Airspeed Announces Acro Camp 2 Cast

After a long and difficult process (made even harder by the outstanding number and quality of applications), Airspeed has announced the cast for the second installment in the Acro Camp series of documentary feature films.

Mary Macdonald is a web developer from Santa Cruz, California. She is a private pilot with 250 hours. She is also known to some as “Ruby Riptide” of the Harbor Hellcats, a roller derby team in the Santa Cruz Derby Girls league. She is the only camper who has a tailwheel endorsement, but she has never soloed a tailwheel aircraft or flown in a tandem aircraft with a stick. Her influences include airshow performer and aviation entrepreneur Amelia Reid (who taught such luminaries as Sean D. Tucker and Rod Machado).

David Klein is an instrument-rated 400-hour private pilot from Palos Verdes Estates, California who flies his C-182S for business over California, Arizona, and Nevada. He began a career in technology services in 1983 and later started his own enterprises in 1993, which he continues to operate. Aviation runs in Dave’s family. His father was an airline pilot for Western Airlines. Dave himself is passing along the love to his 17-year-old son.

Denise Isaacs received her private certificate in 2009 and has accumulated 120 hours of total time. She lives in Connersville, Indiana, where she is an accounting and personnel manager for a family business. She has had one aerobatic flight in the Grayout Aerosports Pitts S-2C. Her father, who is a pilot, is one of her greatest supporters and mentors.

Cornelius Funk is an 8,000-hour commercial pilot and antique auto dealer from Snohomish County, Washington. Corny has time in such diverse aircraft as the Douglas DC-3, the Convair CV-240, the Lear 25, and the Cessna 310. He has flown cargo and just-in-time logistics for private firms in Central and South America and in Asia at various times, as well as flown charter and air taxi in the northern United States and remote parts of Canada. When not flying, he records and performs using experimental musical instruments that he fashions himself.

These cast members ("campers" if you will) will journey to Ray Community Airport (57D) in late August to fly their very first aerobatics on camera as producer/director Steve Tupper, director of photography Will Hawkins, and others attempt to capture the experience.

Watch for more updates as pre-production continues!

Acro Camp Casting Almost Complete; Principal Photography to Take Place May 12-16

Just a quick update. We've selected our four primary cast members ("campers") and several alternates and we're just waiting for the selected campers to confirm that they're in.

As of a few minutes ago, we've sent an e-mail to every applicant, whether selected as a camper, selected as an alternate, or not selected.

We've also confirmed the dates for the camp (and principal

The selection process was awful in the very best way. Don, Barry, and I suffered through a plague of riches as we reviewed your application and others and agonized over whom to interview and whom to choose. You should know by now that I mean it when I say that there were sparks of brilliance in each application. (Otherwise, I wouldn’t say it.)

Don and Barry are each new to new-media audiences. They’re catching on quickly, but neither of them really understood what a rabid and sophisticated tribe aviation podcast listeners are. Needless to say, the application package took them both by surprise and kind of rocked them back on their heels a little. Like me, Don and Barry were each humbled by the amount of time and energy that you put into your application and each of the three of us dug through the whole package with awe and (I’ll say it again) humility.

I really wish that we could have brought everyone into the hangar, stuffed them into airplanes, and then rolled them out. But this is necessarily a small-group thing. For what it’s worth, each camper who was selected had to get over the hurdle that I placed in front of them, to-wit: Would he or she be an adequate and worthy proxy for people like you who weren’t selected?

Please stay tuned here and follow both me (@StephenForce) and the #AcroCamp hashtag on Twitter for updates. And there’ll be plenty of podcasting about this as we get closer to, during, and after principal photography May 12-16.

My task now is to capture this whole thing in a way that’s worthy of the energy and support that has so readily flowed from applicants, new-media personalities, aviation illuminati, and others. So many people have placed their belief and trust in Airspeed and you can be assured that I’m going to bend over backward to produce a product worthy of the excitement that it’s causing.

Acro Camp Casting Update

Here’s an update! We’ve reviewed the applications so far (something approaching 50) and we’re beginning to conduct Skype interviews later this week. If you’re received an e-mail, congratulations! You’re a step closer to being in the cast.

If you haven’t received an e-mail, don’t despair! There’s no guarantee that we’re going to get our perfect four people out of the small number of people we’re initially interviewing and we might come back to the well. Don't make other plans just yet.

Thanks for the stupendous response! It’s really amazing how much buzz this project has picked up and we’re going to fan those flames as much as we can.