KARMAN ALPHA
Twelve Feet Under : Behind the Scenes
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About
Karman Alpha
Karman Alpha is a rocket launched by Project Sunride in Mojave Desert, California, aiming for an apogee of 100,000 feet. It was a project that continued for years and was finally launched on the 1st of July, 2023.
A Documentary?
It was October 12, 2022, when I heard back from Project Sunride. I was accepted into their “resources team”. At the time, my job was mainly taking photos and videos of the team, and I heard that people were talking about making the upcoming launch in America into a documentary. Honestly, I didn’t know they were serious about it, until one time I was filming an avionics meeting, and Tom (Avionics Lead at the time) showed me the documentary “Space or Nothing”.
The Story
Well, just a couple weeks before the trip, the 7th of June,2023, to be specific, my wallet (along with my ID) got stolen while we were doing this photoshoot. This means I won’t be able to make it to the trip, and I will have to make a documentary which I have absolutely no clue what actually happened.
The Effort Started
On 16th of November, 2023, a clip review meeting was held. The team sorted out the clips, wrote down what happened, and downloaded them all onto a 2TB hard drive. I always felt like video editing was a one-person job. But this time I feel like I couldn’t have done it without people helping me because I have never worked on long videos before, let alone a documentary. We then spent the next two months going through hundreds of footage, and I finally had a picture of how I wanted to tell this story.
Many Interviews
Funny enough, the interviews are the only thing that I know exactly how I wanted to be from the beginning. I always knew that the uni has a really cool filming studio but I was stunned when I saw it for the first time, it was exactly how I pictured it.
We started the interviews on the 15th of February, and because we faced some technical issues and had to redo 4 of the interviews, we ended up doing 9 interviews in total
The Countdown
After the interviews, everything came together fairly quickly, surprisingly. I still remember the day I sat in front of a computer from 4 pm to 12:30 am and finished the “launch day” section, I was so excited that I called my friend immediately after the editing session. I knew precisely how it should appear, every element falling into place.
Premiere Event
After several review sessions, the final documentary was completed. We planned a special premiere event for students, staff, and sponsors. I also made an invitation card for it, including 3 easter eggs in the design.
The event was on May 11th, 2024, followed by a YouTube release at 7pm that day.
