The Big Picture

Collider’s Steve Weintraub teams up with Prime Video and IMAX to moderate an exclusive Q&A with
The Blue Angels
editor and director Paul Crowder.
Crowder shares the behind-the-scenes challenges and highlights of filming
The Blue Angels
for an IMAX tribute documentary and emphasizes the importance of building trust with the squadron to capture exclusive footage and personal moments during their year-long journey together.
Crowder also talks about future projects with J.J. Abrams, Ron Howard’s
Jim Henson: Idea Man
, and Kire Godal’s
Tolstoy the Tomato Thief
.

The idea for The Blue Angels was the “brainchild” of producer and actor Rob Stone (Mr. Belvedere) and former Blue Angels Commanding Officer Greg “Boss” Wooldridge to celebrate the Flight Demonstration Squadron’s 75th anniversary. Four years ago, they were struggling to get the documentary off the ground before contacting Glen Powell of Top Gun: Maverick fame, who then got filmmaker J.J. Abrams (Lost) involved with his production company Bad Robot. Abrams then recruited editor and director Paul Crowder (The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years), having worked together previously on the miniseries UFO, to helm what would become a tribute documentary filmed in stunning IMAX that puts audiences in the cockpit with some of the Navy’s most elite pilots.

Collider was fortunate enough to team up with IMAX to show an advanced screening of The Blue Angels, where our own Steve Weintraub moderated an exclusive Q&A with Crowder. The director discusses his work alongside the fearless pilots, spending Thursday nights at the bar with them, getting to know their families, and earning the trust of these Navy experts as they documented an entire year with the Blue Angels in preparation for show season. From the sky-highs to the stuff the Navy wouldn’t allow cameras to roll on, Crowder breaks it all down from start to finish, clearly still in awe of the experience. Despite the challenges of high-flying sequences, filming in IMAX, and more, Crowder opens up about the bittersweet end of The Blue Angels production, saying:

“I have to say, this started off as a project that I was very excited about getting into, but then when you spend a year on the road with these people, the best part of a year with all of them, the whole crew, and all the people that you worked with through that, it was so hard. It was like when they’re at the end of the season when they go to do the drop of salute. It kind of felt like, ‘Man, we don’t get to do this anymore.’ That was heartbreaking. I really have a great relationship with a lot of the pilots and people still. I try and stay in touch with as many of them as I can, and they were just so welcoming to us.”

Check out the full conversation in the video above or the transcript below for all of this and more. Crowder also discusses his time jamming with Paul McCartney, working on UFO and his thoughts on extraterrestrial visits, and what’s up next for the editor, including his mysterious J.J. Abrams series, Ron Howard’s (Apollo 13) Jim Henson: Idea Man and the heartbreaking documentary from Kire Godal (Lion Warriors), Tolstoy the Tomato Thief.

Blue Angels is in IMAX theaters beginning May 17 and will run for one week only. Following its theatrical run, the documentary will be available to stream on Prime Video on May 23.

The Blue Angels (2024) Follows the veterans and newest class of Navy and Marine Corps flight squadron as they go through intense training and into a season of heart-stopping aerial artistry.Release Date May 23, 2024 Director Paul Crowder Main Genre Documentary

Before Stepping Behind the Camera, Paul Crowder Jammed With Paul McCartney
Image via StudioCanal

COLLIDER: I like throwing some curveballs at the beginning before we get into it. Upon researching and preparing for this Q&A, I read that you jammed with Paul McCartney when you were 14 years old.

PAUL CROWDER: I did, indeed. Yes.

Most people don’t get to jam with Paul McCartney, even if they’re amazing musicians, let alone when they’re 14. How did this happen?

CROWDER: Well, my father worked for Paul McCartney from ‘73 onwards, so joined on the Band on the Run album, and was his tour manager and business manager. I was about 14, and up in Scotland, they were doing Back to the Egg album. They were watching a cut of the film, Wings Over America. They filmed the American tour and they were watching a cutback of that. I watched about an hour of it, and I was starting to get a bit fidgety, and I was learning to play drums at the time, so I said to Steve Holley, “Can I go play some of your drums?” They were all in the studio — there were five different drum kits — so I went and spent half an hour up on all the different drum kits. At the end, about half an hour later, I’m down on this one drum kit and I’m sitting there playing away on this thing, and I see Paul and Denny and Laurence and everyone all come past the window and into the studio. I was like, “Oh, crikey.” So I put the sticks down and started to walk out, and they went, “No, no, no. Stay, stay, stay.” And then he picked up his bass, started playing, and we jammed. We recorded three songs. It’s like three tunes. Whatever we jammed, they recorded it, and I have a cassette. Still have it.

