In 2002, Channel 4 television gave a team of special effect engineers 12 weeks to design and build an UFO that will trick witnesses and get media coverage. They base their ship on eyewitness reports and video footage and begin what turned out to be a frustrating and difficult project.
Considering the interesting subject matter, I was surprised by how poorly this film managed to sustain interest or to convey any real excitement. The basic set up is pretty interesting, can a crew of experts from various trades manage to produce an object that looks like an UFO and can fly convincingly. Going for a frame with a balloon and fans to guide motion, the object looks good and works pretty well - the film is split in two distinct parts; the first half is the production and the second is focused on the flying.
The first part tries to be interesting but almost totally fails to transfer the engineers' passion to the audience. I watched them get all excited over various plans, struggle with problems and make massive improvements and discoveries, but never felt it myself. The film fails to really explain the problems at any stage - the discussion with the expert over the issues of battery spread and shorting excited and challenged them but I had no idea what was going on. Likewise the fact that the craft spins wildly out of control is easily fixed, but we don't get any understanding of why the problem occurred or the thought process that solved it.
The second half is much better - the flight of the craft is pretty exciting, even if nothing really happens. It is impressive and I did get the feeling of relief from the team that it went. It was a shame that the same sense of wonder was not conveyed during the design and production (which is really the more impressive part).
Overall this is an OK documentary but it never really gripped me in the way it should have done. The flight is good but it really fails to get across the excitement of encountering problems and solving them. Shame that such an interesting topic should be given such poor to average coverage.
