This is all getting a bit silly. Like a large US aircraft maker who shall remain nameless but are called Boeing, the
PR arm of the RAF are shooting themselves in both feet with this attitude.
Writer/photographer/publisher/filmmaker*: "we would like some help, please"
RAF/US defence giant: "maybe, but first jump through lots of hoops and then if we feel like helping, let us charge a stack of money greater than the budget of or expected profits for your entire book/magazine/film"
Writer (etc)" "No thanks, we will try and do it without your help, leading possibly to an inferior product but certainly one which is out of your control and from which you will make nothing. Or we won't bother, denying you independent cheap publicity."
I have been looking for video footage of various aircraft. The situation is reversed vis a vis the UK/Europe and the US militaries. The Pentagon has either supplied tape for free or let us rummage in their archives for minimal cost. The UK equivalent library, the BDFL, while being extremely accommodating and helpful at the shop floor level (as are Boeing, LM etc), want to charge £1000 PER MINUTE for footage (yes, you read that right) largely because of Crown Copyright. A starter for 10 for the FJ aviators; approximately how many Harriers or Tornados could you fly for an hour with £60,000? Probably a few, but if you wanted to film them, then DPR would want their cut...
*Unless you work for an "immediate news" outfit such as the Telegraph [see recent thread on the Bears probing UK airspace involving Fylingdales radar alerting the pilots who dash across the runway to their Tornado F4s etc] or the BBC [shows QRA pilot dropping maps because they won't stage it again], Sky TV [doesn't show map-dropping aviator, but uses video of Su-30 instead of Typhoon because that's what they were given]
The whole RAF/MoD publicity machine is broken unless you are the day after tomorrow's chip wrapping or an item on 24 hr news tomorrow at 2.30 PM (repeated at 2.30 AM and then on next year's Funniest Military Blunders).
Well, I'm glad to have vented some of that, not that it will help much, but please add any further thoughts on the direction RAF
PR is going that you might have...
JT