Making ‘Impossible’ stunts possible
WHEN it comes to deathdefying, adrenalinefuelled stunts there may be no better place to perform and film them for the world to see than New Zealand’s adventure capital.
Along with a full ground production unit, Mission: Impossible — Fallout also required a full aerial crew in Queenstown to film helicopter stunts years in the planning.
Producer Jake Myers said the area was chosen because of the number of large, undeveloped areas only accessible by helicopter, and the wealth of aviation knowledge, experience and equipment in the resort.
Glacier Southern Lakes Helicopters, owned by Ngai Tahu Tourism, was the goto during filming and while the company has 30plus years’ experience in movies, Fallout was a different beast.
Chief executive and pilot Pat West said the company provided all of the aerial support for the movie shoot — at peak, it looked after 13 helicopters, which included two brought in from the United States, all of Glacier’s Queenstownbased helicopters and others from Heli Otago.
While most movie shoots last about two weeks, Fallout required about two months of work, during which time Glacier looked after the aerial unit crew, including producers, director Christopher McQuarrie, and risk management crew.
Aerial filming was done by Glacier Southern Lakes pilot Alfie Speight.
Glacier also organised temporary hangars, wrote safety management systems for the production, did risk assessments and organised ‘‘daily activities’’.
‘‘It is a big job but we’ve been involved in the film industry for 30plus years and we’ve got the right staff and systems in place to try and make it as seamless as possible for production, and that’s why they tend to use us.
‘‘From the aerial filming perspective, we do that all the time, so that’s not a huge difference to what the norm is.
‘‘Some of the stunts we got involved with required more time and effort to ensure that they were safe — you’ve got to have a look and see what they want to do, analyse it, do a risk assessment, see if we can change it to make it safer, better, or whatever, for production.’’
Stunt sequences shot in Queenstown started with the ‘‘longline’’, which required lead actor Tom Cruise to climb up a rope attached to a helicopter, dangle about 2000 feet (610 metres) above ground, freefall on to a bag attached to the end of the rope and bounce off it.
Cruise said the stunt was designed and planned for two years before filming ‘‘one of the most extreme things we did on this movie’’ in the Wakatipu.
‘‘It’s all very technical . . . it required great flying from the pilot and rigging from the stunt guys, who all did an incredible job.
‘‘It’s hard to catch your breath because there is less oxygen up there because of the low pressure under the rotor.
‘‘It was bitter cold and I was wearing a rig that cuts off the blood circulation, so my legs were numb.
‘‘Then, its a 40foot (12m) drop and you don’t know what’s going to happen.
‘‘The first time my hands literally locked and it was like I couldn’t let go of the rope.’’
Ahead of filming, Cruise went through intense pilot training to fly the latest model of the Airbus H125, formerly known as the AS350, himself.
In Fiordland, he had to perform a ‘‘wingover’’ manoeuvre, flying low over a lake and diving into a waterfall in a spiral, which was ‘‘quite terrifying’’ to watch, Mr McQuarrie said.
‘‘From our perspective, looking at it on camera, you have no depth perception and each spiral looked like he was going to crash.’’
Mr Myers said the helicopter chase, filmed in Skippers Canyon, was ‘‘extremely perilous’’.
‘‘The pilots who fly through these canyons are local pilots who have been doing it for years, and not many of them can go low down to the surface and handle the twists and turns of the river.
‘‘Tom had been trained to do this in a relatively short amount of time, and was flying by himself.
‘‘Most of the stunts that we’ve done with Tom in the past have had a safety mechanism built into them . . . this sequence was all up to Tom.
‘‘If he made any slip of the controls it would be all over.
‘‘It was very nerveracking and every time they came back I breathed a sigh of relief.’’