Crowdsourcing Video Script Edits(?)

[Tex]

So I'm gearing up to start producing YouTube videos, and I have a rough script idea that will be just challenging enough to give me good practice to see what else I can come up with. It's a solid historical piece, I've done some research on it, and it's an interesting story.

My only problem is that I don't know if the script itself is interesting enough. To me, it seems a little too factual/documentary-ish for a quick history lesson. I had the idea of coming to the Forum itself to see if any writers out there would help critique my script to make sure that what I'm producing is quality. If people are interested, great, I'll leave the script here to see suggestions. If not, then oh well, I'll get somebody else to help.

Thanks if you're willing!

Spoiler

Wrong Way Corrigan

It's hard to imagine what life would be like today without air travel, but in 1937 things were much different. The first airplane in history had only been flown 34 years prior in 1903, and the first nonstop flight over the Atlantic ocean took place in June 1919 by British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown.

In those early days, flying was dangerous, and the planes of the time were flown only by people with great ambitions, and perhaps less common sense than the average person. Planes were unreliable and still a very new technology at the time, but that didn't stop early pilots from achieving milestone after milestone. One of these early aviators was a man called Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan.

Corrigan was an aircraft mechanic that actually helped build the Spirit of St. Louis, the plane flown by Charles Lindbergh during his famous solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. Inspired by the achievement, Corrigan bought a plane and began to modify it for a transatlantic flight in 1933. In 1935, he applied for the certification required to make the flight, but was denied because his plane was deemed unfit for the dangerous crossing. He continued to modify and reapply for certification, but in 1937 he became unable to renew his plane's aircraft license due to increased regulations regarding airplane construction.

Eventually, however, Corrigan was able to certify his plane for making transcontinental flights. In 1938, he was granted permission to fly from his home in California to New York, with the condition that he fly back home immediately. He landed in New York, and upon refueling and repairing his plane, he set off on a 28-hour flight back home... and ended up in Ireland.

When confronted by Irish officials as to why he had come across the Atlantic without prior permission, he responded by saying that he had misread his compass when the flight began, accidentally travelling East instead of West. Surprisingly, his story was believed, and  he was allowed to return to America without penalty. When he landed in New York, by boat this time, he was greeted by parades that were allegedly larger than those honoring Charles Lindbergh after his own flight. It was here that he received his worst punishment for the illegal flight- his pilot's license was suspended for exactly two weeks.

From 1937 to his death in 1995, Douglas Corrigan never did admit to crossing the Atlantic intentionally, but whether his story is true or not, Corrigan cemented his place in history by being one of the first aviators to cross the Atlantic solo.

 

[Benjamin Kerman]

What will the backround to this video be? Any script can be made interesting if the video is good enough. Otherwise, it sounds like a (snoooooozz) history textbook. 

As for the scrip itself, i think giving it more of a "talking to you" feel instead of "reading to you" would be a good idea. Maybe like "so then this guy had the nerve to fly over the Atlantic. We dont know if he was dumb or if his testes were larger than the average man, but it was brave". Something like that, where the listener is probably more engaged. 

[Tex]

Overall, it's gonna be pretty generic stock footage, some vintage footage of barnstorming, and then of course pictures of the relevant people/planes, and maybe even a map or two depending on how ambitious I get.

And the style you describe is indeed interesting, because I know even before doing this that a style akin to reading out of a textbook is never gonna sell. I can attempt to produce some more conversational-ish versions tomorrow.

[qzgy]

I like the topic. Have to agree with B Kerman, a more conversational style would be better.

[Tex]

So it's like almost 2:30 in the morning where I live, and I was trying to fall asleep but I had one of those "eureka" moments so I literally just wrote a new version of the script down. I think it's way funnier, and it's completely different and more conversational than the first one. Let me know what you guys think.

I essentially pictured myself literally sitting down in front of a microphone and repeating what I knew about the story from memory, and offering my thoughts on what the story is like. It's basically like I sat for a few minutes talking to somebody about it and just wrote it down. So it's extremely conversational, but I think it would be a unique style of narration to use, particularly with some slightly-humorous but still historical background footage to use too. 

Keep in mind that I wrote this in like fifteen minutes after two in the morning, so if there's typos, please forgive it.

