{"id":2252,"date":"2020-01-11T18:14:50","date_gmt":"2020-01-12T01:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/?p=2252"},"modified":"2020-01-19T13:51:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T20:51:44","slug":"disciples-of-flight-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/11\/disciples-of-flight-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"The Disciples of Flight movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At the end of 2019 I downloaded a new aviation documentary\u2014 and it’s gorgeous<\/em><\/strong>. Beautifully shot crisp HD images of general aviation flying paired with insightful interviews from a bunch of pilots, including Patty Wagstaff, Rod Machado and NASA’s Dr. Dismukes. You can download it from Disciples of Flight<\/a> directly for $15, or use Amazon Prime Video<\/a>. Well worth the price for the visuals alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Disciples<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The movie’s 93-minutes are all about personal dedication to aviation, about really loving and living flying. There’s no narrator, just lots of hangar interviews cut with super cool flying video. Both feel personal, close, real. Some great quotes to keep:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBuilt into the human psyche, we have this \u2026 desire for liberty. I think with many people the airplane becomes the metaphor for liberation, for the ultimate sense of freedom.\u201d

Rod Machado<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"Disciples<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLife doesn’t get complicated until you land.\u201d<\/p>

Patty Wagstaff<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There are some niggling errors. It could have done with one more set of eyes in final editing; Rod Machado’s website isn’t www.Rodmachodeo.com, and in an unfortunate lower third the wonderful R. Key Dismukes is announced as the retired cheif <\/em>scientist for human factors at NASA. That’s small stuff I know. My first book, published by big boys McGraw-Hill, had an endorsement from Ron<\/em> Machado on the back cover! But right at the beginning of the move, like three sentences into the first narration, we hear, \u201cmaybe it was Jonathon Livingston Seagull that coined the phrase Disciples of Flight.\u201d Well, maybe not. I went back and looked, the phrase doesn’t appear in Bach’s book anywhere. That’s a more serious lapse when you’re talking about the very name of the movie!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Disciples<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s a skill, it’s a wonderful skill, it’s like playing a musical instrument in that you can always go further.\u201d<\/p>

R. Key Dismukes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"Disciples<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are also some interviews that go on too long, and the thematic arc becomes unclear for a lot of the middle of the movie. Good discussions about safety and risk, passion, balance, building a plane, a pilot’s relationship with a plane, and more. But a little muddled there, not enough of a storyline holding it all together to be a masterpiece. Then you watch some more of the stunning video, Patty Wagstaff doing aerobatics, a glider soaring over Lake Tahoe, and none of that really matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Disciples<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMuch past just going from point A to point B as fast as you can, your artistic sense can come out. And you can do all sorts of things \u2026 you’re painting in the sky.\u201d<\/p>

Tim Brill<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The movie did make me think. Am I a disciple of flight? I certainly think and read about flying every day. I do fly a lot, if 700+ hours a year is a lot. But that’s mostly airline flying, pushing buttons in a comfy Airbus flight deck. I don’t fly nearly as many hours as I’d like in gliders or tailwheels. I declined to become a pilot with the AZ CAF maybe flying their B-17 or B-25 because we adopted another little boy and I love love love being a dad. I want to fly more, to fully dedicate myself to real flying, but yet I do JFK to LAX for money and then spend long weekends with my family. Maybe when I retire from the airlines I will be full-time flying fool #avgeek. The real darker side of obsession is not tackled in the movie, hinted at, but that’s probably for the best, as it’s soon on to more cool flying scenes and neat aviation lines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFlying is part science, part technology, part art, part expression.\u201d<\/p>

Tim Brill<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"Disciples<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA pilot and an airplane are a team. And teams require coordination, understanding of each other, and trust.\u201d<\/p>

R. Key Dismukes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"Disciples<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlways interested in learning more and becoming better and to explore new places and to learn to master the airplane better.\u201d<\/p>

Jim Hoddenbach<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"Disciples<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBeing able to move in three dimensions \u2026 is just one of the happiest aspects of my life. If I every get a little unhappy, I go fly my airplane.\u201d

R. Key Dismukes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It made me want two things: to move to the residential airpark I’ve been looking at, and to buy a bigger TV to watch the movie again!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All quotes and movie stills from The Disciples of Flight documentary,<\/a> 2019, Media Stew. I paid for the download myself, and have no connection to the director, production or promotion team. I’m a huge fan of Rod Machado, Patty Wagstaff and the academic work of Key Dismukes. I’ve rented sailplanes from Laurie Ricardi several times at the excellent Soaring NV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the end of 2019 I downloaded a new aviation documentary\u2014 and it’s gorgeous. Beautifully shot crisp HD images of general aviation flying paired with insightful interviews from a bunch of pilots, including Patty Wagstaff, Rod Machado and NASA’s Dr. Dismukes. You can download it from Disciples of Flight directly for $15, or use Amazon Prime Video. Well worth the price for the visuals alone. The movie’s 93-minutes are all about personal dedication to aviation, about really loving and living flying. There’s no narrator, just lots of hangar interviews cut with super cool flying video. Both feel personal, close, real. … Continue reading The Disciples of Flight movie review<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,393],"tags":[60,18,45,17,46],"class_list":["post-2252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-link-to-videos","category-movie-review","tag-artistry","tag-love","tag-mastery","tag-passion","tag-perpetual-pursuit"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2252"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2315,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252\/revisions\/2315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.innerairmanship.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}