Flying trucks,
flying cars, skydiving, commercials, freefall cinematography,
stunts, stunt coordination, parachute stunts, skydivers,
aircraft, locations around the world.
Ford F-100
Flehner films from Buenos Aires, Argentina contacted me in
'98. They wanted to film a truck in freefall and under
parachute and wondered if I had any experience with that kind of
thing. The closest I'd come was a Chevy Malibu station
wagon and a bunch of Hondas, all of which, by design, bounced
into sandwich looking metal chunks. I told them no problem.
Sometimes you bite off more than you can chew and just
chew hard. In the commercial, the F-100 (our US F-250)
drives out the tailgate of a military aircraft and goes into
freefall. It flies through the air and then opens it's
parachute and glides toward the earth. Above the ground, it
cuts away from the parachute and falls to the ground, wheels
spinning, churning up dust as it peals away. Build Ford
tough. Easy enough.
They sent me a copy of the story boards and I went to work to
find ways to make it happen. I was happy to get the job,
but realized the task I'd taken on was no small trick. The
trucks, after preparations, cost around $50,000 each and there
were only two available for the production. To my relief,
word came that the entire production and rigging would be done in
Argentina by the military there. They needed some advise,
but they'd handle all of the rigging because the truck was
exiting their C-130 and only they can rig things that leave their
planes. The weight of responsibility had been lifted from
my shoulders. I was scheduled to fly to Argentina, shoot
for three days or so, and fly home.
Two weeks before the shoot, everything changed. The
deal with the military had fallen through and I had three weeks
to set things up. Could I handle it? Again I said yes and
with fingers crossed, and started to call my friends.
Here's how it came together.
Todd Shoebothem and Anne Helliwell of Basic Research were in
charge of the rigging. Gary Durice was their expert rigger
of choice for this job. Along with Jerry Borquin D-22, he'd
dropped and saved cars in Terminal Velocity and pitched an
elephant in Operation Dumbo Drop. Still, the rigging was
tricky. The trucks needed to freefall ten thousand feet
before opening a parachute and then survive the opening shock at
terminal. They weighed five thousand pounds without
motors.
Jim Blumenthal in Kingman, AZ provided the C-123, and just
about everything else. Although the trucks were rigged in
Argentina, they still needed quite a bit of work, and we needed
to set up the test truck (photo) to be as similar to the real
trucks as possible. Jim did the welding, balancing,
nailing, bending, cutting, sand bagging, loading, and so on to
get the trucks ready to be dumped... then he did what he was
hired for, loaded them into the plane to be dropped. If you
ever work with Jim Blumenthal, stand aside, cause he's on a
mission and unless you're working up a sweat, you're taking up
space.
The old test truck |
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Weighed down to 5000 lbs. |
So we dumped the test truck from 15,000' above sea
level. I'd practiced hanging from the left side of the
tailgate and found it easy to push my body slightly out to make
room for the truck to just pass the tailgate before I let
go. In flight, the force of the air racing by pushed me
back directly in front of the truck's front tire. As the
truck rolled toward me, I pushed even harder. The wind just
pushed back and as the front bumper reached the edge, I tumbled
away. In freefall, with a drogue, the truck flew
well. I was surprised to find it's fall rate consistent.
It tracked backwards pretty fast, but even that was
consistent and relatively easy to chase. It was the biggest
vehicle I've flown with to date. Even the new Fords were a
bit smaller. It's always interesting to fall with an object
that just tosses around in the sky. There's no dirt dive,
no interaction, just the chase back and forth. Sometimes I
chase the cars, sometimes they chase me back. This truck
just kind of tracked in one direction and let me take it's
picture.
 Carl Nespoli and F-100
#1 inside Jim Blumenthal's C-123
|
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The first new Ford flew pretty well except that it wanted to
rock back and forth over it's center balance point. The
drogue system was attached to four points, but the points were
too close together and didn't offer much stability. Also,
the drogue hung out in the truck's burble and bounced around a
bit causing the main G-11 canopy to prematurely deploy after
about eight seconds of freefall. Great for the helicopter
waiting to take canopy shots, lousy for me falling away from
it. I decided to keep rolling and get a few plate shots on
the way down. The helicopter with Stan McClain on camera
circled the truck hanging nicely under canopy all the way to the
ground. The truck landed with practically no damage, so we
still had two trucks.
I decided to let the next two trucks bounce. We had the
canopy shots and needed freefall, so the best option was to take
them up with drogues only. The second truck also seesawed
with the front a bit heavy. The seesawing and slight
turning made the trucks move around lunging forward as if to run
me over, and then backing away as it pitched up. I found
myself flying hard to keep the shot. The visual of a large,
metallic silver, brand new truck in freefall was perfect.
The cars I shoot are beaters with dust flying all over the
place. These F-250s were new and polished.
The third and last jump was with the truck we'd saved under
canopy. We worked quickly on the rigging to beat sunset and
loaded up for the jump. The sun was maybe ten minutes above
the horizon when the truck and I exited the airplane.
Golden reflections gleamed from the front grill as it rolled from
the ramp. In my shot, you could read the Ford emblem and
then we were airborne. Again the truck seesawed a bit and
flew all over the sky. We tried moving the attachment
points further from the center, but the director felt it would be
easier to deal with the rocking of the truck than trying to erase
cables around the truck.. I chased it, and then it chased
me. I hated to end the shot, but we had to part our
ways. I deployed, and floating under parachute, watched it
plunge to earth. That was the end of a perfect day, and the
beginning of what should be a pretty amazing commercial...
jj
Hey Carl Nespoli and Eric Bangle. Thanks guys! yo
gonna die......
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