This month's interview is with Marc Wolff, professional helicopter and aerial stunt pilot. When Marc's not travelling around the world for filming projects, he lives in Mougins with his wife and two children, Lily and Henry and Bruno their Airedale. It was during one of his stays here that we met up and asked him about his work with film companies, how it all started and what brought him to France originally.
Going to Paris wouldn't have changed anything climate-wise so we came here as we had friends who lived down in this corner of France. We made several trips down to see if we liked it and then, in 2001, we rented a house for about six months the other side of Mouans-Sartoux. There were three or four international schools here which meant that the kids could keep up their English as well as their French while experiencing the culture - you can't do that everywhere in France.
I like to say that I'm a pilot by trade. I worked on my first film in 1974 but I didn't really start full time until 1976. I've been doing it a long time. These last few years I've been directing what's called "Second Unit". Films are often made by different units, the main unit shoots talking heads and the main cast and does stuff that is more involved logistically, big stunts, huge accident sequences that involve doubles, very often not the principal cast. Often there's an underwater unit and on bigger films there's an aerial unit. So I eventually started directing aerial units."
AMB: Which films have you been involved with?
MW: I've done over 170 films. I've been involved with ten James Bond films, Indiana Jones, three Star Wars films, all the Harry Potter films, the Superman films, Full Metal Jacket, Black Hawk Down, Cliffhanger, Mission: Impossible, Memphis Belle, Air America, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Body of Lies. It's a long list and best looked at on the IMDb!
Every film is different. Sometimes I fly camera helicopter, sometimes I fly an action helicopter, a stunt helicopter, sometimes I co-ordinate all that. For example, Air America had twenty-five helicopters and fuel trucks which I co-ordinated.
I have an office in my home and I have a company that I'm associated with in the UK called "Flying Pictures" and they own equipment and I invested in that. They are the world leader in the provision of aerial filming. I started that twenty odd years ago because I needed reliable camera equipment to work with. It's also important to get enjoyment from what you're doing and enjoyment has a lot to do with the people you're working with as well the crew. I did a Disney film years ago where I met my wife, which involved a 12 month period working in 18 countries and 12 people. It was a very intimate experience and much different than say, working on something like Cliffhanger. While that was a fantastic experience with two months in the mountains we were working with 300 people so it was a very different experience. Creatively I had the chance to do a lot of interesting work from an aerial point of view with Black Hawk Down where I had ten helicopters from the American Army, I had half a dozen civilian helicopters at one point and there were two devoted as camera helicopters and three months to play with these toys. And so I had the opportunity to tweak stuff and work to perfection.
AMB: Which is your favourite country that you've enjoyed filming in?
MW: I enjoy working in different cultures and I enjoy going somewhere new. I also like going back to places that I'm very familiar with. From a working or flying point of view it's much easier, well until September 2001, it was much easier in North American and Canada. For example I love the open spaces and empty landscapes and the freedom to fly without disturbing people. Europe is very populated, the airspace is much more controlled and the landscape much more populated so it's much more difficult to do things; it's much more bureaucratic and you're dealing with many different bureaucracies not just one, as you would if you were working in the United States for example. Working in places like the Grand Canyon or Monument Valley - it's wonderful for a number of reasons.
AMB: Which part of the USA were you born in?
MW: I was born in Chicago in 1947 but I only spent about five years there before my family moved east to New Jersey and I left there when I was about 19. I wasn't into anything as a kid and not very academic. When I finished secondary school I had a choice of going to university or do something else. I didn't want to be a doctor or chemist or anything like that. Also, my family didn't have huge amounts of money to spend on me so in the end I allowed myself to be conscripted into the army in 1966. I'd been working part time for my father who's a civil engineer and it was a polite way to get out of the family business.
AMB: Once conscripted, did you suddenly find your vocation?
