With the theatrical release of RED 2, I thought I’d go back in time and do a post about my work on the original RED, starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Mary-Louise Parker, and John Malkovich.
I was contacted by the producers of RED to shoot a few of the vital remaining helicopter and VFX shots for the movie. By the time we got the whole thing scheduled, it was May, and the movie was slated to be released in October, making our shoot the last remaining shots to get for the film!
Through A Glass Productions handled all of the coordination for the shoot, arranging gear, crew, and helicopter. The Visual Effects Supervisor flew in to Kansas City, and we decided to go ahead with the aerial portions of the shoot, despite impending storms in the forecast. We shot on Kodak Vision 2 film and my crew (including amazing 1st AC Thomas Pease and equally amazing grip Michael Stoecker) mounted an ARRI 35-3 camera into a Tyler Middle-Mount II helicopter rig.
The Middle Mount II is a quarter million dollar rig produced by Tyler Camera Systems that takes up the entire backseat of a helicopter, and it’s compatible with the Eurocopter AS350 (Astar), AS355 (TwinStar) and Bell 407, 206 (Jet Ranger) or 206Ls (Long Ranger). For the shoot, we rented a Jet Ranger.
We flew the ARRI 35-3 with an Angenieux zoom, and rigged the handgrips so one controlled the zoom functions and the other controlled focus. The way the Middle-Mount II is situated, the operator is strapped into the rig, but sort of hangs out of the door with the camera to get the most clearance for shooting. Obviously, some people might not like this scenario, but when you’re strapped in, you almost have a feeling like you’re floating, and rolling film at the same time is something really magical.
We rigged the helicopter at an airport outside of town, and flew into downtown Kansas City and picked up the VFX Supervisor. We took off from the KC Airport and scouted the perfect place to shoot the aerial shots that would line up with some pre-built visual effects elements. Despite it being a windy day (did I mention storms?) it was a beautiful dusk, and we did several passes from one angle that matched up with the pre-vis.
We landed, Tom swapped film mags, and we took off a second time. This time, lights started to come on in the buildings downtown, and we hit the perfect sweet spot with the sun just as we fell into night.
We landed, Tom downloaded the film, the VFX Supervisor took off for the airport and at the end of the night we had a leisurely helicopter ride back to our home base.
Throughout the entire shoot, we watched the radar and massive storms were rolling through non-stop directly north and south of where we were shooting. The way back, we got to watch the storms continue to roll as we flew through a storm-free corridor, enjoying a lovely zen moment, with the view of distant lightning, and the hum of the helicopter blades.
Here’s the final clip from that portion of the RED shoot:
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