The Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) is the largest organization of Location Managers and Location Scouts in the motion picture, television, commercial and print production industries. Their membership plays a vital role in the creativ
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38 • LMGI COMPASS | Summer 2024 beachfront and perform a cannon roll—a stunt where a vehicle performs a rapid and controlled rolling motion, usually involving a special cannon mechanism to induce the roll. Leitch and his stunt crew decided they wanted not only to film the stunt, but to break a world record. The previous record for a cannon roll was held by stuntman Adam Kirley, who achieved seven rolls during the filming of Casino Royale in 2006. On The Fall Guy, stunt performer Logan Holladay was going to go for eight. Now they needed to find a beach. To safely pull off a roll of that magnitude, they'd need a beach that was somewhat level with very densely packed sand. The stunt would have to be performed after the tide went out, as the movement of the water would exert enough pressure to naturally compress the sand. Careful adjustments would be required on the day due to the constantly changing tide. Roope and his team eventually found a beach adjacent to All Sands, a sand mine located about 45 minutes outside of Sydney. The owner, Duncan McComb, had been mining the sand hills in that location for more than two decades. His property extended down the beach to the low watermark, which is very unusual as there are few privately owned beaches in Australia. Luckily, that meant that the only approval they needed was McComb's. "They'd had some shooting there before," says Roope, "in fact, we came in on the tail end of Furiosa, so they already had protocols in place and a road system that allowed us not to be anywhere near their activities." It sounds relatively easy, but there were enormous concerns due to the nature of what the team wanted to do. "We had to tell him exactly what was being done and demonstrate that it would be handled in a professional and proper manner," says Roope. Darren Floyd, their All Sands liaison, was incredibly supportive while still keeping an eye on how the crew might impact the integrity of the beach. Endless conversations followed about things like what would happen to the engine oil or whether the windshield was likely to shatter. Would the handles on the SUV come off? What about the tires? "After we figured out the timing for the shot, everything that wasn't absolutely essential to make the car drive and that could possibly be flung off into the water or left in the sand had to come off," says Roope. "But after we did a test, there was still some debris." That meant that on the day, they would be bringing in an army of sweepers, scoopers and other support vehicles to clean up any wreckage left strewn across the beach in the stunt's aftermath. Finally, after months of preparation, it was time to do it for picture. A helicopter and drone would shoot from above, while a Ukrainian Arm and strategically placed cameras rolled on the beach. But on the first take, the car flipped front-over-back three or four times, culminating in a kind of pirouette on its front bumper before finally landing. Not a record-breaker. The company had one SUV left for the shot. For the stunt to work—and break the record—they'd need to have perfectly