In our latest showreel we take to the skies with an aerobatics champion pilot. Strap yourselves in, it’s a pretty wild ride!

Our client Ahmet sent us some pretty awesome footage from his flight with a champion aerobatics pilot. You’ll need a strong stomach to watch the full version on our Action Sports page, but stick it out till the end.

Ahmet had a neat idea for how he’d like this edited, asking us ‘can you make it look like the plane crashes?’ Without any distant footage of the plane in the air, and using only one internal and one external GoPro angle, we had to get creative.

First we used the existing footage, choosing a shot that swooped towards the ground and zooming in further to simulate a nose-dive. Then we added in smoke and flame effects by mapping these using a mask in After Effects.

Next up we added some glitch and distortion effects to simulate the camera blacking out as the plane ‘crashes’ and a whole series of sound effects to complete the deal, including a plane crashing, two explosions, a‘warning’ voice and siren, and a bunch of distortion sounds at the end.

We polished things off with some epic ‘Carmina Burana’ style music. See if you have the stomach to watch it right through!

Thalia is the Video and Sound Editor at Sonic Eye.