Spoiler

So if you've ever been in a plane and flown somewhere, you know that it's really complicated and that planes are the safest way to travel, but that really only started in the 60's and 70's. In the 1930's, flying was still really new, and really, you had to be a little crazy if you wanted to fly. People have been wanting to fly like birds since pretty much the beginning of time, but when you look at the machines that people called "airplanes" in the early 1900's, it's just completely insane. The Wright Brothers basically strapped a bunch of cloth onto a frame made out of wood to build gliders and then just stuck an engine onto it. That's really all an airplane was. Yeah, there was some science behind it, and the Wright Brothers really did do a lot of things right with their designs, but these machines were just scary and unreliable.

So in the early 1900's, it was really just a bunch of crazy people out there building planes and flying everywhere, and barnstorming, which is basically doing stunts in airplanes. One of these guys was a guy called Douglas Corrigan. He flew for the first time as a passenger when he was 18 and he loved it so much that he started learning to fly and was flying solo by 19. Kind of wish I could have flown solo at 19. So he gets a job as an airplane mechanic, and he would actually get flying experience by taking off and doing stunts in a plane during his lunch breaks. I mean, this guy was insane.

Anyway, he actually helped build the Spirit of St. Louis, which is the plane that Charles Lindbergh used to fly across the Atlantic Ocean solo, and he was the first person to do that. Well, Douglas Corrigan looks at this flight, and he says, "I can do that too." So he buys a used plane, and again, this is one of those death machines basically made from wood, and he buys it used, and starts modifying it so he could fly across the Atlantic ocean by himself.

So he goes to get this plane certified to make this trip, and he was denied because his plane wasn't safe enough to make it. Really not that surprising, but he goes back, mods it more, and tries again and again but he keeps getting denied, and finally he's just told that he can't renew his plane's license anymore because the plane just isn't safe. So he seems to give up on it, but somehow manages to get his plane certified to fly nonstop across the United States- Because I guess flying for 30 hours over land is way safer than flying for 30 hours over water. Well, I guess there aren't really any hospitals in the middle of the ocean.

So he gets permission to fly from California to New York as long as he flies right back, so of course he goes "Okay" and flies to New York. And his plane makes it, he manages to fly his plane for like 28 hours straight across the United States, lands, fixes up his plane, and then takes off to fly another 28 or so hours back home. But one thing led to another, and.... he basically ended up in Ireland.

So he shows up in Ireland, his plane isn't certified to make a trip like that, and nobody in Ireland even knew he was coming over. So they interrogate him, and asked "How did you end up in Ireland?" And all he said was.... "I guess I just misread my compass."

So to recap- this plot, that everybody knew wanted to fly across the Atlantic by himself, has been building this plane for about 5 or 6 years to do it, AND they knew his plane was able to fly for 30 hours straight without stopping, and he just says that he read his compass wrong. Well, everybody in Ireland believed him, so they sent him back home, no problem. When he gets back to the United States, he's being celebrated with parades and stuff, and this newspaper made fun of it by saying "Hail to Wrong Way Corrigan" backwards, but when he gets to the American officials, they gibe him this super severe punishment- they take away his pilots license for two weeks. That;s it. This guy flies by himself for 30 hours in a wood plane, goes over the Atlantic Ocean by "accident" (with big quotation marks there), and they're basically like "Well, don't do that again."

It just goes to show how crazy these pilots were in the 30's. You can't really just say, "Oh, I'm gonna build a plane and cross the Atlantic Ocean" anymore, but Douglas Corrigan did, and I think it's crazy that more people don't know about him. I just thought it was cool.

 

[Benjamin Kerman]

@Tex thats great. I was much more engaged reading that script. You can even joke around a little more, but at this point its not a necessity. Funny pictures, like some of those early flying machines like this. 

I think you're on to something here...

 

[Tex]

I do think that the humor can come out even more just based on how I inflect it, naturally there's a limit to just putting words down and then reading them again. I'm gonna do some tests later on to see if it'll work the way I hoped it would. Thanks!

[Bill Phil]

I'd recommend a passing mention to airships. Commercial flights across the Atlantic were made regularly in the 30s. Heck, the Graf  Zeppelin flew around the world in 1929. But it's your script, so what you like.

[Tex]

The main topic of the video is Wrong Way Corrigan himself, so I was attempting to just offer enough information about it to help tell the story. I'm essentially assuming that the audience isn't completely in the dark, but they don't know this specific story, so I wanted to tell it.