|
By
Don Ward
Editor
MADISON, Ind. (October 1999) – Distant voices repeatedly crackle
over radios lining the Ohio River bank.
People clinging to clipboards and cellular phones and film cassettes
scurry between trucks and boat trailers huddled along the Madison
boat ramp. Speeding golf carts ferry equipment and passengers from
point to point.
|
|
Photo by Karl Pearson
Helicopter
pilot Paul Barth chases the vintage Miss Madison on the
Ohio river while photography director Larry Blanford controls
a half-million-dollar camera, mounted to the nose of the
aircraft.
|
The deafening roar of Allison aircraft engines
fills the air as vintage hydroplane race boats pass by with a camera-equipped
helicopter in close pursuit. At a riverbank park across the road
from the race "pits," caterers hastily prepare a hot lunch
for more than 200.
Two blocks up on Second Street at the "Madison" movie
headquarters, dozens of newly hired employees dart between offices,
answer the constantly ringing telephones and shove messages into
a honeycomb of mailbox slots lining the walls. Patches of white
tape list the names, although few working here would know a face.
And there's no time for introductions.
Welcome to the world of movie-making. Just don't get in the way,
don't forget to wear your credential and, oh yeah, never look directly
into the camera!
The production crew for the $7 million movie "Madison"
has been in town since early summer, and Madison Regatta fans watched
with fascination the filming of vintage hydroplane race boats in
between real races at the July Fourth event.
But beginning Labor Day Weekend, area residents got their first
real glimpse of movie making in full production. The kickoff to
filming the fictionalized version of the late Jim McCormick's against-all-odds
Miss Madison victory in the 1971 Regatta attracted several hundred
"extras" to the riverbank to cheer on the boat.
Vintage cars and trucks were brought in to help re-create the period.
Seventies-era banners and flags adorned the judge's stand and pits.
Hamburgers sold for under a dollar and Coca-Cola was served in 8-ounce
bottles.
Besides closing the boat ramp to the public and occasional traffic
blocks on the Ohio River bridge and on certain Madison streets,
filming so far has had little impact local residents -- other than
spending some time down on the riverbank to watch all the action.
Using a little imagination, it's truly 1971 all over again. And
most area residents are delighted that a feature film will soon
record forever that storybook summer when the hometown Miss Madison
won the big one -- the Gold Cup Regatta. In the event's 49 consecutive
years, 1971 still stands as the only year the community owned boat
has ever won the Madison Regatta.
"I like the genre of the film as an underdog story. It's a
small-town drama with the backdrop of this exciting boat race,"
said race unit assistant director Rusty Gorman, 37, a native of
Marion, Ind., who now lives in Los Angeles.
Hoosier flavor among crew
|
|
Photo by Don Ward
Photography
director Larry Blanford (far left) and assistant Rusty Gorman
(second from left) use toy cars to instruct vintage hydroplane
drivers David Williams and Hanover’s Todd Yarling (back
to camera) on the next filming run for the movie “Madison.”
|
Gorman, whose biggest film credit to date
is "The Abyss," studied film production at Northwestern
University and later earned a master's degree at the University
of Southern California. He said the town of Madison's annual financial
struggle to stage the Regatta parallels McCormick's feat of winning
the historic race. He even compared the making of the movie to those
efforts.
"This film is a metaphor for the race and the town in a way
because we don't have a lot of money, and there's a lot of people
who are vested emotionally in the making of it," Gorman said.
To make the movie "Madison," the production crew was divided
into two units -- one to film the dialogue scenes with the actors
and another to film the boat racing action. Perhaps fittingly, many
film crew members are Indiana-born, and many have attended a Madison
Regatta while growing up. So there's a certain amount of Hoosier
pride going into making the independent film, which is being funded
by Chicago-based private investors.
In fact, race unit photography director Larry Blanford, a Richmond,
Ind., native, took a slight pay cut to be here.
"From the time I read the script, I knew I wanted to be a part
of this project. It's a good family film, and it's not very often
that I can work in my home state," said Blanford, 40, who operates
the camera from the passenger seat of the helicopter after staging
the action on the ground with the boat drivers.
A former U.S. Air Force cinematographer, Blanford got his movie
career start in 1985 when he was chosen to ride in the back seat
of a Navy F-14 Tomcat to film parts of the movie, "Top Gun."
When he left the service, he continued making Air Force documentaries
and eventually began getting hired for corporate jobs, filming commercials.
It wasn't until he hooked up with Academy Award-winning photography
director Januz Kaminski ("Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's
List") that his career took off. Since then, his film credits
include "Broken Arrow," "The Rock," "Armageddon,"
"The Jackel" and "Fly Away Home."
The money is great, he says, but he averages six months a year on
the road. So far, his work has taken him to 33 countries, and sometimes
he'll travel halfway across the world just to film a 30-second commercial.
His past clients include Nike, Coca-Cola, Ford and Chevrolet, and
he will spend a week in Utah later this month to film a Puegot car
commercial.
Director Bill Bindley, an Indianapolis native who co-authored the
"Madison" script, contacted Blanford about working on
the movie after seeing his photography credits on other projects.
Blanford's work here will generate thousands of feet of film, which
will likely be edited down to about 20 minutes of the 120-minute
movie.
|
|
Photo by Don Ward
“Madison”
photography director Larry Blanford checks a light meter
as helicopter pilot Paul Barth prepares to liftoff for another
filming run.
|
"It's a fascinating business,"
said Blanford, who lives in Los Angeles. "Once you get you're
name out there, you're in charge of your own destiny. But it's tough
to break in."
