The sky would appear to be the only limit when it came to the thousands of feet of film shot for insert and background plates for Get Smart’s action scenes. Second unit DP Don McCuaig credits a small methanol powered remote-controlled helicopter called the Flying-Cam for platework and point-of-view action shots captured in challenging industrial terrain. Designed by Belgian engineer Emmanuel Prévinaire nearly twenty years ago, the Flying-Cam was created to give cinematographers the option of “close-range aerial filmmaking.” Its tiny size, about six feet, and weight, about thirty pounds, allows it to get into locations full-size choppers cannot access. For one such example in a Vernon rail-yard, Flying-Cam pilot Remi Epron was strapped into the back of a high-rail pickup that drives backwards along the track while a freight train is chasing them down. Epron had to keep the Flying-Cam helicopter (controlled by an RF signal) at a precise distance from the front of the train while moving backwards. “I’ve done a lot of complicated shots, but never while being chased down by a train,” Epron notes.
McCuaig says the Flying-Cam was also used to capture tricky point-of-view shots through and alongside the Schuyler F. Heim Lift Bridge in Long Beach Harbor, a no-fly zone for full-sized helicopters that was only available for twenty minutes before Cal-Trans officials lowered the bridge. “The POV from the plane that Max uses to chase down 99 and Agent 23 in the SUV had to fly on a knife-edge between two narrow bridge supports, so the Flying-Cam was the best solution for a challenging location,” McCuaig explains. Flying-Cam operator Michael Kirsch says the great thing about the remote aerial system is its ability to get access to rare shooting positions, which for Get Smart also included low-hanging electrical wires that presented numerous safety issues for a full-sized helicopter mount.
Get Smart is a comedy, but its deadpan humor often occurs in the middle of some frantic action. Semler credits second unit DP McCuaig with suggesting the use of digital rear projection (over green screen), for the background plates when Max, 99 and Agent 23 [The Rock], are battling inside and outside a burning SUV as it roars down the freeway. McCuaig says his team tested mounting multiple cameras on the same head, and had great success with the Chapman-Leonard Gyro Stabilized Head (G-3). “We were able to get the parallax very close and get a wide shot and a close-up from the Chapman head,” continues McCuaig. “With no vibration, the alignment was terrific. One of the great things about the Genesis was how well it blends with an old film workhorse like the Panastar.” McCuaig adds that the resolution and cost benefits of shooting film made it more practical than shooting HD second unit. “There were some scenes where we had 12 cameras going at the same time.”
Matching Get Smart’s global locations (which switched within the same scene), presented Semler with, perhaps, his biggest challenge. Halfway through the story, Max and 99 visit a Russian bakery they suspect of being a KAOS front for making nuclear bombs, a scene shot in five separate locations in three countries. It began on a bridge in Moscow at dusk looking across the river at the bakery’s façade, which Semler shot in Russia with three cameras and available light. As the spies approached the bakery, Agent 99 climbed up on the roof, and Max walked inside—all shot on a back-alley in Montreal. Once inside Max drops down a secret elevator (the Budweiser brewery in Van Nuys, California) and meets up with 99 (in yet another Montreal location). The scene ends in a dramatic rooftop fight, shot on a three-story set at Warner Bros. Due to scheduling issues, the tighter coverage on
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