Dead Mans Curve

Finally after 12 months of confusion and delay my Helicopter Mustering teaser is complete..

Dead Mans Curve

Helicopter  mustering is a bloody fickel industry  with many obstacles to a successful muster. A helicopter mustering operation needs to contend with many elements to make a decision to chase cows..

The weather got us this year as it is too hot to muster, which usually results in dead animals and helicopters. Onward and upwards in 2012 and expect the next post to be late March 2012 when we can finally get this show on the road .

So .. Purchased 4 brand new Go Pro Hero HD cameras only to find out that the NEW Go Pro 2 had been released this week in the USA. I thought to myself.. All cool .. they could not have changed the quality that much! After a quick email  to my new mate in the US at Eye of Mine his words were  ” GoPro 2 is stunning.  I’m testing with it now” ..

Just ordered 2 x Go Pro 2 HD cameras for the shoot .. Anyone wanna buy a HD Hero! Check out this footage from GoPro 2 .. Bloody hell!

After being AWOL in freight world for nearly 4 weeks the mounts have arrived! I fitted them onto a loaner R22 for camera angle views and to make sure the mounts fit where we need them to. The mustering helicopter will fly with 3  Go Pro HD cameras rolling all the time so needed to make sure we could could shoot two outside cams at the same time without seeing each other which we are confident we can do. The action shots will be great with excellent coverage of both Bulls and helicopter.

Here is a rough layout of the shots with camera positions in the stills. I hope to make a new mount for the top of the tail boom using an existing aerial mounting base as a template.

We are currently working on the green screen R22 Helicopter Sim of Rossys accident. The end results we think will be very cool..

We will film this powerline when we head to the Pilbara in the middle of November and hope to run a green screen simulated helicopter crash over the top..

One of the scenes in the pilot involves Rossy recounting his accident with a powerline over the DeGrey river in Western Australia. Rossy was very lucky to live and tell the tale of this accident. We have been able to recreate this accident using a sim helicopter from DreamFoil creations. Here is an image of the line with a simple depiction showing where the helicopter struck the line. Rossy was mustering cattle over the river that day and hit the power line he knew was there, the main blade of the helicopter hit the top earth line and severed it leaving Rossy to fight the helicopter for his life. The helicopter lurched into a violent 90 degree with shudder ripping through the airframe, Rossy found himself pointing at the ground in a 90 degree freefall with his only option to wrestle the Robbo back to a hover in the bottom of the river bed..  he walked away that day.

I got a chance to have a phone call with Rossy the mustering pilot today and it was decided to go for a Station closer to Karratha in November. This is probably a good decision as we need to test some new mounts arriving this week from the USA on a R22 I have access to locally. I also have to take off to the USA at the start of November and will not be back in Australia until November 11th which pushes the production into mid November.

Looking forward to getting all the rigging set up this week.