Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1469942
I brought the 744 and the 411's to Trevor Fulks, for him to design and fabricate the mounts needed to secure them to the plane. While Trevor was doing that, I sent our Navy liaison all the requested specifications for the sound gear, which he forwarded to the appropriate Navy departments for approval. Tom Cruise had requested that there would be a remote control in the plane that would give him the ability to start and cut all the cameras and the sound recorder simultaneously with a single button press. Keslow Camera was building the remote for the cameras. Dan Ming, our incredibly helpful A camera 1st AC, spoke with Keslow for me and they told him they thought it would be possible to incorporate record-stop control for the 744 into the remote. I sent Keslow a Sound Devices CL-1 remote control interface, along with the schematics for it. They were able to cannibalize the CL-1 and incorporate it successfully into the remote. Once completed, the remote worked perfectly. It was able to start and stop everything with a single button press. The cameras we used were the Sony VENICE. They are large sensor, 6K, IMAX capable cameras. The VENICE lenses and sensors could be connected to each other by fiber optic cables. This gave them the capability for the lenses to be mounted separately from the camera bodies. Ultimately, the Camera and Grip Departments found that there was enough room to safely secure six cameras in each F/A-18. All six camera bodies were mounted in one cluster midway under the plane's canopy. The separately mounted lenses were placed wherever was ideal for picture. Curiously, we found that the camera bodies would fit better in one plane than another. We learned that no two plane canopies are the same; each one is handmade and is slightly different from any other. Things were starting to come together. The Navy was reviewing our equipment lists. The remote was being made. The Y cables were being built. Trevor was fabricating the mounts to attach everyone's gear to the planes. We just needed to get everything delivered in time to do a little testing before it would be needed for shooting. The mounts, the Navy's approval of the gear, and Keslow's remote all arrived the week before we were to start shooting the flying sequences. In the hangar, we mounted all the cameras, as well as my recorder and radio receivers into an F/A-18. The Keslow remote worked perfectly, it reliably rolled and cut all the cameras together with the 744. We did one final shakedown test flight without an actor to make sure that everything Trevor had mounted for us stayed in place. It did. Unfortunately, the Y cables hadn't arrived in time for that test flight. The next opportunity to test would not be until we started shooting, with an actor in the plane. Fingers crossed that the Y cable was going to work! Time now for the rest of sound crew to come on board: Tom Huck Caton (Boom Operator), Cara Kovach (Utility to start), Kevin Becker (Utility to finish). Additional sound crew that worked on the film were Mark Agostino, Eric Ballew, Lawrence Commans, Jeff Haddad, Zach Wrobel, and Jeff Zimmerman. Production officially started. The day had come for our first flight. Tom Cruise was fully suited up, the still untested Y cable had been connected by the indispensable Neville, a civilian contractor who worked for the PR Department. The SM's were on, the 411's were powered up, the 744 was awake with its timecode jammed to the same code as the cameras, and it was ready to record. Cruise climbed into the plane. There was silence. I heard absolutely nothing at the sound cart where I had tuned its receivers to the same frequencies as the 411's in the plane. However, once the F/A-18's system was energized, it came alive; I was able to hear through the Comms as the plane went through all its trouble warnings (it does this every time on startup) "engine fire," "flap failure," etc. When the warnings finally ended, Cruise spoke. I heard him loud and clear. Yes! The Y cable was working! Phew! Soon after the F/A-18 Hornet took off, it disappeared and returned about an hour or so later. We retrieved all the media, brought it back to the hangar where we downloaded all the camera and sound files, backed them up, then brought the masters to the DIT for us to watch. The pictures were spectacular. Claudio Miranda's inflight cinematography is extraordinary. You can absolutely tell that the actors are really flying in the F/A-18's, it is very clear they are not being shot against green screen. The Keslow remote worked perfectly throughout the flight. Cruise had been able to start and stop all the cameras, along with the sound recorder as he requested. The sound the Y cable provided was fantastic, crystal clear, absolutely, usable. A triumph. High fives all around... It turned out that on that very first sortie, the plane did, at some point, hit 7G's, and nothing came loose. Trevor's mounts worked perfectly, the 744, the 411's and all the cameras and lenses remained solidly in place. In short, it worked. Everything worked! Well, so we thought. During dailies, Cruise pointed out my 744 and the 411's ended up very much in the frame. The sound gear had to move, however, I was told by Trevor that the sound gear was mounted in "the only place in the plane that it could be" and there was "no other option." Even if we had been able to find an alternative mounting place, Tom Cruise plays Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance, and Jerry Bruckheimer Films