I work for a programme called “Outrageous Acts of Science”. Made by October Films for the Discovery Science channel in the USA, and reversion around the world, last year it was the highest rating show on the channel, and I’m pleased to say it does it exactly what it says on the tin. Each 43 minute episode focuses on a particular theme and takes the world’s 20 most daring, most outrageous or just downright bizarre online clips - and uses a cast of the world’s best science experts to explain them for us.

Five of the clips in each show will have an interview with the creator, and possibly a demonstration of their reason for being a scientific superhero. My job is Producer Director, and I’m responsible for travelling the world to meet these incredible people, finding out what drives them, why they did what they did, and how much fun it was.

With a cameraman, the two of us have usually just one day per shoot to get enough footage for a four or five minute piece within the show. As you can imagine, we get to film some amazing people, and outrageous acts! This series of blogs will be about the experience of capturing this, and what I’ve learnt along the way.

Location: Chamonix, France

What I learnt from this shoot: Timing is key.

After being sent to the French Alps to interview an aeronautical daredevil about an incredible stunt he’d performed, the shoot came up against the clock, and with some leg-achingly painful results…

Arnaud Longobardi is an airline pilot in France, and if there was ever a man I wanted flying  a plane with me in it, this is him. He ‘speed flies’ in his spare time, which for those of you that don’t know (as I didn’t) is like base jumping but with a small parachute that lets you manoeuvre, and get some serious speeds up. After many months of practice and some serious maths and physics calculations, he did THIS:

My cameraman Mark and I went to meet Arnaud to see him in action and find out how he pulled this off.  The plan was to meet and conduct an interview halfway up the mountain for some beautiful scenery in the back of shot. But, perhaps predictably, mother nature had other plans, there was thick cloud covering the view.

Photo: Joe Allen

For the first time that day I considered timings, and knew we had plenty of time to get everything we needed done, so decided to put the shoot on hold, have a coffee with Arnaud, discuss the filming, and meanwhile have a meteorological staring contest with Mother Nature. Either she would blink first and the weather would clear, or I’d blink, and would have wasted the whole day sitting in a cloud, possibly left with worse conditions.

The gamble paid off, although it was a calculated risk as cloud usually burns off in the morning. Mother Nature blinked at about midday, giving us this awesome shot for a great interview. It was a game of timing, and I was winning.

Photo: Joe Allen

We were shooting on the C300 and had a 16-35mm lens on to make full use of incredible scenery with the widest angle shot we could get. With a large depth of field we kept the background crisp and unblurred. Mark was changing shots sizes between my questions to give us answers we could cut together.

Having waited for the weather we were now a little pushed for time to get the second part of the shoot done, the demonstration. Our plan being to see Arnaud speedflying from the top of the mountain, so we stayed in position and got him to fly down, with some impressive manoeuvres on the way.

Video: Joe Allen

Once we rejoined him we had just enough time for him to fly once more, this time from a higher location. After a breathtaking ride to the top, and a surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly, given the altitude), difficult hike to the jump location, Arnaud was saying we must hurry as the cable car would stop running soon. We agreed, and filmed him departing straight away. There’s a special kind of emotion you experience when you’re the producer whose signed off a risk assessment saying this man is okay to jump off the top of a mountain… and then seeing him jump off said mountain. Terror. Sheer professional terror. Great view though.

Photo: Joe Allen

He was aloft, winging his way to the ground, covered in GoPros and a wired mic. A radio mic wouldn’t be much use here since he’d very quickly be out of range, plus we wouldn’t be rolling the whole time as we’d lost sight of him. Instead, I was using a Rode Lavaliere mic which plugs straight into an iPhone with a 3.5mm jack and can capture broadcast quality sound. We’d used a head strap for the GoPro, and one on the chest looking out as well, the goal was to get his point of view of the flight.

Time for Mark and I to hot foot it back to the cable car. Except hotfooting anywhere at two and a half thousand feet is no easy task, especially carrying a full set of filming gear. We got back to the cable car to find it had stopped running for the day. Fortunately a wing suit jumper was just preparing to jump so we asked how we can get the car started again, “You can’t, that’s it for the day, you’ll have to walk.”, he replied while quite literally jumping off a mountain. I searched for the location managers number who we’d got the permit off and explained we were the film crew, we need the cable car, a simple matter of turning it back on, we have equipment etc…. “No”, was the rough translation of the many attempts I tried to explain, fearing perhaps my request was not making it past the language barrier. “But we’ve got film equipment, we can’t walk down a mountain, can’t you just start the car again?”. “No”.

It dawned on me that we were stuck at the top of a mountain, I was now losing the aforementioned game of timings, and the only strategy to get back in the lead, was a 2.4 km walk down the side of a mountain. Here’s a satellite view of the trek, this isn’t an apocryphal tale, this was hard. Really hard.

Le Brévent Height: 2,525 m | Bergerie de Planpraz Height: 1,999 m

Mark and I reached the bottom, slightly sunburnt, exhausted, and with legs promising some serious aches to come tomorrow morning. We survived, and for the sake of my production manager, I didn’t feel we were in any significant danger at any time, but it was a tough slog!

Timing is Key

Timing is the most important thing to control on shoots, not just because you might get stuck at the top of a mountain, but because its the one thing that is truly fixed, no amount of charm, money or love will get you more. While this tale is a warning to keep an eye on time, hopefully it’s also an example of how to manage it – we got the interview nailed at the beginning, and the crucial shots of Arnound flying first, everything else was a bonus, although climbing down a mountain didn’t feel like it. Prioritise your content towards the beginning of the shoot where you can, because the you never know how it will end.