You raise it, from the egg. For Winged Migration (2001), Jacques Perrin's team ran a bird school in Normandy. The chicks heard ultralight engines while still in the egg, walked in line behind their handlers, and then learned to fly behind the planes.

Perrin had fourteen ultralights. The cameraman sat out front, in the open, in the pilot's place. "You must not suffer from vertigo," he said.

The trick is speed. Geese cruise at about 15 to 20 metres a second. Match it and the goose hangs still in the frame while the world streams past. Miss by 5 metres a second and, at two metres, it leaves the frame in well under a second (our arithmetic for this lens).

Three years, about forty countries, more than 450 km of film. Many of the closest flying shots used the birds they raised; most of the birds in the film were wild. The geese, the trike and the country here are our own models, built and lit in code.

Would you sit out front?

Sources: Le Peuple migrateur educational kit, Tamasa Distribution and Galatee Films (quoting Perrin in Paris Match and Marianne); Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 75th Awards; Alerstam et al., PLoS Biology (2007).
Music: made with ElevenLabs Music. Sounds: made by us.