Production · Direction
CAE
Women building careers in aviation, in their own words.
Production · Direction
Women building careers in aviation, in their own words.
01 The brief
CAE are one of the world's largest aviation training organisations — the company that teaches the people who fly the planes. Operating in over 35 countries, they train more than 220,000 civil and defence crew every year. When they needed a production partner for a series of films tied to their Women in Flight initiative, they came to us on recommendation.
Women in Flight exists to address one of commercial aviation's most persistent problems: the significant gender imbalance in its cockpits. Fewer than 6% of the world's airline pilots are women. CAE's programme actively works to change that — recruiting, supporting and championing women through pilot training at every stage.
The films needed to reflect that ambition. Not a corporate recruitment video with stock music and a voiceover. Something that felt like an honest conversation with people doing something difficult and worth talking about.
02 What we did
The reference CAE brought to the brief was the kind of intimate walk-and-talk profile you'd see in a high-end magazine — the subject moving through their environment, talking naturally to camera while a producer asks questions off-screen. Candid, unhurried, credible.
We shot four walk-and-talks across CAE's vast training facility in Crawley with Bisma, Cindy, Lauren and Georgina — each mic'd individually, each filmed in a single extended take. DOP, AC, gaffer and sound, all battery-powered to stay mobile through a building that size. The gaffer worked with a lantern and a small COB on a boom, soft enough not to be harsh, punchy enough to fill the darker corridors and simulator bays we moved through.
It was the hottest day of the year. One of the simulators had overheated the day before and was out of action. The callsheet had a note about iced water with production. The format depends entirely on whether the subject feels comfortable enough to speak naturally while walking, and whether the crew is invisible enough to let that happen. Four people who'd never done anything like this before, in an unfamiliar building, on a sweltering day. We got all four in a single take each.
03 The result
The aim was to keep ourselves out of it. The crew, kit and logistics should all feel invisible, so that what's left is Bisma describing the moment she decided to fly, or Lauren on being one of very few women in the room. That's what we got.