Aerial cinematography is action cinematography – it’s daringly creative and creatively daring. It’s about speed and adrenaline, and is fast, furious, flashy and exciting. It’s the highly sophisticated camera systems mounted to the nose of helicopters, to the belly of Lear jets and to the tail of B-25 bombers. It’s the images that put the sizzle in Twister, Air Force One, Con Air, Armageddon and Mission: Impossible 2. It’s what moviegoers expect and what producers and directors demand. It’s all that plus one added caveat – aerial cinematography can be deadly.
Commercial director Paul Giraud took his last breath filming aerials. He and three crew members (including a Local 600 member, first assistant Mikael Glattes) perished on June 22 in a remote location of British Columbia, Canada near the Alaska and Yukon borders, while shooting a car commercial for Los Angeles-based production company H.S.I. Reportedly their helicopter’s rotor blade clipped the side of a glacier, causing the chopper to explode into a fiery crash that found a fatal resting place in an underlying crevasse.
While investigators have the task of looking back and determining exactly what happened on the glacier, the members of the intimate fraternity of those who make aerial cinematography their livelihood are thrust into a state of serious reflection. They live each day with the grim yet realistic reminder that their next film shoot may be their last. How do they live with that other than through their passion for the art? What are the issues at the forefront of their profession and their existence, which by their very nature are one and the same? The answers, which can serve as a production reference guide, must be taken seriously in the aftermath of the crash in Canada.
The ideal aerial crew is made up of an experienced aerial director of photography and an experienced film pilot. As is the case in all professions, there are bona-fide experts and there are those trying to be. Recognizing and respecting that difference is the consensus industry key to safe aerial cinematography. “There’s a different area of knowledge and a different level of experience in what we do,” says Cliff Fleming, owner of South Coast Helicopters in Costa Mesa, California and a film pilot with more than 20 years of experience. “It’s not that we can fly a helicopter any better than the next guy, it’s just that film is different. There’s a unique terminology. How to maneuver the helicopter safely and position the camera in the right way requires skills that other types of flying just doesn’t require.”
Adds Rick Shuster, a Los Angeles-based film pilot and a 17-year veteran of film flying, “Film is an absolutely different world. There’s a huge difference between good pilots and film pilots. Helicopter pilots who fight fires are excellent pilots, but they’re not film pilots.” Aerial cinematographer Hans Bjerno attributes much of the safety and success in his 15 years of shooting aerials to the fact that he always insists on working with an experienced film pilot. “Many people seem to think that flying a helicopter for film is the same as flying for tourism or for corporate business. That’s like saying driving a taxicab is the same as driving a racecar. Would a production company hire a taxi driver to drive a stunt car on a film shoot? I don’t think so. Why then is it difficult to understand that only film pilots should be used for shooting aerials?”
In film production, the choice of pilot typically rests with a line producer or a unit production manager. Too often, that decision is based on budgets, logistics and availability around ever-changing schedules. That’s a danger zone, according to Craig Hosking who has done flying film shoots for more than 20 years – in both helicopters and a variety of fixed wing aircraft. “Production people have few skills in judging pilots. It’s just not their business. The opinions of experts have to be respected and film is a special area of expertise. A non-film pilot may be experienced in flying a helicopter but that’s not enough and production has to understand that. There’s a great deal of pressure working in the Hollywood environment, and those who have been there for the years that we have will always fly within the personal boundaries of safety.”
Aerial cinematography’s creative side is also greatly enhanced by an experienced film pilot working in tandem with an experienced aerial director of photography. Steve Koster has been shooting aerials for 12 years, spending the last seven as Giraud’s main aerial camera operator. Koster worked on the car commercial with H.S.I. and Giraud in Vancouver but not in the Yukon. “We understand the conditions of flying,” notes Koster of aerial cinematographers. “We understand the limitations of the aircraft and the limitations of the pilot and they understand what we do. It’s a total team effort.”
Fleming concurs. “It’s critical that the camera operator knows these limitations and works within them. Knowing how to operator an aerial camera system is not the complete knowledge an operator needs for effective shooting.”
Canadian film pilot Jim Filippone, a 16-year veteran also on the H.S.I. job in Vancouver but not in the Yukon, points out the difficulty of bringing creative ideas to fruition while in the air. “We’re always being asked to juggle the creative and technical aspects of film with the creative and technical aspects of flying. We are asked to do many things that are unorthodox in flying to achieve certain shots. It’s up to the aerial director of photography and the film pilot to use our knowledge and experience to determine if we can do it and if so, how. There are times when you have to make decisions that the film people don’t like but it’s all in the name of safety.”
Observes Hosking, “An experienced film crew is never afraid to say ‘No’ to a creative challenge, whereas a new guy who has his one time chance in the Hollywood limelight may push it to try and prove himself. Non-film pilots will fixate on the shot and forget to fly the helicopter and inexperienced aerial camera operators will lose themselves in the viewfinder and have no sense for what the helicopter and pilot are doing.”
According to the experts, two other elements critical to safe and successful aerial cinematography are comprehensive scouting and restricting the number of people in the aircraft during filming. “Scouting thoroughly well ahead of time cannot be stressed enough,” explains Fleming. “When you’re flying and shooting there’s a tendency on the part of production to want to keep going, to shoot more and get that special shot. But you don’t know what’s around the next tree or what’s in that beautiful canyon. Experience has told us to say ‘No. We can’t go there!’”
As for the intrigue and excitement associated with film flying, which often leads to joy riders, everyone involved notes that signals a big red flag. “It’s not fun and games,” says Koster. “We really need to minimize the amount of people in the helicopter to ensure that we have only experienced and essential personnel doing this work.”
Emphasizes Hosking, “Minimal (personnel) required to accomplish the shot is common sense. Added weight in the air is always bad as are the distractions of unnecessary people.
You just don’t combine work and play and aerial cinematography is not play.” By many standards, Ron Goodman is the premiere expert of this niche industry. The president of SpaceCam and the designer of the system, the Canadian-born Goodman has photographed aerials all around the world for more then 30 years. He believes that it’s that higher respectability be brought – across the board – to aerial cinematography. “In the interests of both safety and creative expression, it’s high time that those who dedicate and risk their lives to aerial filming be treated as equals in the eyes of production,” he remarks. “As I look back on my career, it seems that every five years or so I lose a friend or colleague in a tragedy that perhaps, and I emphasize perhaps, could have been avoided. It’s just time that basic guidelines be put in place and formalized. Productions have to consult the experts – the film pilots and aerial directors of photography – and take their opinions as gospel.”
In 1991, Goodman himself almost lost his life to the profession he’s helped create. When filming Far and Away off of the southwestern tip of Ireland, an unexpected wave roared up and hit the helicopter, dropping he and film pilot Bobby Zajonc into the frigid waters below. Were it not for a rescue helicopter demanded by Zajonc and Goodman after a careful scouting expedition recognized the need, the two would have perished. “There’s no question that experience saved our lives,” recalls Zajonc, a 25-year film vet who goes by the moniker
Bobby Z. “We probably should have been dead but I’ve been to Navy water school twice and I was able to set the helicopter down in the water smoothly.”
Continues Goodman, “We operate in a very tenuous production environment today. Everyone knows about budget issues. Yes, safety can be expensive, but look at how expensive an accident is. Furthermore, everyone knows about runaway production, and it’s not just Canada. Aerials are shot all over the world, and in some of the most remote areas.
It’s especially critical that experienced film teams are employed. We have to make sure that experienced film people’s freedom to work does not get curtailed by immigration and government authorities – as it has been in certain countries.”