That’s insane and amazing, and I’m riddled with jealousy.

CROWDER: We won’t talk abut that the whole time, but there is one fabulous memory — I can still visualize it — where I was doing something, and he just stared at me and he went, “Use your tom-toms.” I’m like, “Yeah, alright, Paul. I’ll do whatever you say, mate.” So, yeah, it was great.

The other thing that I read is that you were studio engineer and you got to work with George Michael on “Last Christmas” and “Careless Whisper,” and you worked with A-ha on “Take on Me.”

CROWDER: Yeah, we mixed that. I didn’t see the band, but we mixed that. I worked at a studio in London. I started to engineer. I worked at Trident Studios and Advision. George Michael came into Advision, and they did “Last Christmas.” He had the LinnDrum programmed, and some stuff already recorded, which we transferred, and then they did that. He liked the microphone that we had. There was a specific Sony microphone we used, and he really loved that, so he came back to do “Careless Whisper.” I think they mixed it at AIR Studios, but we did the recording at Advision.

Image via Columbia Records

You directed two episodes a few years ago of the show UFO. As someone who has obviously studied UFOs and after directing, do you believe that aliens have visited the planet? Do you believe in UFOs or do you think everything can be explained?

CROWDER: Having done these two shows, I always have believed in something that we don’t know. You want to wish that interplanetary, like Star Trek where you can fly from place to place, you want to wish that’s possible. You have that desire for that to be true. But people have seen them. My wife has had two experiences, things you cannot explain. So I definitely believe people are seeing something. What they are, I don’t know. If it’s aliens, you know, I have no idea. But I definitely believe there’s something that we don’t understand going on.

How Glen Powell and J.J. Abrams Got Involved With ‘Blue Angels’

Jumping into why we’re here, how did this project happen? Give us some background.

CROWDER: The project was the brainchild of Rob Stone and Greg Wooldridge, “Boss” Greg Wooldridge, who’s in the film. Rob was one of the producers of the film, as well. They had made a film together in 1991 called Blue Angels: Around the World at the Speed of Sound, and that followed the Blue Angels through to Russia and everything. They did this whole thing. And Boss and Rob had stayed friends the whole time since, so they wanted to make a film about the 75th anniversary of the Blue Angels. They started pitching this about four or five years ago, trying to get it together. They hooked up with Glen Powell, who then hooked up with J.J. and Bad Robot, and they were working with Glen and Sean [Stuart] at Sutter Road. So they all got together, and then we had just done that UFO show and this opportunity came about. I was probably sitting in the right seat at the right time, and they were like, “Well, hey, do you want to do this?” So I was like, “I think so, yes.” [Laughs]

I couldn’t believe it, though, to have an opportunity like this. I was surprised they went for me. I’m not probably most people’s first choice that you would have thought for a big action movie. Although, the films I have worked on, like Formula One, [1], and Riding Giants and things like that, were definitely big action films in their own right. But the opportunity to do this and then the year that followed, it was very quick. We were in August, “Do you want to do it?” “Yes.” September we’re meeting them, October we met them again, and then in January, we’re off to El Centro, and we’re doing it. It was incredible to start.

I’m just thinking about how quick that is. I know you obviously had a lot of people working on this film, but what was the crew like? How many people did you actually have for the year that you were embedded, essentially?

