Metadata
WORK ID: YFA 4608 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| FLYING 1 & 2 | 1928-1933 | 1928-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Silent Duration: 15 mins 56 secs Credits: C.H. Wood Bradford. Subject: Transport |
| Summary This film is part of the C.H. Wood collection and contains footage of a light aircraft flying at an altitude of 13,000 feet. There are shots of the Yorkshire coast and countryside as well as shots of the plane doing loops and spins. |
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Description
This film is part of the C.H. Wood collection and contains footage of a light aircraft flying at an altitude of 13,000 feet. There are shots of the Yorkshire coast and countryside as well as shots of the plane doing loops and spins.
Title-To Cloudland!
Title-Some impressions of flying.
Title-Produced and photographed by C.H. Wood with the co-operation of the Yorkshire Aero Club Ltd.
A light aircraft takes off from a runway
Title-We’ve all seen that from the ground…now how does it look...
This film is part of the C.H. Wood collection and contains footage of a light aircraft flying at an altitude of 13,000 feet. There are shots of the Yorkshire coast and countryside as well as shots of the plane doing loops and spins.
Title-To Cloudland!
Title-Some impressions of flying.
Title-Produced and photographed by C.H. Wood with the co-operation of the Yorkshire Aero Club Ltd.
A light aircraft takes off from a runway
Title-We’ve all seen that from the ground…now how does it look from the `plane?
The shots are taken from the plane looking down as the ground becomes further away; they pass over fields and farm buildings.
Title-Rather `bumpy’ at first, as we circle over Yeadon town…
Title-But we soon gain height and settle on our course
The village is spread out below as well the surrounding countryside; the shadow of the plane is visible on the fields below. The plane follows a river and passes over a big viaduct.
Title-Along the rugged Yorkshire Coast and out over the cliff edge!
The plane flies along the headland and then out over the sea as it rolls over the rocks. It comes back over the headland and over the sea on the other side.
In another shot a train emerges from a tunnel and the plane follows it for a few moments and then flies out over the sea again.
Title-At higher altitudes it is difficult to believe we are flying at 110m.p.h.
The shots are taken from higher up and a village and multi-coloured fields are laid out below. Then the plane reaches a greater altitude and the uniform layout of buildings in a bigger town can be seen.
Title-But not all days are bright and clear, so when the Earth looks dull and gloomy…
A town is below but it is harder to see due to the fog.
Title-Let us climb still higher, up through the clouds.
This time a larger section of the countryside is visible, including a winding river. The plane flies into some clouds and the towns can be glimpsed briefly through the gaps in the clouds. Then the plane flies up above the clouds so that there are shots of them laid out below the plane like a platform.
Title-11,000 ft. above drab Yorkshire on a dull day.
Title-A limitless world of dazzling sunshine!
There are more shots of the fluffy clouds just below the plane.
Title-Higher still…to look down through gaps in this snowy plain to the Earth 13,000 ft. below!
More lingering shots of the landscape below the clouds; larger areas of Yorkshire are visible as the plane is so high up.
Title-But it is actually AMONGST broken Cumulus Cloud that we find the greatest beauty.
There are shots of the clouds surrounding the plane like individual while, fluffy, mountains. There are lingering shots of the clouds all around the plane as well as the landscape that is visible between them.
Title-Part 2 Follows.
Title-To Cloudland.
Title-Part 2.
Title-Aerobatics!
Title-Settle yourself in the open cockpit of the D.H. Moth, for some stunting!!
The camera is in the passenger seat of the plane looking at the back of the pilot’s head. The landscape below is far away.
Title-Watch how the Earth, and not out AEROPLANE, seems to do the banking and turning.
From the passenger seat there are shots of the rudder of the plane and of the landscape moving as the plane turns to an angle. Then there are shots of the ground below and again back to the rudder where the earth appears to twist and tip.
Title-The same sensation occurs in a simple loop.
There is a shot facing the rudder and one facing forwards as the pilot turns the plane in a loop. The pilot follows this up with a few more rolls of the plane and then a couple more loops.
Title-We sit still and let the EARTH and SKY do all the turning and rolling.
The plane does some more rolling and half loops and this is followed by some shots of the back of the pilot’s head. The ground below can be clearly. The plane flies lower and glides over the tops of some buildings and then flies up high again into more loops and rolls.
Title-Now watch the view straight ahead as we go into a slow spin.
There are several sequences of shots taken from the plane looking out onto the landscape as it rolls and spins. There is a brief shot of the pilot who is now sitting in the passenger seat.
Title-And after those thrills let us return, in a cabin type machine, for a final glimpse at majestic CLOUDLAND.
There are some long lingering shots of the plane flying through and above the clouds.
Title-Down again to find Yeadon!
The plane flies above the clouds, lowers into them and then the shot cuts to the inside of the cabin where the pilot is looking through the window to see through the cloud cover. There are shots of the ground as the plane gets lower and lower and it eventually touches down.
Title-The End.
Title-C.H. Wood Bradford.
Context
This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C.H. Wood of Bradford. The collection consists of approximately 2500 film and video elements including titles dating back to 1915. Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s. Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution. His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C.H. Wood’s in the 1920s. Charles was employed by both Pathé and Gaumont as...
This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C.H. Wood of Bradford. The collection consists of approximately 2500 film and video elements including titles dating back to 1915. Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s. Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution. His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C.H. Wood’s in the 1920s. Charles was employed by both Pathé and Gaumont as a cameraman for the northern region. C.H. Wood specialised in aerial photography and filmmaking. Charles used the expertise he had developed through his aerial photography to good effect during the Second World War when he pioneered infra-red lenses, used by the Dambusters, and for which he too earned an OBE. His sons, David and Malcolm Wood, took over the company, which was for a time known as ‘Wood Visual Communications.’ The company closed down in 2002. See the Context for The Magnet Cup 1960 for more on C.H. Wood.
