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The first customer for an HD camcorder in a SpaceCam was Argentina’s millennium TV spectacular. "Plus-8 provided the HDW 700A camcorder, a wide-angle Fujinon zoom lens, a Sony 9-inch HD monitor and a Sony 14-inch high-resolution HD monitor," Nightingale remembers. "They flew this system all over South America and shot down there for about two weeks; it came out very well."

Flying Pictures, USA, located in Van Nuys, began operating about five years ago. It is the sole outlet for the Gyrosphere, a remotely controlled, gyrostabilized camera system that was first brought to the United States in 1984. Flying Pictures now has two Gyrospheres available to the motion-picture and video industries. Although the system’s primary use is on helicopters, it can be mounted on a variety of platforms, including cranes, boats, camera cars and even a descender rig. It was the first stabilized ball mount to be used on a descender rig (for Steven Spielberg’s Hook).

On helicopters equipped with a special set of brackets designed by Flying Pictures, the Gyrosphere ball can be mounted on the nose of a Eurocopter Twin Star or, within minutes, be moved to the side position. In this setup, it has seen action on The Perfect Storm, Message in a Bottle and Outbreak, among other features. It was also used on a specially designed, 500’-long cable system for Wild, Wild West to simulate the POV of Dr. Loveless’s giant bug creature.

The company’s main business is renting the Gyrosphere and supporting top aerial cinematographers, one of whom is Michael Kelem, who also serves as president of the company. "I’ve been in the business for more than 10 years," Kelem says. "Our philosophy is to send out the most reliable piece of equipment to aerial cameramen with a lot of experience. That way, Flying Pictures can support not only [cinematographers], but also productions, with excellent personnel and backup. We’re always adding new features, such as faster, stronger gyros and more digital options."

The Gyrosphere has four gyroscopes (yaw, pitch, roll and one for horizon leveling) and a Mitchell Mark II 35mm 4-perf camera, and uses either a Cooke MK II lens or an Angenieux HR 25-250mm zoom. For most sequences, the Mitchell with the 10:1 zoom is used, but a VistaVision camera and prime lenses are generally substituted for visual-effects work. "VistaVision and the Gyrosphere make a good combination for doing effects shots and backgrounds," Kelem says. "We did a lot of work on Rocky and Bullwinkle, a big visual-effects show that required the use of both Gyrospheres. Sometimes, one would be on the East Coast while the other was shooting on the West Coast. At one point they were both at the same location, with me shooting on a camera car while the aerial cinematographer, David Nowell, was shooting from a helicopter.

"We had to have a very stable camera platform for these background-plate shots, because they were going to add a lot of CGI characters to those scenes during postproduction," he continues. "For instance, there are shots where Bullwinkle flies a vintage plane through Washington, D.C. We filmed the plane with the pilot wearing a green suit, and Bullwinkle was later substituted for the green pilot. Because Flying Pictures does aerial coordinating, we’re able to offer the complete package work, equipment and personnel."

Pearl Harbor is Flying Pictures’ most recent high-profile job. Nowell, an aerial cinematographer with more than 27 years in the business, worked as director/cam-eraman on the epic film’s aerial unit. "Aerial work was obviously a very a big deal on that production," Nowell says. "I had a crew of four doing camerawork, along with 14 pilots and a backup crew of six mechanics. The Gyrosphere was my prime camera platform. Most of the time, it was mounted on the nose of a Twin Star helicopter, but sometimes, with the use of a custom-built bracket, it was hung on the tail of a B-25 bomber. This setup allowed us to get some amazing footage of the Japanese armada heading toward the island of Oahu.

"Although the B-25 came over as a camera platform, we painted it up to look like one of the Doolittle Raid B-25s and shot some scenes for that sequence," he continues. "We also mounted cameras on the tails and wings of various airplanes. Tyler Camera Systems sent over some of its camera systems, including some built especially for this show. On one, we put two .30-caliber machine guns with a Photo-Sonics 4ML camera mounted between the barrels. With this setup on the front of the Twin Star helicopter, we could fly, run the camera and fire the machine guns, giving us a POV of a Japanese Zero strafing the airfield."