CROWDER: We had at least one or two camera people. I would always prefer to have two for the shoot so we could have someone with a handheld device and someone with sticks because there’s just so much to cover. The crucial thing about it is that we don’t get to tell them, “Hey, can you shoot that again? Oh, sorry. Can you go back and do that one more time?” You just get them in the day when they’re doing their walk down, when they’re doing their briefs, their debriefs. Any action that’s happening, it’s just in the moment, so you get one shot at it every day. So, you’ve just got your few days, so want to hope the weather’s the same. At least they do everything at the same time every day so if you’re going to shoot, “Okay, we’ll do the walk down here, and we can get it from three or four different angles.” But hopefully, the weather’s the same so they’re all cut in a good fashion for us. So, those are some of the hindrances.

So we had two camera people, obviously, and then you’ve got the camera team, as well, who focus and prepare the cameras. You got your sound department, which is one person for sound, a producer in the field, so it was about six of us, at least. But if we were on big days where we’d have two or three or four cameras because we wanted to show important moments, then we might be a crew of about 10 that’s in the field right rocking during the shoots. But obviously, much like the Blue Angels, it’s a massive team of 140 people, it feels like. But it’s so crucial that they all did their job so well. The team was so good from top to bottom that you see it on the screen. It needs everybody to be at the same A-game in order for us to deliver stuff like that.

But also, in that process from August to January, we got in touch with Kevin LaRosa and Michael FitzMaurice, who were the aircrew who had done Top Gun: Maverick, and spoke to them, and asked them, “What about options? What could we afford for the budget? We want to be able to do this. We want to be able to do that.” We get them on board and they give us all the do’s and don’ts that we can and then take that to the Navy, get them approved by the Navy, so then we can book the time to actually get out and put a helicopter in the formation, which no one’s ever done before. So, a lot of those shots that you see, no one’s ever been able to shoot that because they’d never allowed especially a commercial helicopter to be in that formation. So that was pretty spectacular, too.

Related ‘Top Gun: Maverick’: Watch Us Train Like the Cast and Fly the World’s Most Advanced Aerobatic Stunt Plane Dogfights, bombing runs, and a whole lotta g-force!

When you think back on the shoot, which shot ended up being the real pain in the ass or the one that you had to fight for or go through red tape? The one that you still can’t believe is in the movie?

CROWDER: Well, I don’t know. That’s a tough one. There was one that was really tough to get for no other reason than I just couldn’t seem to find the right time because I wanted either a sunset to cheat for a sunrise shot or a sunrise shot. Very early on, when we got to Pensacola, we were hanging out, we’ve got the cameras all set up in the hangar, and the humidity was crazy, so you had to get the cameras outside as quickly as you could, so they could acclimatize and you didn’t get condensation on the lenses. We were in there prepping, and it was very, very early in the morning, and the hangar door opens, and it reveals Fat Albert and then the six jets. It’s a beautiful golden sunrise, and I’m like, “I’m getting that shot. That’s the shot I’m getting.” So from then on, I didn’t get it. I got it the last week we were filming. I got it on the penultimate day. I actually was able to go, like, “Guys, I don’t care. I’m staying here with a camera on my own if we’re doing this.” We did it at night and I got the shot I wanted.

What was really brilliant was Brian Abe, who was “MO.” He’s briefly in the film; he’s the maintenance officer. He really got those jets together because what happens a lot of the time is those jets, something will go wrong, like the jet 2 will fail and they’ll put the number 7 jet, so when they line them up, it might not be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 on the tails. So he made sure we had the six jets out there and nothing else was blocking the view. He was all into it. I’d explained to him the shot I wanted, and he was really helpful in getting that. It was not unnecessary, but it was a very difficult shot to get just for timing because our schedule was so tight for timing all the time. We always had shots on the shot list that we didn’t get done every time, so adding this shot to the list was always difficult for people to get. But anyway, we got it, and it’s near the beginning of the film.

Image via Prime Video

One of the things I’m fascinated by is the editing process, and that’s because that’s where it all comes together. In a film like this, it’s really where it comes together. How long was your first cut of this film? Did you have a cut that was three hours, where you were like, “This is great?”

