Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1517535
5 2 P E R S P E C T I V E | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 2 4 stunt considerations. But at the time, this was the most challenging set I'd envisioned. It had to be structurally sound while operating on a gimbal twelve feet in the air and moving at extreme angles, without the support of exposed trusses around the body of the helicopter. All while controlling the size, to keep the thing a plausible scale for the action. Lastly, it had to accommodate multiple directors' visions for shooting their episodes' scenes! For instance, the helicopter had to be constructed in such a way that multiple sections could wild out, to accommodate various directors' differing shots. When I landed Reacher, my first call was to a Set Designer with whom I love working, Jonathan Gotfryd. He's so talented, so intelligent. Jonathan specializes in structurally complicated sets and his skills were key to figuring out how to make my ideas work. Construction coordinator Bill Vance and the structural engineer were instrumental in making sure the set didn't collapse. Once we had the green light to get this beast of a set off the ground, Jonathan, Bill, and the set decoration department were the next crew members to visit the real Super Puma. The instructions were to measure every inch of the machine. No detail was too small. It was important for me to do a side-by-side comparison of the real helicopter and our set, to keep everything grounded and believable. Once they returned, I gave my sketch to Jonathan with the overall dimensions of the inside of the helicopter and he ran with it. Early on, I wanted to encase the set's structural support within the body of the helicopter, not as exterior trusses, to avoid obscuring the view outside the windows. We also decided to make the entire thing out of aluminum. Essentially, we were building the entire helicopter, sans the mechanical workings. The next step was making sure that the back doors worked with the design. I had asked Jonathan to create an animation of the backdoors. It helped me present how they would function on camera, but it also helped our VFX friends, as we build the doors in their open and closed position and our VFX team animated the action in post. On this show, we have an amazing VFX producer, Cary Smith. He's wonderful to collaborate with, and his work complements my design so effortlessly. As soon as the production had all of our directors on board, we scheduled another meeting to bring everyone up to speed on the progress of the build and open the floor for the various directors to shot list their scenes within our proposed set. As we got more information on what the directors needed, we were able to augment the body of the helicopter as required. The overall structure was designed somewhat modularly so it was fairly easy to wild out sections per a director's request. As the crew neared completion on the construction, the set decoration department stepped in to do their thing! Set decorator Liesl DesLaurier and her team leapt to the difficult task of finding elements for the helicopter that didn't look too old, such as appropriate parts for the cockpit. This set was supposed to be high tech, contemporary, real... It couldn't have parts that looked like they belonged in a WWII era helicopter. After weeks of sourcing, set dec pulled together all the necessary elements, The build was well underway when the production learned that our hero practical helicopter was no B A A. SUPER PUMA PRODUCTION HELICOPTER. SET PHOTO. B. SET AND PRODUCTION VEHICLE COMPARISON. PLAN VIEW. C. SET AND PRODUCTION VEHICLE COMPARISON. SIDE VIEW.