Photo-Sonics, Inc. of Burbank is perhaps the oldest company currently involved with aerial motion-picture cameras. The firm was founded around 1928 as Acme Tool & Die, making registration pins and replacement movements for the Bell & Howell 2709 cameras used by Walt Disney. Soon after that, they began manufacturing the Acme Camera as a complete replacement for the Bell & Howells used by Disney. The camera became an integral component of the Acme-Dunn optical and contact printers. In the early 1940s, the company was given an honorable mention by the AMPAS for its contribution to the Acme-Dunn Optical Printer, and in 1980, the honor was upgraded to an Academy Award for scientific and technical achievement.

Conrad Kiel, the company’s rental manager, relates, "Around 1965, Fox Studios purchased one of our 360 fps, pin-registered 4E cameras to photograph miniatures on Tora! Tora! Tora! Several years later, the camera was sold to a Hollywood rental house that provided it to customers as a special-effects camera for commercials and motion pictures. In the years that followed, we received many calls for additional cameras. We began building cameras specifically for the motion-picture industry and formed a small rental department. The 4E camera became the 4ER when it was reflexed in 1984. The 4ER earned the company an AMPAS award in 1989. Over the years, we’ve built many 4ER [pin-registered] and 4C [rotary prism] cameras specifically for the film industry."

Both the 4ER and the 4C are large, 35mm cameras that are not typically used for aerial filming because of their size, weight and AC power requirements. "The 4ML camera was designed in 1969 as a compact, 28-volt, pin-registered, 35mm camera capable of running from 10 to 200 frames per second," Kiel says. "It was used in The Final Countdown as a belly-mounted camera on an F-14. Although the camera had been mounted and used on numerous military aircraft, I think The Final Countdown was the first example of feature-film aerial work for us. Projects that followed included Top Gun, Hot Shots! and Flight of the Intruder. The 4ML was also used as a ’close-proximity camera’ on Armageddon, for which it was mounted directly at the base of the shuttle rocket boosters."

For Pearl Harbor, the company recently provided two non-reflex 4ML cameras to be used as wing mounts and cockpit cameras. The camera can be fitted with PL, Panavision, BNCR or Nikon lens mounts. "David Nowell tells me that he has put the 4ML on a Japanese Zero, an F-5 Tiger, an F-86 Sabrejet, a P-38 Lightning, a P-51 Mustang and a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk," Kiel says. "All of our cameras are designed to handle abusive environments; in fact, they’ve been used for many years in military, aerospace and nuclear test applications. Because of the 4ML’s compact and rugged design, no one bats an eye when a feature producer requests that it be mounted to an aircraft."

Aerial production services

In addition to companies manufacturing products for airborne filming, there are those that focus primarily on providing services, such as Aerial Cinema Productions of New York, which began operating about 10 years ago. "We offer full-service aerial production and coordination, providing the helicopter, the pilot and mounts," says Ray McCort, pilot and aerial coordinator for the company. "Most of the time, we provide the whole package with the helicopter as a camera ship. Occasionally, we fly the helicopter without a camera if it is going to appear on screen as a picture ship or flying on a specific stunt sequence.

"We offer several types of helicopters; the most common are the Jet Ranger and Long Ranger [made by Bell Helicopters] and the Twin Star or A Star [made by American Eurocopter]. Our fleet is equipped with pop-out safety floats so we can operate over the water, too," says McCort, adding that the company has branches in Chicago and Atlanta.

Most of the company’s business is a blend of features and commercials, with occasional calls for TV shows and music videos. "The first feature we did was probably Now And Then," he says. "We used the Wescam system and worked on the closing credit sequence. Demi Moore, Melanie Griffith and Rosie O’Donnell were all playing in a yard. The sequence began as a tight shot and pulled way up over the streets and houses. We started by coming in and hovering over the house, then zooming in on the actresses. As the helicopter flew away, we slowly zoomed out and tilted up to reveal the entire neighborhood.