CROWDER: It was about two and change, the first one, and it was great. We have a brilliant editing team that cut this. I just was so pleased to work with these guys. They’re both American cinema editors themselves. I left it in their hands to start with because I was so close to the footage, and there were certain things I wanted to do. There were shots I wanted to get in there, [but] I [could] get them in later. When I’m an editor, and I’m working with somebody else’s footage, I may view it in a way that they’ve not perceived, or I may want to put the shots together in a way that wasn’t originally conceived, and so it’s good to see what other people can bring to the thing. So with James and Kevin, I gave them my sensibilities: “Hey, this is how I like to do things. I like to cut it like this. I like the music to lead us as much as possible.” I gave them a few things that I would like them to try, and then I let them go. Then we worked together, and I started coming in after each section was built. I adjusted some things that I had in my head, and, “Oh, that shot I was thinking about going here, I can do that right here.” And plop some things in and discuss with them how to make these things work. So it was quite a process because there’s so much going on.

What happens when you watch the long cut, while it’s interesting and exciting and everything, there’s a routine happening here every day — the same routine. Nothing changes. The only thing that changes is occasionally you change locations, but they’re doing the same thing. They’re getting up, they’re having a debrief, doing a show or doing a practice debrief, leave, go home. Come back the next day, same thing. Go, come back the day, same thing. So when you watch that in the film, that starts to become a bit laborious, so you have to find ways of keeping the audience engaged, keeping the film flowing and moving forward and not feeling repetitive, and get through those moments in that fashion. So the edit was a little tricky, finding the right things to cut out, and very difficult cutting things out that I really didn’t want to cut out.

Here’s What Couldn’t Make the Cut in ‘The Blue Angels’

That’s what I wanted to ask you about. What was the storyline or the thing that you had that you were like, “Oh, I can’t believe I’m gonna have to get rid of this, but it just doesn’t serve it. We just have to get rid of it?”

CROWDER: I think it was more about getting more of the voices in of the sections we had of the enlisted folks and not the pilots. A little bit more of their stories. When we tracked off, you kind of were setting up a few too many storylines to track, and it was getting off the point of what was making it easy to flow. It suddenly stopped flowing for a minute. And then when you got back to the jets and everything, it was flowing again better. So, we had to cut some of those scenes out, which is a real shame.

There’s a great thing — the crew chief for Boss, he’s a DJ. When they got to El Centro the first time, room 19, he was in, and he put all these colored lights up and he started jamming his tunes and everyone’s hearing the music, “Hey, what’s going on? It’s in Kevin’s room!” So they all go over to Kevin’s room. They have a little party that starts. And so then next night, “Room 19, everybody.” So they all went to room 19. Then on the road, they get to the first hotel and he gets given room 19, so, like, “I guess we’re partying tonight.” So we had all this footage of them just having a real fun time, and you could always see his hotel room from the street if you walked past the hotel room. It was like the one room that’s just coloured lights going on all the time. 24/7. He just had them going on all the time. “That’s Kevin’s room.” So, that was a shame that I couldn’t include that. He had a single out that year. He made a song about COVID, and he sings the acapella version right there at the end. That’s what he’s doing in front of the lads on the last day.

But, yeah, that was a shame that we couldn’t get some of that stuff. A couple of the other people got married. One of the pilots had a baby. I wanted to get a bit more of those things in, but again, there wasn’t a real fit for it with everything else we were doing.

This Is What the Navy Didn’t Want in ‘The Blue Angels’ Documentary
“There are certain protocols, certain things that happen behind closed doors that were just, for whatever reason, stay behind closed doors.”

When you were shooting and editing, was there anything that was off-limits? Before you started shooting, did the Navy say, “You can do this until this point?”

CROWDER: No, I think the key was there were times when we were shooting, one of the jets would have a problem in the air so it would land, and there’d only be five in the formation, and they didn’t want us to use any of those shots with the formation. That happened on one of the helicopter days when we were at 10,000 feet. We shot day one at 5,000 and day two at 10,000 so we could get the two different perspectives, and sadly, the number 4 jet had an issue and dropped out for about six of the maneuvers. So we lost some of the really good stuff of the diamond coming over. We have a great shot of it in the three, but we couldn’t use it. We considered CGI-ing the fourth, but it was like, “No.” Didn’t want to do that.

Then, of course, there were certain moments where, again, when you’ve got a day full of repetition, when something unrepetitive happens, like someone’s in trouble, we’re like, “Get the cameras on.” It’s like, “Mm, no, you can’t. Sorry.” There are certain protocols, certain things that happen behind closed doors that were just, for whatever reason — security reasons, whatever — they just stay behind closed doors.

