From camera prep in Dubai to filming Jetman
Filmquip Media, helicopters, and the work behind the picture
I started as a prep technician at Filmquip Media. The path to Jetman ran through camera systems, aerial work, and learning what an image needed before choosing the equipment.
My Dubai story starts at Filmquip Media, where I worked as a prep technician when the company was an ARRI Media partner. Before the helicopters and Jetman, there was camera preparation. That starting point matters to me because a finished film rarely shows how much of its image was made possible before anyone pressed record. My route into cinematography began with the equipment that other people needed to trust.
The picture begins before the shoot
Camera prep sits close to the consequences of a decision. A lens has to work with the camera. The camera has to work with the rest of the package. What looks like a collection of individual items has to become something a crew can actually use. That is the part of my background I carry into cinematography: an image has practical conditions, and someone has to understand them.
I don't see that technical beginning as a detour. It gives me a way to examine an idea. What does the shot require? What limits the available setup? Where is there room to change the plan? Those questions remain useful when the job becomes choosing the image rather than preparing someone else's camera. Filmquip was the beginning of that progression for me.
A helicopter changes what the audience can see
At Dubai Film, that work grew into filming Jetman and working with helicopters. In a January 2017 interview with BroadcastPro ME, I described why an aerial position mattered: it could bring the viewer close enough to see what a pilot was doing, in a way a ground position couldn't. Resolution and frame rate served that particular view of the action.
The interview also records a very practical limit. The Canon 30–300 and Fujinon 25–300 lenses I discussed for aerial work did not cover the full 6K sensor, so we would work at 5K. Young Feathers used predominantly RED EPIC DRAGON footage. That combination of subject, viewpoint, lens coverage, and recording choice is a better account of the work than a camera specification by itself.
Young Feathers belongs in the story
Jetman Dubai: Young Feathers is in the catalogue below, with the film and a selection of frames. It is a substantial part of my Dubai life, and one I want people to be able to watch when they read about that period. The photograph at the top of this entry is a frame from the film: two pilots leaving smoke beside the Burj Khalifa.
A frame can give you the scale of that image. Watching the film adds the movement and the relationship between shots. Both views are useful. I want the journal to make it easier to move between them, so an account of the work leads to the work itself instead of ending at a description of it.
The commercial work continued beyond Dubai
The other projects linked here come later: Sunshine in 2020, then Genesis and Can't Be Your Friend in 2023. They are separate projects from the Jetman years. Together they show more of the commercial and music-video work in my catalogue, including films made with director Thomas Simon. Putting them beside the Dubai story gives that early technical experience somewhere to lead.
What I want to keep from the prep room is the habit of working backward from the picture. An aerial film, a brand film, and a music video ask for different things. The useful continuity is knowing how to connect the intended image to a workable camera setup, then making choices that belong to that particular film. Dubai gave me a place to begin doing that professionally.
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