This project started with a simple question: what if we could show Salvadorans their own country from a perspective they'd never experienced?

Not the version in tourist brochures. The real thing - emerald lakes, active volcanoes, coastlines where waves crash against cliffs, coffee plantations spreading across mountainsides. All from the air, at speeds that make your stomach drop.

Migue standing in the middle of a highway getting a shot.

The Hunt for Beauty

We started with the obvious targets - iconic landmarks, historical monuments, places everyone recognizes. But the most powerful shots came from improvisation. My producer and I developed a rule during those six weeks: if either of us saw potential for a shot while driving, we stopped immediately. Built the drone. Captured it. We couldn't risk saying no - weather changes, light shifts, the moment disappears.

That discipline gave us hours of footage, most of which we'd never use. But it meant we could be surprised. I went in with specific emotional beats planned, but I had to let the country show us what it wanted to reveal. The irony is that we set out to surprise the audience, but we were the ones who ended up astonished. This country is staggeringly beautiful in ways I hadn't fully appreciated until I saw it from above.

Our drone flying above the Izalco volcano and El Cerro Verde.

Working with Drones

We tried helicopters first. Too shaky. The footage looked like it was shot during an earthquake. So we switched to high-end drones.

The trickiest part was speed. Drones don't naturally fly fast enough to create that stomach-dropping sensation of flight. So we shot everything having in mind that we were going to speed it up in post. Which meant we had to be three times more careful while flying - every tiny movement of the controller got amplified when we increased the speed. One jerky motion and the whole shot was ruined.

The closest we came to disaster was at the rock cliffs near the coast. We needed this shot flying parallel to the formations, low over the water, with waves crashing below. The problem? We were operating the drone from a kilometer away with no visual contact. Just guessing the distance between the drone and the waves by watching a screen.

The 4-kilometer ocean shot over the fuel ships was planned, calculated, and terrifying. We saw the ships in port, measured the distance, calculated battery consumption. The entire flight path took over thirty minutes - we depleted the battery just reaching the ships, then had to bring the drone back on less than half power. It was a make-it-or-break-it moment. You're watching a very expensive piece of equipment potentially sink into the ocean, and there's nothing you can do except trust your intuition.

That shot is twenty seconds long in the final cut. Thirty minutes of risk for twenty seconds of screen time.

And Estero Jaltepeque might've been the most precise flying we did. We operated the drone from a speeding boat while chasing a folk of birds. High-speed boat, drone flying directly in front and above us, nowhere to land if anything went wrong. Pure choreography between the boat driver and the drone operator, and one mistake would've ended it.

Migue, Juancho and our producer Chechi Santos at El Pital, Chalatenango.

Climbing Mountains in Pieces

Most of the major volcano shots required us to climb to the summit. You can't fly a drone from ground level and reach those altitudes - the distance is too great, the winds too unpredictable. So we'd break the drone into components, distribute them among the crew, and hike up to catch the sunset.

At Santa Ana volcano, a female coyote appeared while we were setting up. She stayed with us through the entire thirty-minute flight, just watching. Given our company name is Black Coyote, it felt like a blessing - or at least a good omen. She was calm despite the noise, unbothered by us disrupting her territory.

Chasing Light, Destroying Tires

There was this one evening where we were racing between locations to catch sunset. Drove like maniacs, jumped a curb, completely destroyed a tire. Didn't matter - we got there, set up the drone, and captured one of the most beautiful shots in the entire film.

Then we spent three hours in pitch darkness, middle of nowhere, trying to reach a hotel with a destroyed wheel.

Building a Theater From Scratch

We were handed an empty room with a curved concrete wall. That's it. Everything else we built from nothing. We plastered and realigned the wall to make it perfectly symmetrical, painted it with specialized screen material so the projectors would work correctly. Installed a curved projection system that wraps around you. Built 33 custom seats.

Then came the hard part - programming the senses. When you fly over a volcano, you smell sulfur. Coffee plantations trigger the scent of roasted beans. Coconut groves smell like coconut. The wind syncs to the footage so you feel air rushing past when you're diving through canyons.

We tested the film with a reduced audience while programming the scents in real time. I wanted to know when the smells enhanced immersion and when they distracted. What I learned is that the brain associates scent with visual information in unpredictable ways. We accidentally placed a tropical beach scent over footage of a dam, and people immediately reported smelling putrid water. The scent itself was pleasant - coconut, saltwater - but paired with dark water and concrete, their brains reinterpreted it as decay.

The finished custom built screen, before installing the projectors.

Unforgivingly Beautiful

This wasn't just about showing pretty landscapes. It was about cultural reclamation. Salvadorans have had legitimate reasons to fear their own country - violence, political instability, economic collapse. Local tourism is rare because staying home felt safer than exploring. We've internalized a narrative that our country is broken, dangerous, not worth our attention.

I wanted to counter that narrative not with words but with undeniable visual evidence. Look at this. This is yours. This exists right now, an hour from your house, and you've never seen it.

Vuela El Salvador opened as part of Skydeck Millennium, a new cultural hub in San Salvador. That context matters - this isn't a standalone attraction, it's part of a larger argument about what El Salvador can be. The film represents a portal to everything this country offers, positioned within a space dedicated to culture and possibility.

The final cut includes more than thirty locations. Active volcanoes, winding rivers, emerald lakes, coastlines where cliffs meet ocean, coffee plantations spreading across mountains. The music is passionate and emotional - it had to be, because I needed people to feel this, not just watch it.

I want people to leave that theater remembering that nature is unforgivingly beautiful. That we come from a place worthy of awe. That being Salvadoran means belonging to something dynamic and colorful and extreme - ocean to volcano in five minutes, joy and struggle compressed into impossible proximity.

Six weeks of climbing mountains with expensive equipment. Building a theater on faith. Programming machines to trigger emotions through smell and wind and curved light.

Worth every terrifying moment.

The Country You've Never Seen: Filming El Salvador From Above