I can understand their perspective. They want to put out the best version, but there’s also that element of, “Well, this is really happening.”

CROWDER: Yeah. I think one of the most fun things that I experienced was in the first weeks in El Centro. So, Fat Albert, the jet, which is the big C130J, they have a little doll on the front of the plane, which we had to paint out, actually, for the film. It’s this little Hawaiian motif. So whenever they get on the road, when they get to the first night, they find a nice location, and they all go and dress in Hawaiian shirts and they all go out to the bar, and they just have a whole night together, the crew. “Hey, first night on the road. Here we go!” At every location, on the Thursday night. It’s called Bird Night. The first time I was in El Centro, essentially they’re on the road, so it was a Thursday night and Bird Night, and I walked into the bar and they’re all dressed in Hawaiian shirts. I’m like, “Is this what they wear when they’re not…? Is this the fashion? Okay, fair enough.” Then I found out what it was.

And then what happens is, I have this fabulous coin that I was given. He flew this in his jet while he was up there during his last week. This was in his jet with him, and then he got one for a lot of us in the crew and gave us one. Your Blue Angels coin you’re supposed to have on you all the time, right? It’s taboo to not have it. So, what will happen in the bar is, they’ll start tapping. Someone will just start doing that and everyone has to get their coin out and do it, and if you don’t have your coin, you have to do a forfeit. Now, the forfeit usually most of the time involves buying everybody a round of drinks. If everybody has their coin, whoever started it, they have to do the forfeit. So, I saw this moment happen, and I was just like, “Oh, I gotta shoot this.” Wouldn’t let me shoot it. Couldn’t shoot it.

Image via Paramount Pictures

There was one time we were in there with the cameras doing something else, and it started, and I was just like, “Jess,” and she said, “I’m on, I’m on. I’m rolling.” I was like ,”Great,” and somebody came in and went, “No, no. Shut down. Cameras are here. Don’t.” So I stopped it and then they came back and said, “Oh, you can do it after all,” and I said, “Well, it’s not happening.” So, that was a shame that we didn’t capture that because that was just a real nice camaraderie moment — things that they do where they’re on the road, and also shows you the importance of the coins and these little routines and things that have gone on for years and years. It’s really fantastic.

When you looked at the shooting schedule, what day did you have circled in terms of, “I cannot wait to film this,” and was there anything circled in terms of, “How the F are we gonna film this?”

CROWDER: What I was worried about was putting the cameras on the floor looking up all the time because that’s the view we all get if we go to a show. I wanted to get the cameras higher on as much as we could, you know? “When can we do the helicopter? How can we do the helicopter? Will we get to do the helicopter?” So, once we knew when we were going to do that, that was the shoot I was looking forward to most.

Then the pylon shoot was another thing, because to attach a Venice camera to the wing of one of the planes or to the undercarriage of the plane, you have to have the right equipment. It fits on where the missiles would attach, so that has to be machined and engineered and approved by the Navy upstairs, 10 levels and everything. We would never have had the time or the budget to be able to meet that schedule. We were, thankfully able to find the the ones that they used on Top Gun: Maverick. They attached those ones. They got lost in the mix, so they were missing. They were there somewhere, so someone knows where they are, but couldn’t find them. Anyway, a brilliant producer team found them, and we were able to use that. So, that was another day that I was very excited about because that, again, hadn’t been done in this fashion. Not with these cameras. So, that was quite cool.

What was really cool was Bob Benson, who flew it, he didn’t have a monitor to watch, so we lined the cameras up. We had a monitor out in the field. We stood in the center of screen, and he drew with pencil on his visor of the jet, “Okay, let’s cross here, cross there. This will move from there to there,” and where it would cross. So he flew everything and shot everything that he did using that as his little version of the monitor, so that was pretty wild.

A low-tech video village.

CROWDER: Exactly.

Getting ‘The Blue Angels’ in IMAX Was a Challenge Well Worth the Effort
Image via Prime Video

So we’re in this amazing IMAX theater, and I wanted to know, what was it like shooting in IMAX and editing? It looks spectacular watching it on the big screen.

