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Skyward / production notes

As Stephen Low’s giant screen directorial debut, Skyward, illustrates a unique ability to capture the lyrical and mysterious qualities of wildlife on film. To achieve the astounding close-up flying sequences in the film, the filmmaker worked with a small team of naturalists. The production funded the hatching, imprinting and training of a flock of Canada Geese for the project. The geese were trained to fly in close proximity with a boat, making possible unique slow motion footage of the birds taking off and flying in their wetland environment. The team also used a specially developed wind tunnel to film flying geese.

One of the offshoots of the work on Skyward has been the experimental application of this technique for the re-establishment of bird migration routes using ultralight aircraft (Canada geese, Sandhill cranes and Whooping cranes).

Some of the techniques developed for Skyward were used subsequently to capture IMAX 3D footage of flying Trumpeter swans for a sequence in the Stephen Low film The Last Buffalo (1990).

The techniques pioneered for these giant screen productions have since been used by other filmmakers in other formats, but the clarity, intimacy and lyrical quality of these original images has arguably never been equaled.

Skyward is also notable as being the first IMAX film to feature cel animation sequences and the first IMAX film to incorporate slow motion shooting (at 45 frames per second) —a necessity for capturing the rapid wing beats of the geese in the film.