At first focusing on filming his passion for motorcycles, C.H. Wood later specialised in aerial photography and filming. Within Bradford Museums Photo Library Collection there are more than 250,000 negatives and images created by C.H. Wood, including nearly a thousand very high quality monochrome aerial photographs showing Bradford's cultural, architectural and industrial heritage from the air. Charles first took to the air in a Gipsy Moth, a biplane belonging to the Yorkshire Aeroplane Club, in 1938. Fortunately, he started training as a pilot just when the Air Ministry, with a possible war approaching, started a scheme for the Civil Air Guard enabling training for a much reduced cost. Yet although he gained his certificate just before war broke, he wasn’t used as either a pilot of a photographer. Instead Charles used the expertise he had developed through his aerial photography to good effect during the Second World War when he pioneered infra-red lenses for night flying. He had already used this method, which eradicated the effect of mist, on the ground, taking many astonishing photographs. During the war he trained pilots in the use of infra-red photography, which was used by the Dambusters, for which he too earned an MBE. He also won an award from the Royal Commission on awards to Inventors, and left the RAF in 1946 as a Squadron Leader. The story is recounted in an article for the Yorkshire Post, informed by Charles Wood’s son, David: “His work involved experiments on the ground with flashing lights at night around West Yorkshire which led to challenges from people who suspected he was a spy. The chief constable who knew the full story had to step in to reassure the authorities. Working with his brother Willie, an RAF instructor, Squadron Leader Harold Wood invented a means of simulating darkness, using filters and special goggles, for pilots training during daylight for night-time raids. Harold was then approached by a Wing Commander whose upcoming mission, he explained, was to drop bombs over water from an altitude of 60ft in moonlight. Could Harold devise for him a moonlight effect for his crews as they practised over the Derwent Valley reservoir and Windermere? The Wing Commander was Guy Gibson and his unit was 617 Squadron. Their successful Dambuster raid in the Ruhr Valley owed much to Harold having met Guy Gibson’s training request for artificial moonlight. It was later acknowledged by the Air Ministry as “a war-winning invention of the utmost importance.” After the war Charles Wood switched to an Auster aircraft, with modifications for photography, flying out of Yeadon Airfield. He combined his air photography and filming with his work for local businesses, showing the companies from above. Among the C. H. Woods archives is a brochure for Lister & Co., Manningham Mills in Bradford which features several such photographs of the factory taken from an airplane – see Knitting Pretty (c.1955). Photographs had been taken from the air from the very beginnings of photography in the middle of the nineteenth century from hot air balloons. The very first was by a Frenchman called Nadar – writer, caricaturist, photographer and innovator. In 1855 he patented the idea of using aerial photographs in mapmaking and surveying, taking his first successful aerial photograph, and the world's first, from a balloon, in 1858. The oldest surviving photograph taken by Nadar was of the Arc de Triomphe in 1868. Later kites were used. Rather bizarrely cameras were even attached to pigeons in 1903 – rather comical (and disturbing) images of this can be seen on the oldaerialphotos website (References, fig. 4). The use of aerial photography to provide a complete map of Britain, and its use in archaeological surveys, didn’t really take off until after the end of the Second World War with Operation Review, when the Royal Air Force undertook an Ordnance Survey of aerial imagery of the entire UK for the first time. This kind of air reconnaissance was used by the Union during the American Civil War. At the end of the First World War Hollywood got into airplanes, especially Cecil B. DeMille. In the 1920s aerial cinematographer took off, leading to the first film to win an Academy Award for best picture, Wings, in which one of the most famous aerial cinematographers, Harry Perry, created some of the most spectacular aerial footage. The following year Howard Hughes used his millions to make an even more spectacular film using aerial footage, Hell's Angels. Perhaps the most famous example of this between the wars was Test Pilot in 1937, with Elmer G. Dyer as the aerial cameraman. More of this story is provided by Stan McClain (References). Recently the Aerofilms collection of aerial photographs from 1919-1953 have been put online at Britain from Above. This has quite a number of photographs of Bradford and its environs from the 1920s and ‘30s, although of course this is not the same as moving image. But perhaps the greatest collection of aerial photographs of Britain was made by the Germans, from 1936 onwards, and greatly increasing form 1939 until 1942. The aerial reconnaissance photography of Great Britain carried by the German Air force, the Luftwaffe, was extremely thorough, although they often failed completely to interpret the photographs, missing, for example, the crucial British radar stations. Maybe if they had had cine films things might have been different. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the film is its fascination with clouds. Today we are used to flying above the clouds in airplanes – some estimates claim that there are up to half a million passengers in the air at any one time – and maybe too often we take this for granted: preferring to read or doze rather then look out the window. For those new to flying in the early days the view over the clouds must have seemed a fantastic sight (perhaps flying to the moon will be just as humdrum in a hundred years time). Yet the admiration of the shifting architecture of clouds has not entirely disappeared. At the Cloud Appreciation Society clouds are loved, and they’ve had enough of people moaning about them. As they declared at the end of their Manifesto: “Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!” References C.H. Wood Archive of materials held at the YFA. Martyn Barber, A History of Aerial Photography and Archaeology, English Heritage, 2011. ‘How one family captured Bradford through the decades’, Yorkshire Post, 16 March 2013. Stan McClain, A History of Aerial Cinematography A brief history of aerial photography, oldaerialphotos Britain from Above Luftwaffe Aerial Archive of Great Britain & Ireland 1939 - 1942 The National Collection of Aerial Photography, History The Cloud Appreciation Society |
