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Great Planes (2008)
Potentially good series, ruined...
This series would be great - if it really showcased the Great Planes. And there are some great planes on the list, including some not featured on the repetitive "best of" or "top ten" shows. But the show is totally ruined by the camera work. It appears to have been shot by a ferret with ADD on caffeine who just bought his first movie camera and wants to try out all the features.
Not only are the transitions incredibly frequent, they are accompanied by distracting 'swoosh' sound effects. The camera jerks around, never staying with a shot for long enough to make any impact. The program should tell a story, instead, it's a series of film snippets strung together in a haphazard fashion. It's almost unwatchable. It is about to the standard of the home movies of the 1950s in terms of the photographic techniques employed.
Frequently, the wrong aircraft is shown, or the narrator talks about one aircraft when another is being shown on-screen. The narration is disjointed, and seems to have no overall flow.
The bottom line is that this could and should have been a great series. But it should be renamed "Great Planes - Terrible Cinematography"