Unless you attend the BOD meetings or act as an advisor to the BOD.
Funny you should mention that because we support the CEO and the BOD as well as the entire rest of the company worldwide. To that end we are often in a position to know about things going on or being planned that most people in the company will never know until it happens, if it does. Obviously we cannot reveal or discuss them outside the realm of our work.
We have a whole room (code locked) that is lined floor to ceiling with the footage we have shot in support of the 787 dating from when it was one of two design concepts that were being considered for our next airplane program. One concept was code-named Yellowstone. The other was named (by Alan Mulally) the Sonic Cruiser.
The Sonic Cruiser was the favorite of ours and our customers until the reality of fuel prices began to hit home. The key to why the Sonic Cruiser would have worked aerodynamically was conceived and developed by one guy, an engineer Boeing referred to as "Engineer X" to hide his identity from the media, and more importantly, the competition. I interviewed Engineer X to get on tape his explanation of why his concept made the Sonic Cruiser viable as an aircraft.
But economic reality made the Sonic Cruiser impractical so we turned our attention to Yellowstone. Yellowstone subsequently became the 7E7 and when the basic configuration was determined it was given the next 700-series number in line and the program was officially launched as the 787.
The room I referred to contains tapes we shot of every key meeting, including the intense debates that occurred between the proponents of aluminum and the proponents of composites and the subsequent decision and why it was made. The tapes contain footage of the entire 787 development process both at Boeing and at all our key suppliers and partners. While we, including me, have provided similar coverage of our previous models starting with the 767 and continuing through the 57, 77, NextGen37, and the 47-4, our coverage of the 87 has been unprecedented.
And you don't direct this stuff and conduct these kinds of interviews and not come away knowing a hell of a lot about the programs, the people, and the company. If one likes the air transportation industry-- which I do-- that is what is so fantastic about this job. I would bet that the people in our department-- which is not very big, in Puget Sound there are only about 20 of us--- know more about what goes on in this company than anyone else who works here including the CEO and the board.
Because one week we might be supporting McNerney in a presentation to the board, the next week we might be producing a video to support a sales campaign to an airline, the next week we might be doing a video about a new technology being developed, the next week we might be in China doing a video about a project Boeing is partnering on, the next week we might doing a video about a new lift system being used by our overhead crane operators, the next week we can be in Dubai talking to Emirates about why the 777 is so successful for them and shooting their entire operation from the ramps to their maintenance and cargo operations to takeoffs and landings out next to the runways to their class on teaching flight attendants the proper way to slice and serve cheese in first class, on and on and on.
One of our videographers and I have ridden behind the robotic tape head on the huge arm of one of the automated tape-laying machines while it was winding a 787 fuselage section in Charleston. That's the level of involvement we get with our products and processes.
And we aren't just recording what happens, we also make things happen sometimes. I and another guy came up with an in-flight scenario while shooting material for a video supporting our tanker bid in the 777 full-motion simulator. Our scenario was to have the flight crew detect and evade a SAM launch by instantly slamming the plane over into an inverted bank and diving for the ground. All of our planes can do this. The A330 cannot. It was a capability nobody on the program had thought of depicting. So I directed this scenario along with the other scenes we were shooting that day and the editor included it in the finished video.
Now the tanker decision was not made on the strength of a video. In the overall scheme of things the videos we and I assume EADS produced in support of our respective campaigns played a minor role at best. But we did hear later that our SAM evasion scenario made a huge impression on the Air Force people who were part of the whole selection process. And that scenario came about because I'm a pilot and have a thorough understanding of Boeing and Airbus' flight control philosophies and the other guy, now retired, has even more experience with flight control philosophy development and had had SAMs shot at him a few times.
And while we are doing all this stuff in Puget Sound, our counterparts in St. Louis and southern California are doing the same kinds of things in support of Boeing's defense and space operations.
So yes, JD, I and the rest of us in our department know more about Boeing than you can even conceive it's possible to know. And it doesn't hurt that the company pays us a bunch of money to do what we do.
. I don't believe anyone here or in St. Louis makes less than six figures a year.
And interestingly enough, what we do and why we do it dates all the way back to Bill Boeing and the very first days of the company, first known as Pacific Aero Products, soon changed to Boeing Airplane Company. Because, as I was told by the company historian and archivist many years ago, Boeing had a keen interest in photography and motion pictures. I don't know if he became involved in either of these as a hobby or not, but from day one, he had everything of interest going on at the company recorded in still photography and in many cases motion pictures. We're still at it today.