MW: They give you loads of tests and I was offered, oddly enough, working with what's called "Intelligence" which is finding out what other people are doing and preventing other people finding out what you're doing. And to do that I had to be an Officer. I thought that was better than sitting in a muddy trench in some foreign land being eaten alive by mosquitoes, so I did that. But in the end I still got bitten by them. In the process of becoming an Officer, I trained first as an Infantry Officer and we had to do a two week training in the swamps of Georgia where it's hot and muddy and mosquitoes everywhere. At the end of two weeks they picked us up in a helicopter and flew us back to base. As we were flying back, the penny dropped as I remembered a friend of mine was at flight school so I decided I should find out more about it. I asked and received the army's approval to go. It turned out they were desperate for people. Nowadays you need a university degree to enter, but back then they took anybody; they even took me! Later I was commissioned as a helicopter pilot. Once I started flight school I found I had a natural sense of direction and just loved flying. I'm usually calm under pressure and respect that sometimes things can go wrong. Your biggest worry is yourself as human error can play such a big part, and feeling over-confident and that you'll never make a mistake - the next thing that happens is that you do make a mistake.After graduation from flight school I was posted to South Vietnam extracting the wounded from combat zones under heavy fire. In 1970 I was posted to Germany as the youngest captain in the US army at the age of 21. Once promoted they didn't want me to fly anymore as they had plans for me in military management. I didn't like the thought of that, particularly as it meant managing an infantry unit on the ground and possibly later ending up behind a desk in the Pentagon. So I got out but decided I wanted to stay in Europe. At that time Britain was expanding into the North Sea and had a shortage of pilots. I got a work permit and joined a company that flew helicopters for aerial surveys and the like, and which gave me other job opportunities. It led me to settle in the UK and I ended up with dual nationality. In the beginning I spent a lot of time on the west coast of Scotland and then moved down to London where I lived for about fifteen years. Thoughts turned to having a family but I wanted to live a little more remote from the streets of London so decided on Cornwall. By that time I was very well established in the business and travelling all over the world as a helicopter pilot working for film companies.
When I first started out I did a lot of television commercials for companies such as Marks & Spencer, Courage, Renault and ABB. Back then Britain led the world so about 80% of my work was involved with that. A few years passed and eventually those people making commercials, people like Ridley Scott, moved up into films and I graduated with them. Most of the people I work with I've known for over twenty years. I have a mechanic I work with that I've known for 29 years and two camera men I've known for over twenty-five years. AMB: How important is your health in this business?
MW: My health is my livelihood - so it's important I stay fit. Obviously the older we get the more vulnerable we are to things going wrong because we just wear out. In Europe, generally, after the age of 60 you're not allowed to do what's called public transport as a single pilot. But what I do is classified as slightly different - it's called aerial work and I'm allowed to do that after 60 provided I pass a medical and do all the other safety and emergency procedures which is every six months. It's done by the controlling authority of the licence. My primary licence is a British licence because that covers Europe but I also have American and Canadian licences as well as a French and Kenyan licence. However if I needed to film in New Zealand I'd have to go there and take a flight test just to show that I'm current. As I said, my primary licence is a British one and I undertake the test every six months regardless.
I fly helicopters, planes and hot air-balloons. Anything from four-engine transport to small business jets to little bi-planes but like anything you need to be type rated and be current on that aircraft. If a wild stunt is involved with either an old bi-plane, or a World War Two airplane, I'd probably get someone else to fly that and I'd fly the camera because, again, they're very specialist. For example, in Saving Private Ryan there's the scene at the end with two mustangs. Although someone else flew the planes I co-ordinated the scene, found the planes and the people to fly them. I was also responsible for the aerial photography while co-ordinating from the ground with Spielberg. As they flew around I was on the end of a radio next to him speaking aviation speak to the pilots.
AMB: At what point do you get involved with a script and say "These aerial sequences are not going to work"?
MW: There's no rule but generally the earlier I'm involved the better it is for the production, the more money we can save, or make it more efficient, or the more shots we can get on screen for every dollar or pound that they spend so that we spend it wisely. Every producer works differently but usually I'm involved a couple of months in advance. You read the script and most directors will visualise their ideas in storyboards. So quite often you get those. And then you meet with the various heads of department involved and you all talk about the various ways you're going to do things. Visual effects play a huge role nowadays.
AMB: Are you finding that you're doing less due to the advance in computer animation?
MW: In fact, I'm doing much more work because of computer animation! It allows the script writer to do whatever he or she wants, the world's your oyster in that sense, and that gives me lots more work. Every computer generated sequence should have a real element to it if it's to be any good. So, Harry Potter doesn't really fly on a broom stick but I'm one of many departments to make a broom stick fly. Apart from being time consuming, computer animation is also very expensive so everyone sits around the table and works out costs in advance.
Knowing your team very well is essential too. But there are times when you don't. For example I did a film a couple of years ago called Doomsday and that was as a Second Film Director and I didn't get to chose my crew at all as I was given a crew by the producer. I shot for three months in South Africa and then a week in London, then a couple of weeks in Glasgow and that was in a different role. I was a leader there, managing things, a slightly different kind of job, more motivational.
AMB: How do you see your future in five or ten years' time?
MW: I'm definitely into the directing bit and would like to do more Second Unit directing. It doesn't quite pay the mortgage yet possibly because I started out a bit late but I did it in Amelia, Doomsday, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Price as well as The Flood and would really like to direct more. I also love the flying and the travelling to new places, and I love the people that I work with.
AMB: How do you set about doing a scene that's never been done before?
