Lockheed Martin Aeronautics
"Train the Way You Fight"
Lockheed Martin designs, builds and delivers the world’s most innovative, 5th Generation multirole fighter aircraft: the F-35 Lightning II. Twelve nations around the world will operate the F-35 and the U.S. Air Force will have the largest fleet with 1,763 F-35s when deliveries are complete.
The F-35 Lightning II has advanced capabilities that have never before been available in a fighter aircraft. Advanced pilot training is the key to making the most of those capabilities. Enter the T-50A trainer aircraft, the most effective aircraft available to train the next generation of pilots to fly, fight and win.
The T-50A is Lockheed Martin’s submission for a U.S. Air Force competition to recapitalize its current, aging trainer fleet, which is 50+ years old. One of the major advantages the T-50 offers operators is its technological and design alignment with the F-35, allowing operators to “train the way you fight.”
While this alignment can be described with talking points, an actual image of the two aircraft together is a very powerful marketing resource.
Capturing the F-35 and T-50 together was a rariety. The F-35s are either in production in Fort Worth, Texas, or delivered to customers and stationed around the world. The T-50s are based in Greenville, South Carolina. Getting the two aircraft together was nearly impossible — until February 2018, when a company function placed the two aircraft on the same runway.
Visual communicators seized the opportunity to photograph the two jets together, knowing the value these photos could bring to a host of marketing and public relations activities. In addition taking the photo, a member of the team had the idea to use the image almost immediately following the shoot for social media and advertising purposes. The Air Force competition was still open and having new imagery could help tell the T-50A story in a decidedly fresh way.
Plans included creating an animated GIF that begins with a focus on the T-50, highlighting the training aspect. The GIF then builds through to focus on the F-35, personifying Lockheed Martin’s campaign motto: “Train the Way You Fight.”
The end product became multi-dimensional project that went from being “just a photo” to an engaging tactic that allowed Lockheed Martin to take its campaign to new heights.
The F-35 Lightning II has advanced capabilities that have never before been available in a fighter aircraft. Advanced pilot training is the key to making the most of those capabilities. Enter the T-50A trainer aircraft, the most effective aircraft available to train the next generation of pilots to fly, fight and win.
The T-50A is Lockheed Martin’s submission for a U.S. Air Force competition to recapitalize its current, aging trainer fleet, which is 50+ years old. One of the major advantages the T-50 offers operators is its technological and design alignment with the F-35, allowing operators to “train the way you fight.”
While this alignment can be described with talking points, an actual image of the two aircraft together is a very powerful marketing resource.
Capturing the F-35 and T-50 together was a rariety. The F-35s are either in production in Fort Worth, Texas, or delivered to customers and stationed around the world. The T-50s are based in Greenville, South Carolina. Getting the two aircraft together was nearly impossible — until February 2018, when a company function placed the two aircraft on the same runway.
Visual communicators seized the opportunity to photograph the two jets together, knowing the value these photos could bring to a host of marketing and public relations activities. In addition taking the photo, a member of the team had the idea to use the image almost immediately following the shoot for social media and advertising purposes. The Air Force competition was still open and having new imagery could help tell the T-50A story in a decidedly fresh way.
Plans included creating an animated GIF that begins with a focus on the T-50, highlighting the training aspect. The GIF then builds through to focus on the F-35, personifying Lockheed Martin’s campaign motto: “Train the Way You Fight.”
The end product became multi-dimensional project that went from being “just a photo” to an engaging tactic that allowed Lockheed Martin to take its campaign to new heights.
T-50A trainer and F-35 fighter jet, "Train The Way You Fight" final image.
Photo Shoot
This type of commercial photograph is produced by taking a large number of photos from one static camera position. It is imperative to keep the camera in one spot for consistency in post production. To light the jets, one flash unit is moved to multiple locations around each aircraft. Below is a visual representation of the extent of manual work involved to produce the final image.
Every flash seen below was a single hand held strobe walked around the jets by a photographer illuminating a different angle of the aircraft. One photographer triggered the camera while a second moved the light. All the shots were carefully planned to include a specific section of the aircraft from top to bottom. The use of a scissor lift gave invaluable height to the photographers that evening. Each shot was crucial to providing the retoucher with enough photographic information to composite a final image.
The retoucher composited the image using multiple layers, opacity strength and masks to add light to the aircraft; explained further in the next section.
Motion Graphic to demonstrate the lighting technique *not final product*
Composite
Thinh Nuygen composited the final image. The composite has a total of 45 layers. Most of the layers are image layers from the photo shoot. A few are adjustment layers with layer masks for tone and heal/clone layers for cleanup.
The image layers from the photo shoot were set to layer blending mode “lighten” to display the brighter areas of the aircraft and ground in relation to the other layers. Both aircraft were shot with one studio flash positioned for each individual exposure with the camera on a tripod. Layer mask tool was used to further isolate the desired areas from each image layer to blend the individually lit areas together. One long exposure with constant lighting was used as a fill light on some areas of the F-35, but the layer was treated the same as the flash exposures using the lighten blending mode and layer mask tool. The brush and pen tablet tools were key to the accuracy of the layer mask. The completed aircraft composite was then merged to a single layer for global editing.
The aircraft composite, the ground composite and sky were kept as separate layers in order to give the client subtle variations, easily adding or subtracting these areas. Similar final adjustments of sharpness, clarity and color were added to these layers using the Camera Raw Filter after converting the main layers for Smart Filters. The Smart Filter/Camera Raw filter makes non-destructive adjustments easy to copy back and forth between layers.
Layer grouping was also an important tool for organizing and isolating various parts of the composite. See below for a working screen grab in Adobe Photoshop CC.
Screen grab of Adobe Photoshop CC to demonstrate layer build of composite.
Second screen grab of Adobe Photoshop CC to demonstrate layer build of composite.
Animation
Software: After Effects
The visual explanation of how the photo was created lead to the idea of creating a motion graphic file to show all the flashes lighting the aircraft. The photography team member Todd McQueen then contacted multimedia animator Jeff Flamer who progressed the idea into a polished file for distribution.
To create the animation below, the Photoshop file was imported as a composition with all the layers in tact. The layer reveals were timed just right to gain the effect of lighting the plane piece by piece. Each layer was placed in a specific spot on the timeline to create the appropriate sequence. This visual effect provided a grand reveal of the aircraft by means of light. All of the aircraft layers were set to lighten to allow the images to build upon each other until both aircraft were fully illuminated. The additional text reveal played nicely off the flash effects. The text was created by applying a wiggle expression onto a light to bounce around revealing parts of the phrase. Below is the final motion graphic distributed in external marketing.
Final motion graphic distributed on social media channels; "Train The Way You Fight."
The final image and motion graphic were used on social media and websites, in a multi channel advertisement campaign. The graphic was first released on social media to align with a key customer event in mid-February. It was posted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The initial posts collectively garnered 460K+ impressions and 39K+ engagements, for a total engagement rate of 8.52%. This benchmark far exceeds typical Corporate-wide campaign benchmark for Lockheed Martin. Corporate Communications attributed the campaign success of these posts to the dynamic graphic.
Here are some of the links to the initial posts:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BfeSr-wnVky/?taken-by=lockheedmartin
Photography Team Members:
Angel DelCueto
Alex Groves
Michael Jackson
Andrew McMurtrie
Todd McQueen
Thinh Nguyen
Matt Short
Motion Graphics Team Members:
Jeff Flamer
Social Media Team Members:
Amy Cochrum
Behance site curator: Mandie Mills
Editor: Stephanie Stinn
Web Design: Natalia Gayton
