June 2008 - Panic at the Skytower!

...I'll post a link to the video when it is complete. It is being made by a great  guy called Jamie McKenzie at PureView. UPDATE! Here it is: http://www.luxurypropertyforsale.co.nz/properties/whitford/index.html  Nice work Jamie and crew.

We did a shoot in Auckland for a Japanese TV show this week. They had travelled all through New Zealand, and wanted to end on an epic note. So the plan was to film the star of the show (a crazy Japanese girl, way too much Red Bull!) doing the SkyTower jump. The shot was to start out over the harbour with a skyline of the city, then we were to fly in and gradually zoom into the Skytower, right up to the girl on the platform about to jump. Then she was supposed to jump and we'd film her all the way to the bottom. Pretty simple huh? Well...it would have been if the Perfect Storm hadn't blown in right on schedule! It was a nightmare! Steve and I were getting a pretty bumpy ride, the rain came down right on cue...oh jeepers it was just dreadful. Hard pouring rain, so thick that we could barely make out the girl on the Skytower! The shot going in was great, worked fine...but then the girl jumped, and somehow got stuck 5 or 6 metres below the platform, hanging in mid air 300 metres up! She started to panic and kick around and it just didn't look good at all....but eventually she was released and glided on down to the bottom, where I'm sure she changed her pants pretty swiftly. Not much we can do about the weather unfortunately =)
Peace, Dan