To Fly! is a 1976 short film (23 minutes) directed by Greg MacGillivray and Jim Freeman.
It is a meditation on the nature of flight. It opens with a balloonist in the early 19th century taking off, to the delight of a small crowd. After the balloon flies over some scenic vistas, the narration kicks in. The narrator covers the history of flight, from ballooning to early powered aircraft, to jets, and finally to spaceflight. The narration also muses philosophically about the "new eye" of flight, about how the ability to go up allowed us to see ourselves and our world in a completely different way than ever before.
This film, commissioned for the opening of the National Air and Space Museum in 1976, was one of the first IMAX productions. (Not the first, as the first IMAX production was shown at the 1970 World's Fair in Osaka, Japan.) To Fly! has been running continuously at the Air and Space Museum ever since.
Compare Up, a similar short film that celebrates un-powered flight (namely, hang gliding).
Tropes:
- Buzzing the Deck: A stunt pilot in a biplane buzzes just over the heads of the people watching him, producing a mixture of fear and delight.
- Hemisphere Bias: As the camera flies back to Earth at the end after the film considered the possibility of space flight, the Americas are visible.
- Inevitable Waterfall: The balloonist, cruising over a river, shouts to the kayakers below that there's white water ahead. This is just an excuse to cut to some Scenery Porn in the shape of a majestic waterfall.
- Large Ham: The balloonist at the beginning of the film is super-hammy. He gives a hammy speech that ends with "Because of me, all men of Earth shall fly!"
- Match Cut: A match cut from a train on the tracks to a car driving by is the segue to the next jump in technology, namely powered heavier-than-air flight.
- Moment Killer: A couple sits under a tree as the man finishes reciting Shakespeare's Sonnet 18
. The woman touches his arm, and they're clearly about to kiss, when the shadow of the balloon passes over them. The man isn't pleased. - Narrator: A narrator recounts the history of flight. The narration leans to the philosophic, talking about how man once envied the birds, how skyscrapers come from our inherent desire for flight, and how we may or may not meet alien intelligence when we fly to space.
- Scenery Porn: The whole point, really. The IMAX cameras swoop over majestic waterfalls, waves crashing against a rocky coast, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley. Even farmland becomes Scenery Porn when the camera glides over it from a great height.
- Split Screen: The screen splits into six panels to demonstrate the evolution of the airplane, from propeller to fighter jet. It does this again near the end when showing an Apollo rocket launch.
- Title Drop:
- The first words of the narration are "Flight. Flying. To fly!"
- And the last words are "Human destiny has ever been, and always must be, to fly!"
