This is a story i wrote and directed. shot on the uss hornet in the san francisco bay. the film depicts former-navy pilot Brandon “norman” michaelis recounting a fateful night-training mission over a moonless nevada desert sky. a navigational error from another f-16 put his fighter jet on a nose-to-nose path with another at a combined airspeed of 800 mph. twelve seconds to impact.
But this is about twelve clips. it’s story of precisely 350 milliseconds – less than a blink of a human eye. that’s the time it took systematically jettison commander michaelis safely from his firery cockpit.
