Second SKY-HAWK Shoot.

Braving an insane heatwave (28 degrees inside the car), Myself, Lead Actor John Logan and Assistant Director James McMullan took to the streets to film key scenes for Skyhawk.

 With less than a week to go till my car gets traded in and getting an actress still up in the air, I decided to proceed and do part of the shoot in order to wrap the shots with the car. 

My only real worry the the final shoot date will not match up with the shot footage, some of Johns stuff can be reshot on the day however, in order to balance it out.

Overall I think today went really well and everyone did great... Nearly there...

First SKY-HAWK shoot.

A busy day today going from shoot to shoot and generally Kicking ass.


Logically the best time to film a death defying high speed car-chase is at stupid-oclock on sunday morning. This way you are extremely unlikely to run into anyone except possibly the occasional saddo who is also shooting a car chase. 


At 7:30 am myself, fellow Stunt Driver Conor Bannon and Stunt cameraman Guy Taylor, rendezvous to film the first action sequence in Skyhawk, up in Gilnahirk.


Needless to say all went according to plan. While i'd like to shoot more the main complicated bulk is done. In a slightly more worrying note, 10 days till I loose may car.

Special thanks goes to Conor for risking life and limb and extra thanks to Guy for hanging out of an open car boot at 50 miles per hour with a 600£ camera. :)

Car chases and what-not.

Before my car transforms into it's helicopter mode, there is a brief car chase involving 3 cars. Naturally being a student film, and not having the ability to close off roads, this quickly becomes a logistical nightmare.


Bar the quick swerving around corners and the high speeds which can be solved in editing, the main concern is safely allowing the camera to shoot exteriors of the car. On films vehicles can have camera stands built into them allowing cameras to be on the outside of the car. Also they can have another car in the other lane or in front to get exteriors. This again would be tricky to do safely.


My solution is my GOPRO Hero 2, A small "Stunt" camera designed to be attached to cars etc.

Using the GoPro I can put the camera really close to the ground which will give an illusion of speed due to perspective. The suction pad is also very resilient at high speeds. After shooting it is a simple matter of driving smoothly and speeding the footage up.