.

Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE- Last week, a Vancouver film crew ventured onto the ice road near Behchoko to shoot footage for the fall television season. This crew was not interested in trucks, however. Their cameras focused on the sky.

Omni Film Productions is documenting the daily lives of the pilots, mechanics and other staff at Buffalo Air for a new reality series debuting on the History Channel Canada in September. Three episodes are being edited in Vancouver this month with another nine episodes yet to be shot. The crew began filming in November and filming continues until the end of August.

Buffalo Airways President Joe McBryan sits inside a CL-215 plane that drops water on forest fires. - NNSL file photo

"They don't really call it reality TV, anymore," said Mikey McBryan, maintenance director with Buffalo Airways. "I guess that's like a dirty word for these people. They call it 'observational documentary' or 'ob-doc'."

The crew observes pilots shipping food and other cargo to communities throughout the territory in the company's C-46 aircraft.

"It's like riding a Harley," said camera operator Sean Cable, referring to the 1944-vintage aircraft. "Imagine having 4,000 Harleys. Everything rattles and roars then once you get it up to cruise it just purrs and it's quite a cool sensation."

Cable was among the crew shooting images of the C-46 flying low over the Behchoko ice road last week.

The drama also takes place overseas – all the way to Turkey – this week. Buffalo Airways is flying two Bombardier CL 215 aircraft, built in 1968, for use as water bombers by the Turkish government. Buffalo Airways has leased the planes from the GNWT since 1995 to use the water bombers for fire control in the NWT. The company is contracted to continue the service in the NWT for another decade.

The Turkish government used to lease water bombers from Italy, but hired Buffalo Airways to deliver the two planes to use to train Italian pilots so the country can establish its own aerial firefighting program.

The water bombers are built for short hauls, so they are making frequent refuelling stops as they fly overseas. "It's like taking a golf cart to Edmonton," McBryan said.

A camera operator rides on each plane along with the two pilots and mechanic that make up the Buffalo Air crew.  

Later this month, a specialized film crew is scheduled to shoot images of the land around Yellowknife while riding in a couple of helicopters equipped with Cineflex mounts – the same technology used on the groundbreaking BBC nature documentary series Planet Earth.

"We expect to get some amazing shots of Yellowknife from the air by deploying this technology," said the show's line producer Leigh Badgley.

Filming continues until the end of August.