CROWDER: Well, obviously, some of the editing techniques that you might be able to do for TV you have to rethink a little bit for the big screen. You can fast cut on there, but you don’t want to. You want to let the audience, as much as they can, immerse themselves in some of the images on the screen so you have to consider that. The other thing, of course, is that you’ve got to use Venice cameras to shoot the quality good enough for these. You can’t just pick up your camera and go grab footage on the fly. It’s a big, heavy camera. It takes a lot to get it in place, a lot to get it running. Batteries are really difficult. You can’t get them in the cockpit; they’re too heavy. You’d have to break them down. We weren’t able to do what they could do in Top Gun because they had front seats and back seats, and they could find a place for it. We’re in single-seaters, so we had to use the smaller RXO camera, which is sort of like a GoPro, but much better quality. We were able to use those and place those to get the cockpit stuff. But the Venice camera is cumbersome, so it did create some issues.

Even the handheld stuff. Mike FitzMaurice is a strong as an ox man, but you watch him walking around trying to track all the stuff and he was struggling. It’s a difficult thing to carry, and he’d have it on his shoulders or be doing it for, like, 30 minutes. It’s an insane workout in Pensacola with crazy humidity, as well. You’re just bucketing sweat. The crew were incredible.

What do you think would surprise fans in this theater to learn about the making of the film that they might not know?

CROWDER: I guess what you get to see, really. Just being able to watch this, being that close. To be in the cockpit with them, to have the perception of a jet plane right over your head. One of the wings, you could touch it if you were sitting in that cockpit. Those sort of angles, being in a place you’ve never been before, seeing a jet come at you at full speed — almost the speed of sound — that flies right overhead from the pier. That stuff is just exhilarating. I don’t know if it’s so much of a surprise, but hopefully the film fulfills the exhilaration and captures the essence and the beauty and the dedication to perfection that the Blue Angels is all about. That’s really what we wanted to get at the end of the day.

I mean, these guys were just so incredible to be around, so inspiring to be around. I was inspired to be on the base. I’m a rebel, you know? You tell me to slow down, I’m speeding up. You tell me be quiet, I’m getting louder. I don’t respond to authority or telling me what to do at all. I was completely and utterly taken in by the army base and the attitude to everybody on the base. That completely grabbed me emotionally. I was really moved, as I say. So hopefully all of that is in the film, and you get a bit of that.

One of the fun moments, though, is with that shot when they’re doing the sneak pass and the jet comes over us, over the camera. We were on the pier, so that goes 50 feet off the ground, it sneaks past the audience at just under the speed of sound, so it doesn’t break the windows, and it was coming right at us. We were on the pier by the yellow flag where its marker is and it’s just coming right, and we’re 25 feet off the ocean. So it’s now 25 feet from us, and you’re just staring this thing down. It’s a dot and suddenly it’s huge, and suddenly you’re getting squashed by the air. And Mike, who was shooting the first day, I was videoing it with my phone and he turns around and he goes, “That was cool,” and he points his camera. The next day we did it with Destin, who’s one of the local crew, with a company who were fantastic, the whole team. The support that we got from them was just unbelievable. So poor Destin’s on it the next day, and he’s not so seasoned. Mike FitzMaurice has done Batman and a whole bunch of movies like that where there’s lots of explosions and stuff going on, and he’s in the middle of car chases. Destin’s face after it went by, someone was like, “You alright?” He goes, “Yeah, fine, thanks.” He was not expecting that at all, so it was great.

Image via Prime Video

In the third act of the film when you have the shot of all of them so close together…

CROWDER: The Yankee set, yeah.

I could never do something like that — be a pilot and do something like that. Talk a little bit about watching that footage for the first time and realizing just how close they are and how incredible they are as pilots.

