The balloon chase. The idea was 2 beer-drinking guys on a balloon chase. We shot it all over the states: Dead valley, Arches, New Mexico. We mostly used helicopter shots. We used a helicopter with a sidewinder and one with a nose mouth to get the divergent perspective. We had to build the silver balloon from scratch.
When we tried to do the top shot from straight down, there was too much turbulence on the balloon with made it wobble, so we had to get a longer lens and fly higher. It was quite tricky to get the car-going-under-the-balloon shot. We needed a shot of the balloon landing on the Bute. This first didn’t work because of the windspeed on top of the Bute, so we broke the balloon down, hung it under the computer and transported it to the Bute. Then we had it lift off the Bute and reversed the film later. The shots we took in the bucket were done hanging the bucket from a crane. It was fun. I remember when I arrived at our starting location, I saw about 15 campers, 2 helicopters and some 50 crew members. I thought what the f*k but it all worked out fine; that’s the nice thing in the States working with so many professionals. After the shoot, we spent two weeks in London to edit.
