Stratos IV: A Journey of Perseverance

Stratos IV: A Journey of Perseverance follows DARE’s student rocket team through its 2021 launch campaign in Spain. I filmed much of the campaign, directed interviews for the film and worked on early edits. Alex van Roon and Nico Fosseprez completed the final edit, and the film was released in 2025.

Filming the campaign (September–October 2021)

I started filming when I met the team at Delft station and kept going through the travel, tests, working sessions, daily life on site and the launch attempts. I shot most of it handheld on a Sony ZV-E10 with a Sigma 16 mm f/1.4.

As the camera network and livestream took more of my time, a colleague took on more of the filming. I helped them with shot planning, angles, lenses, movement and continuity so the footage would cut together.

Two shots I am fond of:

• Matching views of the hangar at night and the next morning as the rocket left, filmed so they could be used as a match cut.
• A transition from a moving truck into FPV drone footage. I planned it with Alex van Roon; Alex filmed the truck shot and Elvin Chen flew the drone.

Interviews

After the campaign I prepared interview questions, helped choose who to interview and arranged the sessions. The interviews were filmed at TU Delft’s NewMedia Centre, whose crew ran the main cameras, lighting and sound. I conducted and directed the interviews and added a third close-up camera of my own for facial expressions. One interview, with Dion van Strydonk, covered the final safety decision and the reasoning behind it.

Editing

I selected and tagged footage, assembled sequences, cut interviews and helped shape the story in DaVinci Resolve, working with the team through Resolve’s cloud collaboration on a large shared archive of campaign and livestream footage. When I stepped away in 2023, my rough sections covered the period before the launch attempts.

Credits

The live video case study covers the camera network and broadcasts I ran during the same campaign.