CROWDER: That was what was brilliant when we got the footage in, especially the cockpit footage, and got that back from all of them, watching it all and getting to that moment where they do the diamond 360. It was in Pensacola, I think, the first time. We had the 360 camera and Chomp’s jet, so we’re looking right at them, and I suddenly got a sense of, like, “You gotta be kidding me.” Because you’ve got to imagine, they’re not only going 400 miles an hour, however many tons jets they are, but they’re dealing with all the wind shear, and you’re over the ocean, especially in these sections over Pensacola. So you’ve got wind, ocean, whatever — ocean wind, I should say. All that stuff is going on as well as the jet turbulence that they’re doing, and it’s just mind-blowing. I was trying to figure out, “Is it touching?” I was going frame by frame, “Does it touch? No, it doesn’t, does it?” But it looks like it is. You just can’t imagine that they’re that close together, and it was just mind-blowing. So that was really exciting to get the look-back camera, then, on the Venice.

What was really good was we had the helicopter and the pylon stuff that we did with the Venice that was all shot later in the season, so they were doing the diamond 360, they were at the Yankee set by now, so we were able to get all that with those cameras as well. The helicopter shot was getting it. They were doing it at that point. So, that was just amazing. And to be able to try and get the audience into it and see it from every angle and get the sense of just how they’re off their heads. It’s mad.

It’s honestly so impressive.

CROWDER: It makes you feel good. These guys are out there protecting us. When they’re not flying from the Blue Angels, they’re back in the Navy. They’re the ones that are out there protecting the country, so we’re in good hands.

100%. Before I run out of time with you, you edited, I believe, an upcoming Jim Henson documentary.

CROWDER: I did, yes.

What is Ron Howard’s ‘Jim Henson: Idea Man’?

I’m a huge Jim Henson fan. Ron Howard directed that, and you worked with him previously on The Beatles [Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years]. Talk a little bit about what this doc is about and why you wanted to be involved.

CROWDER: It’s about Jim Henson. It’s his life story. It is a very comprehensive look at his life and his family, all his work. It was an absolute pleasure to work on. I don’t want to say too much because the press for that is in its own window, but yeah, that was an absolute honor to work on that and to be able to work with all that footage. Absolutely incredible. Another really good film I’m very, very proud of. So, that was a pleasure to work with. I have to say, it’s it’s funny, it’s sad, it’s all of the things that Jim brings. And it’s a Ron Howard film, so it has all that going for it. He delivers. Frank Oz is amazing.

Yeah, this Frank guy, he’s okay. You also edited Tolstoy the Tomato Thief.

CROWDER: We’re in the middle of that right now.

For people that don’t realize, there’s an elephant in this.

CROWDER: Yes, this is about an elephant that steals tomatoes from the farmers, Super Tusker elephants. It’s actually quite a sad story because it’s a human-wildlife conflict that you’ve got going on here and they are trying to protect the Super Tuskers. When we started the film, there were 24 left in the world. There’s only 20 now. Basically, the nomadic Masais have stopped moving around, so they’ve now been forced to settle. They build farms for their food, and the elephants used to graze through this particular area. They now come across all these farms, which are full of tomatoes, and they love the tomatoes, so they’re coming in and stealing the tomatoes. The farmers trying to chase them off, they’re spearing the elephants, so they’re getting hurt or getting killed. The elephants are charging the farmers, so they’re getting killed. So there’s this really rotten situation that they’re trying to figure out the coexistence of. Basically, through the eyes of a child, we get to see the progress that has been made in the last few years.

I absolutely want to see this. When is it coming out?

CROWDER: Soon.

Are you trying to say that it could be later this year?

CROWDER: What are you doing in 2025

What are you all doing in 2025 is the question.

CROWDER: I wish it’d be out later this year.

I’ll hopefully be around in 2025 and I will watch it.

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I also read that you directed two episodes of an untitled show. I don’t know if this is accurate.

CROWDER: Yeah, we’re in the middle of that, as well. That’s the latest project I’m working on. Again with Bad Robot and a lot of the same people we did this film with.

So I’m curious, it was untitled when I read about it. Does it have a title now?

CROWDER: It doesn’t, no. We’re still working on it. Still untitled. We don’t even know what we’re making. It’s just a show about nothing right now. [Laughs] We’re figuring it all out.

Is it like a show like UFO?

CROWDER: Yeah, something in that vein. Probably a bit more paranormal. Some UFO stuff and other out-of-body experiences and things like that.

It’s interesting that I started this with UFO and it’s ending with a little supernatural.