Gorman said most people in the film industry are hired through networking
or from earlier relationships forged in film school. For instance,
he and Bindley attended Northwestern together and later were roommates
when they moved to L.A. Gorman has worked with Bindley on other
projects, most recently a horror film titled, "The Eighteenth
Angel," shot in Italy.
Gorman has written three scripts himself and is trying to find investors
to help him produce them. He hopes the scripts will someday be his
ticket to becoming a director.
Twenty-seven-year-old Fred Weigle of Richmond, Ind., studied film
production at Orlando's Valencia Community College, where Disney
Studios have established a special curriculum to turn out film industry
technicians. Weigle, who now lives in Los Angeles, is earning as
much as a midtown lawyer as a camera assistant on the set of "Madison."
"I've never gotten a job in this business from a resume. It's
all who you know or who you can get to know," said Weigle,
who has worked on several IMAX films but credits Blanford for giving
him his first big break into feature films.
Behind the wheel
In addition to many Hoosiers working on the set, many local residents
can be found both in front of and behind the cameras. Hanover's
Todd Yarling, who this summer piloted the Miss Madison hydroplane
at the Madison Regatta, was tapped to drive the fictional Miss Budweiser.
The boat, whose hull is the original Tempus, is now painted in the
Bud's famous bright red.
"It feels a little funny playing the enemy," Yarling joked.
"But I'm having fun."
Yarling said the boat drivers try to give the photographers what
they want, "but it doesn't always work out that way. These
boats break down a lot and they don't turn as sharp as the newer
ones. We have a meeting just before we go out, but since we can't
talk to each other out there, it's a little hard to do everything
as planned."
Aside from the speed, Yarling said the other big difference in driving
the vintage boats was the noise. "It's really loud sitting
behind the engine. There's a lot more boat in front of you, so it's
really different feeling behind the wheel."
|
|
Photo by Don Ward
Assistant
photographer Rusty Gorman films a speeding hydroplane for
the movie “Madison” as technician Fred Weigel
helps hold the camera steady.
|
In the newer boats, the driver sits up front,
affording him a better view.
Dave Williams of Seattle pilots the fictional Miss Madison. As director
of the Hydroplane and Raceboat Museum, Williams has worked with
Bindley from the start to stage the 1971 race.
"As far as the basic story of Jim McCormick winning the 1971
Madison Regatta, the movie is realistic," Williams said. "But
everything else has been written with dramatic license, so you may
see some things that weren't really here in 1971."
Examples include other race boats, such as the Cat's Pride, which
in some scenes was painted to look like the Pay 'N Pak. Other boats
also may appear in the movie version. But McCormick's 1971 nitro-fueled
blast past the Atlas Van Lines will likely make the cut.
Ernie King of Thousand Islands, N.Y., drives the vintage Atlas Van
Lines in the film. "We don't know from day to day what we're
going to do. We just show up at a certain time and get our instructions."
Over Labor Day Weekend, actor Jim Caviezel sat in the cockpit of
the Miss Madison for a scene as the boat was towed a short distance
on the river. It will likely be the closest he gets to real boat
racing.
Eye in the sky
Each time the helicopter goes up, the camera burns 1,000 feet of
film. Two additional ground-based cameras – one mounted just
above water level on one of the concrete bridge pylons – go
through about 800 feet each. Most filming days, the boats go out
about six times.
After a quick drivers' meeting, during which Blanford and Gorman
stage the action using toy cars, the boats are lowered into the
water, the engines rev to life and the cameras roll.
It's helicopter pilot Paul Barth's job to get Blanford in the air
and where he needs to be to make the "race" realistic.
Barth, whose Miami-based company, Camera Copters Inc., owns two
birds, also contracts his services for TV news, shows and commericals,
and also still photography for print advertising. But it's assignments
like these that excite him most.
"I enjoy the creative aspect of making feature films,"
said Barth, who spent eight hours in the air to get his four-seat
Hughes 500 chopper to Madison.
|
|
Photo by Karl Pearson
A
“Madison” film crew moves into position on a pontoon
boat to capture the hydroplane action.
|
He has equipped his aircraft with five rotors
for smooth flying and special aluminum-tube brackets for nose-mounting
the half-million-dollar camera. The helicopter also has radios,
video monitors and a special power supply to run the cameras. In
addition to shooting movie footage, the helicopter videotapes the
action so the crew can review it afterward on small monitors.
"It's fun, but it's serious business," Barth said. "We're
traveling over 100 mph -- as fast as the boats -- and sometimes
we're only three feet above the water."
The Wescam 35-mm camera is maintained by technician Greg White,
34, another Hoosier native from Greenfield, Ind. He explained that
the camera uses four mast gyros to maintain stability while in flight.
It is equipped with a computerized console that allows Blanford
to control the camera's zoom lens, focus, light and movement.
The movie company is paying nearly $20,000 a day for Barth's helicopter,
to rent the Wescam camera and for White's technical services.
The crew is using Panavision lens and shooting the movie in anamorphic,
which provides a wide screen effect similar to that used in "Lawrence
of Arabia."
The race production crew had hoped to have time to test various
lighting situations on the river this fall, since filming of the
dialogue scenes was originally scheduled to begin next spring to
accommodate actor Caviezel's schedule. But when his schedule suddenly
opened up, the producers decided to go ahead with filming of the
entire movie this fall.
As a result, the light testing won't be done. Boat race filming
is expected to run through early October, and the dialogue scenes
will be shot through November.
"Now we're in a race against the leaves," Gorman said,
gesturing toward the trees on the Kentucky shoreline.
Given previous feats here, the odds should be on his side.
|
