a great program here. Although it is not the most in-depth look at it you could ever get, it does put things into perspective a bit and gives you a very good idea of what the pilots have to go through and it is very entertaining. I'd highly recommend this program to anyone who is at least moderately interested in military aviation."