MW: Well, it takes a lot of planning and working out. I take advice from a lot of different people whose experience might be different to mine, and whose judgement I trust, and we start testing. For example, in 1993 I won an award for Best Stunt for my work as aerial co-ordinator and stunt pilot in the film Cliffhanger. Here we had to transfer stunt man Simon Crane from the back of a DC9 airliner to the door of a Lockheed Jetstar business jet. I co-ordinated this stunt and was one of the formation pilots in the Jetstar along with Tom Danaher. The stunt was filmed from a Lear Jet with a periscope camera system, a B25 bomber with 3 cameras, cameras in the Jetstar and DC9 and a camera in a helicopter. The stunt was a year in planning, cost one million dollars to rehearse and shoot and was performed near Durango, Colorado in November 1992.
For this we talked to various people at McDonald Douglas manufacturers and discovered that their DC9 had a tail cone that drops off as they discovered on one occasion when this thing inadvertently came off in flight! The plane still flew perfectly well without it.
Next we asked for their permission to fly the plane with the intent of dropping the tail cone for this particular stunt. They replied yes as long as we were careful that it didn't fall on someone's head. We then had to do it legally which involved convincing the authority that controls the aircraft where it's registered if we could do the stunt. By now we'd done most of the filming in Italy but couldn't find any European authority who would allow us to fly the aircraft and drop the tail cone off. In the end we filmed the sequence in America in Durango, Colorado, as there they have a way of licensing aircraft which is called an experimental category where you can do anything you want with an aircraft experimentally providing you don't do it over a city and that everybody who's involved with it knows the risks they're taking.
The next step was to obtain a statement from Boeing to say they had safely flown the aircraft without the cone and gave that to the FAA. They then allowed us to re-license and re-categorise the aircraft under the experimental category. There were various discussions on how to set up the stunt and get the person in and out of the aircraft. We all knew from normal aircraft experience that turbulence behind an aircraft can be very violent so we sent the cable out with a weight on it and saw how that reacted and then sent a cable out with a mannequin on it and saw how that reacted and where the turbulence was or wasn't violent.
We then did the same thing with the Lockheed Jetstar and the camera airplane we used to fly behind it. We were flying half a second behind the aircraft at a 150 knots and at one point turbulence just picked us up like a leaf and threw us 300 yards off to the side. We regained control of the aircraft and thought, well, we're not going to that process again! While there was a year of planning, it took two weeks of learning to what turned out to be a day of filming. And we did that stunt once for real and with the cameras rolling, we did lots of other takes of it, but the actual bit with Simon Crane, our stuntman coming out and coming next to the Jet Star we did once. We replaced the Jetstar and put a camera plane there and took about 50 different shots showing the tail cone opening up.
Simon also did various tests beforehand using a cable first, then a mannequin before he went and did it. He knew that any miscalculation and he could be knocked unconscious. We had people inside the DC9 airliner who could go to his aid if need be and we also had two chase planes flying alongside with parachutists in there in case of an emergency in case he got tangled up in his costume. He had two parachutes under his costume - which was velcro - so, if he couldn't release himself properly they would have parachuted across to him to help him out. And we had a helicopter down in the sheltered zone with a doctor and medics on hand too. Each step along the way we learn something and each step along the way we adapt our plans by what we have learned. And in the end we did it. The director saw what we did after the first take and said "fine" but he knew the dangers involved. In the end we didn't need to drop the tail cone in the air after all and ended up doing it on the ground with an enormous wind machine for effect. The tail cone was mounted about 9ft off the ground and then dropped - filming was done looking up at the airplane with the clouds going by!AMB: How do you feel when you finally get to see the finished film?
MW: Great when the film is good, disappointed when it isn't. Apart from the fact that you've risked your life doing it, you feel let down really by the people taking the decisions. Sometimes it's just film making by committee. That's the reason why Kubrick, Spielberg, Ridley Scott are so successful because they get themselves on the film as a producer as well and they control those key elements and they have a say in the final cut. I'll always remember working for a director called Taylor Hackford, he won an Oscar for An Officer and a Gentleman, he's married to Helen Mirren, and he works every couple of years. He did a nice film a couple of years ago called Ray but I worked with him on a film called Proof of Lies. Tailor produces and directs everything himself so if you need an answer about something you just go to one person and he makes that decision. He decides what he wants to spend, where he wants to film or not, and he doesn't have to run through sixteen different people like something like Harry Potter which, fortunately, is very story driven but decisions are made by committee.
AMB: Our last question is how would you sum up your feelings about the film industry:
The key to film making is the story. If you have a good story that holds the audience and characters that people care about - or hate - then it's going to be a success. If you don't care about the characters and if the story doesn't make any sense, the action can be as grandiose as you like, it's all meaningless.