"We did a similar shot for Save the Last Dance in Chicago, [which required] filming a moving train from a helicopter. We had to show one of the stars, Julia Stiles, inside the train. We zoomed in on her to a tight shot and then pulled away as the train went into downtown Chicago," he recalls. ’That wasn’t a special-effects shot; she was there in the passenger seats."

McCort says the company’s most recent high-profile sequence appeared in Chill Factor. Shot by aerial director of photography and pilot Geoff Palmer, "it involved several military Huey helicopters chasing down bad guys on location in Utah and South Carolina. The most difficult part was coordinating with the talent, because we were flying with actors in the helicopter and on the ground. The direction of flight and especially the altitude had to be planned out very carefully."

Some of the biggest problems McCort confronts arise when directors want to film a specific shot that might be unwise from a safety standpoint. He says that many directors are not aware of all of the hazards involved in aerial filming. "They might have a particular shot in mind, but it’s the aerial coordinator’s job to keep things safe and sane," McCort points out. "We want the director to get his shot, but there may be several ways of achieving it. We always work closely with the director to find the safest way to do things while keeping him happy at the same time."

Production Helicopters of Los Angeles is also in the business of "aerial coordinating and safety," as president Geoff Palmer puts it. The company began operations in 1981 in Canada and received a number of calls for film work in California, which prompted a move to Los Angeles in 1992. (Branch offices are still located in Calgary and Vancouver.) "We started out doing both commercial and feature work, pretty evenly split," Palmer says. "Currently, we work back and forth between here and Canada because there’s so much production in Vancouver and the Rockies."

A typical job begins when a client contacts the company with an idea or a set of storyboards and asks how to put it on film. "In addition to deciding how to fly the sequence, we have to determine which aircraft to use, line up those aircraft for the required dates, and select the camera systems best suited for the shots they’re after, depending on the creative requirements and the available budget," Palmer says.

"Next, you have the safety work, which has to be done for everything from formation flying to working with extras and crew. You protect the aircraft from the crew and the crew from the aircraft. We determine where the risk is for each shot and then minimize it eliminating it entirely, if possible. Then we set about managing any remaining level of risk. We work things out as completely as we can beforehand, keeping in mind that once we get on location, things might look a bit different."

Production Helicopters uses either the Bell Jet Ranger or the A Star for 90 percent of its jobs, according to Palmer. "Most camera systems fit onto these ships Wescam, SpaceCam, Tyler Mounts and so on. For the opening sequence of Ace Ventura, we used a Wescam, but because this was way up in the mountains, the helicopter we chose was a Lama SA 315. The Lama is a high-altitude helicopter, and even though the design is more than 20 years old, there’s probably nothing that can touch it when you get up around 10,000 feet.

"The Wescam was mounted on the side, and I believe this was probably one of the first four-gyro systems used on a feature film. We took it up 10,000 feet in the Canadian Rockies, which is very extreme terrain. A stuntman was hanging off the side of a sheer wall, and we had to pull the helicopter into a very steady hover and zoom in on his face. The image had to be very solid, because Jim Carrey’s face was later morphed over the face of the stuntman."

A Wescam on a more conventional helicopter, a Bell Jet Ranger, was used for a complicated train shot on the recent Western comedy Shanghai Noon, starring Jackie Chan. "The opening sequence was a little unusual," Palmer says. "It started out in a very confined area, a cut-bank. But the main problem was the timing. We had to fly over terrain and up to the top of a hill to get a tight shot of four cowboys on horses and horses tend to rear as the aircraft flies past. Just as we cleared the cowboys, the train had to come around a bend and we had to swoop around it as the cowboys closed in on it. It was very difficult timing, but it worked out well."