MacGillivray and Freeman expanded a treatment written by the Smithsonian Institution and Thompson, adding various scenes in the storyboard intended to jolt IMAX audiences.

Its advent is described by the narrator as "like the opening of a new eye", allowing humans to reach untouched places and extend their limits, furthering their perspectives about the world.

And so, we begin to realize that human destiny has ever been, and always must be, to fly!The Smithsonian Institution made efforts starting in 1911 to modernize its museums with multimedia content, though this only accelerated since the 1960s.

[15] After writing a third treatment with Thompson,[16] the Smithsonian commissioned filmmaker duo Greg MacGillivray and James "Jim" Freeman,[17] who had previously made surf and giant-screen films with experimental editing; they had also shot aerials for Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973) and The Towering Inferno (1974).

[20] They analyzed the existing IMAX films for inspiration,[21] including Man Belongs to the Earth, whose opening aerial shot of the Grand Canyon enthused them.

[23] He and Freeman storyboarded it with John Divers at their Laguna Beach, California, office, creating "IMAX moments" to thrill audiences and to rely on visuals more than narration.

[25] Through filmmaker Randal Kleiser, whom he knew from his friend Basil Poledouris, MacGillivray partook in courses with actress Nina Foch to master in directing his cast.

Ferguson and fellow IMAX co-founders, Bill Shaw and Robert Kerr, ideated creating three new cameras with better specifications,[20] with one of them to be used for Thompson in his other Bicentennial film, American Years.

Movement was condensed to ease the switching between an extreme long shot to medium close-up, and a wide-angle lens was used to further expand the film's view.

Camera mounts were designed by the United States Navy for a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II piloted by Kevin O'Mara used to film the shot.

Nelson Tyler spent two months developing two mounts for the camera helicopters to film front and side shots, providing smoothness as the smallest vibrations would be noticeable on IMAX.

Other filming locations included the Gateway Arch, Lake Powell, Monument Valley, Zion Canyon, Yosemite Falls, the Appalachian Mountains, and the Sierra Nevada.

George Casey and Lester Novros of special effects company Graphic Films[e] provided planetary models and a studio, and also assisted the crew.

[37] As special effects supervisor,[6] Blyth designed it to have the same color palette as the 747, and inspired by concepts of advanced ion thrusters and magnetically confined fusions like deuterium and helium-3.

Others used a faux version of the slit-scan photography kit used for 2001: A Space Odyssey: the sheet film was projected onto a white board, which the fisheye-lensed camera was put close to.

[37] Bellows and close-up lenses by Hasselblad were used for the penultimate nebulae shots; the camera was facing a tray filled with water and a mixture of black ink and white enamel paint lit by color gels.

[18] The placing of multiple images on the same screen were occasionally used; these were inspired by the multi-image films In the Labyrinth (1967) and Tiger Child (1970), made by IMAX's precursor Multiscreen.

With IMAX screens having a different focus center, thus making an evenly-divided multi-image scene confusing for audiences, Jim Liles of the Optical Department at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and filmmaker Dennis Earl Moore designed new mattes in which the bottom row is 15% larger than the top.

For example, a multi-image scene in which two jets cross each other uses the surround nature of the sound system; MacGillivray expected audiences to "shiver" due to the dramatic shift of attention.

[42] Film critic Daniel Eagan said most of the views depicted in its opening sequence are "stately, processional, celebrating the American landscape while remaining distant from it".

were issued on May 16, 1976,[47] and the film was previewed to members of the US Congress on June 24 at the NASM's IMAX theater[18] (later renamed Samuel Pierpoint Langley,[48] then Lockheed Martin).

[2][46] It was also the premiere film for IMAX theaters of theme parks like Six Flags Great America's Pictorium (1979), Dreamworld in Gold Coast, Australia (1981), and Speelland Beekse Bergen at Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands (June 19, 1981).

was well-received by many film critics;[5] John Alderson of the Chicago Sun-Times summarized that "the subject charms its imagination, while the IMAX format goes right to the brink of sensory overload".

[31] Contemporary critics called it underrated and electric,[l] with David Handler of the Newspaper Enterprise Association dubbing it "the ultimate film trip".

[96][97] The cinematography was praised for its innovativeness and vertiginous aesthetics,[o] equated to theme park rides and epic films,[98][99] which was further amplified by Segall's score.

[5] Nathan Southern of AllMovie gave the film four and a half stars out of five, deeming it a visually vivid historical insight and "one of the greatest unsung landmarks of American documentary".

Some critics panned Ezekiel's character as banal and mawkish, and the omissions of real-life aviation pioneers were noted, alongside how in some shots the balloon appears to be immobile.

[102][103] Filmmaker Mark R. Hasan thought the Betamax audio lacks quality in the dialogue, though he noted the film is highly degraded on videocassette from the original, and said To Fly!

[74] While some praised its effectiveness for inspiring audiences[104] even in smaller formats,[74][15] others found its panoramas to be boring, similar to other IMAX films that are said to overexploit immersion as a gimmick.

's Horseshoe Falls scene at Lockheed Martin; projectionist Keith Madden and audiences assumed the shaking they felt came from the theater's subwoofers rather than an earthquake.