Difficult is worth doing

Day 4 : Another star of the production arrives on set

Another key part of this commercial is the new Honda Accord. The only member of the cast to have their own Winnebago.

Getting ready for it's close up.

To film the Accord on dirt roads in the desert requires some specialised kit.  In order to track the car as it drives through the brush, a camera is mounted to the robotic arm on the pursuit vehicle. The cameraman is able to control all elements from inside the car using a joystick and monitor. This sophisticated technology allows us to get up close to the Accord at speed but maintaining a relatively stable camera shot.

Day 3: How do they get so good?

In order for the skydivers to perfect the art of "flying" they must train extensively to understand how their body movements translate into aerial motion. The introduction of wind tunnels to the sport has meant that divers can spend longer learning all the skills they need in a controlled environment, allowing them to push the boundaries of formation flying in the air.

Mary Tontomasi, a wind tunnel coach and member of the Honda aerial shoot team explains a little more about how it all works.

After you have mastered your moves in the wind tunnel all you need is free fall time. All of the skydivers used in the filming of this production have years of experience. Carl Daugherty does the maths

A Lemur: The perfect mascot for a skydiver.

Shooting the action.

Obviously a big part of the formations being performed in the air is not only how you achieve them with the skydivers but also about how we captured the action on film. 

At twelve thousand feet you cannot just point a camera to the sky from the ground. You have to have highly trained aerial cameramen who not only need to be expert skydivers but also be masters of getting into the right position in the air to film the other divers.

Tom actually cut his face with his goggles through the pressure the weight of his helmet puts on his head.

Even with all their experience this shoot posed a number of new difficulties for our cameramen.
Tom Saunders explained some of the challenges he faced:

“We normally shoot with really wide angle lenses to make sure we get all the divers in the frame. Here we need to shoot much tighter frames with longer lenses so we can get up close to the divers faces to get the filmic portraits we are looking for. This gives us much less room for error.
We also need to fly on our fronts. Flying on your back makes the camera work easier as you have a wider scope of head movement but you fall too fast. With the weight of the 35mm cameras we have to over compensate for the weight to make sure we maintain the falling speed with the formation team. The only way to do this is to fly on our fronts but this means we have only a small scope of head movement so have to make sure we are positioned in the exact place and fall at the exact rate."

"We also realised on the first dive that it is going to be hard for the formation guys to judge their distance from us and not look into the lenses. The idea is that we are documenting the action rather than the divers being aware of the camera. Much of sky diving is done through visual contact and head movements; if they cannot look straight at me they will need to keep checking their distance and then looking away. If they get it wrong they chance making a mistake in the formation or worse still crashing into me. That wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t have a 35lb camera on my head and was falling at 115 miles an hour!"

BJ explains the difficulties the cameramen have to overcome in order to film the action:

Skydive watching:  For the guys left on the ground this is the only way we can tell if the divers have pulled off their formation before they get back down. 

Day 2: The first day of aerial filming.

To add to the nerves, morning jumps were cancelled due to cloud cover. More time for some practise on the ground, affectionately known as dirt diving, but everyone is keen to get in the air and put into practice all the prep jumps from yesterday.

The delays are adding to the pressure. BJ explains the importance of time. “The less jumps we get the more important it is that we get the formations first time. Everyone needs to know exactly what it is they need to do.  We can dirt dive and practise trolley formations but until you do it for real and incorporate the difficulties created by the plane exit speeds and individuals fall rates you never fully know what problems you are going to need to overcome.“

Clem likes to pack his own chute. It allows him to be confident that it will open the right way. At speeds up to 130 mph and with a camera strapped to his head, a “hard opening” could break his neck.

Yesterday's camera tests proved vital and the aerial film team have now made the call to shoot on slightly wider lenses today to make sure they capture the entire formation at the point it comes together.

Clem (lead cameraman) - “We have 50 seconds of free fall and it takes us 20 seconds to get all 45 divers into place. This leaves virtually no time to get the formation in shot. I have to be in the exactly the right place when they come together. I don’t want to be the guy to miss the shot if these guys nail the formation.“

Day 1: Rehearsals

The first day is very much a prep day.  Getting our cameramen used to the weight of the cameras and getting the team working closely together is a necessity.  The team practice the jumps and their positions on the ground first.  This is called dirt diving.

 

Pam had a rocky start to the day. On the first jump of the day her primary shoot failed. Somehow the release pin on her shoot rather than freeing when the cord was pulled, drove its way into the pack jamming it shut. Fortunately her experience told her to stay calm and release her auxiliary chute.
Back down safely on solid ground she seemed remarkably calm about everything.
BJ referred to it as a confidence dive. “It does the opposite than you may think, rather than freaking you out it makes you realise how prepared you are for these instances.  Hey, that is why we have 2 chutes!

It was at this point that our conversations back in London and all the planning for the shoot suddenly became real. We were going to spend the next 5 days coordinating six jumps a day with some of the most highly trained sky divers in their field, creating some of the most complicated aerial formations they had ever attempted.  This was no longer just sketches and technical conversations, this was real people doing some of the most challenging aerial stunts of their lives.

BJ Worth talks about the challenges the skydivers face in forming large scale aerial formations.

Introduction

"Has anyone made a teapot before?"
This would not be a strange question should we be at the introductory lesson of a pottery class but we are at The Perris Skydive Centre, California.

After a year in development we are finally all gathered at the first of many team briefings in preparation for the filming of the new Honda TV ad. Over the next few weeks this blog will chart the making of Honda's latest commercial, giving a behind the scenes insight into the challenges that face a team of skydivers and some ad makers who are attempting to film some of the most complicated skydive formations ever attempted for the camera.

BJ Worth, the stunt coordinator for this commercial is briefing his team of skydivers on what they will be doing for the next 5 days.  He has worked on pretty much every James Bond film since Thunderball so when he explains to his 45 strong team of world class free fall skydivers that this is one of the most challenging aerial stunt sequences he has ever had to produce you get the sense that he is not exaggerating.

Tony Davidson (Creative Director) -   "When you write scripts like this you just imagine anything is possible.  It’s only when you start getting down to the nitty gritty of production that you realise what the real implications are.  That said, in this world where post-production techniques mean most things are possible, it’s nice to be attempting something for real."

Ginger talks through a typical day for a skydiver on the Honda set