Flight simulators have become remarkably good at recreating the experience of flying a military aircraft. Strike Fighter League now wants to find out what happens when you stop treating them like games and start treating them like movie studios. SFL has announced the Gun Camera Film Festival, a new competition that will challenge filmmakers to recreate a real historical air-combat engagement entirely inside a professional-grade flight simulator. The result will be a three-minute cinematic short, but this is not simply a machinima contest where someone sits behind the camera while the virtual pilots do all the work. The filmmakers themselves will fly the aircraft, stage the action, and capture the footage.
That puts the emphasis on filmmaking rather than simply having the most technically impressive simulator setup. SFL is partnering with the team behind the History Channel’s Dogfights series, which will provide the historical engagement at the center of the competition. Three directors will be selected, and all three will be given the same real-world air battle to recreate. What they do with it is where things should get interesting.
Each filmmaker will have their own interpretation of the engagement, with the three-minute limit forcing them to decide what parts of the story deserve the spotlight. One director might focus on the pilots, another on the tactical battle unfolding in the air, while another could turn the same encounter into something resembling a short action film.
Applications open today, August 31, and remain open through September 11. Individuals can enter, as can teams of up to five people. Submissions need to include a treatment, director’s statement, sample work, and production plan. SFL plans to announce the three chosen directors on September 14.
Production will run from September 25 through November 7, with the resulting films released between November 9 and 27. Viewers will then get to decide which director did the best job, with the winning film receiving a live premiere during SFL’s third Online Tournament Series later this year.
There is also a serious history lesson hiding underneath all of this cinematic experimentation. SFL will have the completed films reviewed by the Dogfights team and its Air Combat Advisory Council, including experienced fighter pilots. Aircraft types, markings, weapons configurations, timelines, tactics, and other historical details will be checked for accuracy.
The Gun Camera Film Festival builds on SFL Productions’ existing aviation shorts, including NICKEL ON THE GRASS, CITGO, and AMBUSH. More importantly, it gives the flight-sim community a reason to think about virtual aviation as something more than a competitive sport.
Three directors. One dogfight. Three minutes each. It should make for a particularly interesting test of whether the person behind the virtual camera matters as much as the technology producing the pixels.
