Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Wing Walker Jumps from Airplane - Wing Walking! - By Zane O'Gwin

Written by Teamsupertarmp's very own Zane O'Gwin -
This video was probably one of the funnest shoots that we have done as Team Supertramp. We didn’t have any major problems to tackle. That being said as with most shoots there still are little hang ups that we had to deal with. More on that in a bit. 
The first thing that we do as a team is we start brainstorming ideas. We came up with several but we wanted an amazing stunt that not a lot of people have actually seen. Especially not the way that we would film it. We pitched this idea along with several others and two of them were chosen by Subaru. We were all very excited.
Now that we had the idea and concept solidified we needed to find the right people to execute the stunt. One name came to everyone’s mind and that was Marshall Miller. 
If you ask anyone on the team about Marshall you will immediately get a smile and a comment along the lines of “Marshall’s the man!”Inline image 2
Not only does he personify positivity and optimism he is very good at what he does. He understands the importance of safety and will quickly figure out all of the details and skills that it will take to execute the stunt at hand. We have used Marshall in 5 other videos. Although Marshall is an extreme athlete, he had never done wing walking before. So when we first got to California, Marshall sat down with our pilot Michael Mason of Mason Wing Walking. He provided and owned the Stearman Aircraft you see in the video. and went over all the details and tried it out.Inline image 4 
Everything was set in place and we started shooting early that next morning just as the sun was rising. We had some ice on the wing still and had to wait for the sun rays to melt it off. Then we realized it was only in the high 50 ° F and a lot colder up in the air. Marshall didn’t complain once. We were able to get a coat underneath his shirt that helped him out a bit.
The first day was sunny skies and had zero problems with all our locations. We had just finished at the first location, which was the airport Sants Paula.
We just arrived at our next location when we receive a phone call from Marshall that he had just met Harrison Ford. We thought he was kidding. Apparently Mr. Ford was having a plane built at that small airport and was coming to check on it. The funny thing is when he first arrived he went straight to the airplane that we were using because he loved the model and the way it looked. The rest of the team was pretty sad that they had missed Indiana Jones himself!Inline image 1
The next day of filming was all about the Shotover. The Shotover is a gimbal that is attached to the bottom of a helicopter that stabilizes a camera. This was provided by Tempt Media and Eric was our camera operator. Some of the coolest people to work with and our Helicopter was piloted by Kevin Larosa. A fun fact we learned about Kevin was that he has piloted a helicopter on some of HollyWoods biggest blockbusters such as the Marvel films and Transformers. Between Kevin and Eric we knew we were in good hands once we first got up in the air. They just asked Devin what he was looking for and they made it happen. Inline image 3
The end of the day we were hoping for an amazing sunset shot like we had the day before but Mother Nature said otherwise and we had overcast all evening. So we made do with what we had.
We seriously had a blast making this video come to life. We put so much passion and energy in everything we do and want to give people something to smile about. We hope you can feel our love. As we always say, over and out!