Training Course Shoot, Folkestone

The Ops Con Academy runs S.E.N.T.I.N.E.L, a programme that prepares people to lead media, NGO, research and expeditionary teams working in hostile or austere environments. Their own material is clear that the aim is not to turn people into military operators, it is to make the person running the team competent when things go wrong.

They were delivering the founding cohort of the programme and wanted aerial stills and video of the field phases, for their own course films and marketing.

A military training area near Folkestone in Kent, which the client lists as the Folkestone Training Area. Woodland tracks, a disused quarry and a built training compound.

Four flying days across the two field phases of the course: the first covering the unexploded ordnance, improvised device and drone threat awareness module, and three more over the residential hostile environment first aid phase.

Filming a live training serial is a different discipline to surveying a roof. A roof holds still. A training exercise does not, and it is running to its own timings, with smoke going off, groups moving between stands and instructors working to a script that has nothing to do with where the aircraft wants to be. The job is to get the shot without ever becoming part of the exercise, or a distraction inside it.

Both stills and video were shot, working the woodland tracks, the quarry and the compound from height and from low level along the ground.

The stills and video went to The Ops Con for their own course films and marketing, which is what the shoot was commissioned for.

The reason this one is on the log is range. Most of what we do is roofs in Exeter and Devon, and that is still the core of it. But the aircraft, the qualifications, the insurance and the operator do not change when the subject does. If you have something that needs filming from the air, and it is worth the trip, ask.