Thor-Coat was produced for Thordon Bearings Inc. It was to show the application
process needed for adding a protective coating to a shaft. A bit like a paint job but a whole lot more complicated. We travelled to Molde, Norway for this shoot. A town Germans used to visit on vacation prior to WW2, they now visit again. Sadly we were not able to capture much of the natural beauty of this place in a film that was primarily instructional.
The Miracle of KA114. Our
only full length doc for TV, this film started shooting in 2004 and was only completed in 2013. Nine years in production. You can view the trailer on this site or buy the DVD for $20.00. Pay for view is also expected to be available via Vimeo. Production cost is around $250,000.
We are producing 1000 DVD’s and they will be sold directly or through Aviation Museum gift shops. Funding was entirely internal. We were unable to get any development funding for the project. The networks we approached wanted either a series, or we were told that they had enough airplane films.
The film is the story of the remarkable restoration of an aircraft type that had not flown in two decades. Built in Canada at DeHavilland’s Downsview shops, the aircraft served a very short flying career, engine up shortly after completion in a farmer’s field in western Canada. With
a restoration bill rumoured to be in excess of 6 million dollars, this project has to rank as one of the most if not THE most expensive warbird restoration ever.
Owner Jerry Yagen of Virginia Beach USA gave CSI exclusive rights to film the project and we began with a trip to New Zealand in 2004. The next year we travelled with the Yagens to the UK where we visited the birthplace of the design and interviewed many who had either flown the
airplane during or post war or people who had worked in the factories.
Every subsequent year we shot more of the story, either as interviews with pilots, or in one case tracking down buried treasure. Finally in 2012, we were able to go to New Zealand for one last time. To see the airplane fly.
It’s a great story. Enough to have cost me what it did to produce? Was the project worth what it cost Jerry to finance?
Sometimes you do things that do not make financial sense. You do them out of a passion to tell a story or in Jerry’s case to sense the satisfaction of hundreds of vets or factory workers who remember the airplane when it was made. In the end, it more than a story about a machine; it’s about the people who brought her back to life.