It Was Crucial for the Film Crew and Blue Angels to Bond
“They trusted what we were doing, and they knew they were in good hands with us, that we had everybody’s best interests at heart.”
You edit a lot and you work on a lot of different things. Are there things that you’re also editing right now that I do not know about?

CROWDER: No, I’m just focused on these things at the minute. I did a couple of shorts last year, one about the Nicholas Brothers, which I really, really like a lot, which we made for Pepsi, and it played at Tribeca last year. That’s really fun. They were an incredible duo. But no, I’ve got a handful of things coming up now that we’re sort of talking about organizing for future projects, but focusing on these two films at the minute, and especially Blue Angels. I have to say, this started off as a project that I was very excited about getting into, but then when you spend a year on the road with these people, the best part of a year with all of them, the whole crew, and all the people that you worked with through that, it was so hard. It was like when they’re in the end of season when they go to do the drop of salute. It kind of felt like there was, like, “Man, we don’t get to do this anymore.” That was heartbreaking. I really have a great relationship with a lot of the pilots and people still. I try and stay in touch with as many of them as I can, and they were just so welcoming to us.

Again, if you think about people who are doing a routine every day, this is what they do. They get in and they’re expecting to see this every time they turn around a corner or walk through a door, and suddenly you’ve got these huge cameras and these crews there that they’re not expecting to see. You’d think that would upset their routine enough where it could be like, “They’re here again. How long is this going on for?” But there was never that. They loved seeing us. They absolutely loved having us there. There was a smile on their face. They were on first-name basis with all of us. They gave us all nicknames, some of us, and it was so much fun.

What was your nickname?

CROWDER: I was Pool. It’s a long story about English-American accent. If you ask me my name, and I say in English, “Paul,” they go, “Pool? Oh, Paul!” So I was telling them that story, and they said, “Oh, well, we’re going to call you Pool.” Bridget Topp, she got called Big — Big Top — and Jessica [Young], she got called Boots because she always wears big boots. So there was that kind of thing going on. It’s kind of funny. So that was really nice.

The other thing is when you walk in and you see the Blue Angels, it’s like seeing the Beatles, right? While the faces change, you see those blue suits, and they’re just so iconic. So I walk in on day one, and there they are, all in their blue suits, and I’m so nervous. “Hi. How’s it going?” And they’re all like, “Hey, Paul, how’s it going?” And I’m like, “Wow, what’s going on?” “You were in Flogging Molly, weren’t you?” I was like, “Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was. Early days.” “I love Flogging Molly, man. He was in Flogging Molly!” So they had this fanboy thing for me when I was like, “No, no, no. I’m a fanboy for you. You can’t fanboy me. I’m totally confused.” But that really got us in a very relaxed situation very early on, which just snowballed.

Everybody got on with each other so well, and that was the most important thing and the thing we really had to do in order to be able to make this film. As they say in the movie, it’s all about trust. They have to trust each other to be able to fly that close to each other. Everybody has to be able to trust everyone doing their job. They get in the planes, they don’t check them, they just turn them on and go because they trust everybody. That’s the same with them and us. For them to be able to talk to us, to allow us to shoot the things we wanted to do, we had to gain their trust, and that took a while for us from what we were able to do at the beginning to what we were able to do and ask for it at the end. So, we embedded with them so much. We went out to dinner with them. I played darts with Chomps. Every chance I got, we played darts. I never won one game. He was like, “Oh, I can kind of play.” I was like, “Oh, really? You can kind of play? I’m glad we’re not betting money.” But he was he was fantastic.

We went over to Alison’s house and Cheese, went to their place, found out when they were pregnant. Chewy makes the best steaks. He’s got one of those green egg things. He makes the best food. He was fantastic. So we got to hang with their families. We got to hang out with them a lot, and that was really a big part of what made us able to get so much of this footage was that they really did trust the process, they trusted what we were doing, and they knew they were in good hands with us, that we had everybody’s best interests at heart. That was a wonderful thing, and it’s something I’ll always take with me that they gave us that trust.

Blue Angels is in IMAX theaters beginning May 17 and will run for one week only. Following its theatrical run, the documentary will be available to stream on Prime Video on May 23. Click the link below for showtimes.

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