Seek And Destroy!
It's not often you get a call from an art director asking if you fancy a day out firing anti tank missiles with the Army. It took me all of a millisecond to clear my diary and make myself available!!
As ever with the army we had an early start 6.00am from London to RV as they say in a car park opposite an Army barracks somewhere near Salisbury plain. Where we would be met and transferred to an undisclosed location. I feared that my assistant Michelle might self distruct in 5 seconds as she read out the instructions from John Butterworth, Camouflage magazines Art Director.
Eventually we arrived on Salisbury plain as everything was being set up. The plan for the day was that we could shoot the culmination of a week long exercise involving the Infantry live firing six Javelin anti tank missiles. We were allowed to shoot the troops arriving and as they moved forward into the firing position and then had to rely on a camera with a remote to shoot the actual launch of the missile. Sounds straight forward but you have to factor in that the troops will be landing in a helicopter a mile away and then being driven at flat out speed in two warrior tanks over rough terrain to the firing area. Amongst all this there are more smoke bombs and explosions going than you can shake a stick at. In addition there are also the two GPMG machine guns firing God knows how many live rounds of ammunition at a couple of rather unwell looking old tanks on the hill opposite. And of course the top brass and all sorts of people are watching from a safe distance as the army only get to do this exercise twice a year . So lets not mess this up!
After a full safety briefing and a tour of the battlefield we get set up. We will have three goes at shooting the whole thing. I decide to shoot some long range landscape shots first and set a remote camera up in front of the firing point but outside the arcs of fire just in case anything goes wrong. This also then gives me a chance to see exactly what will be happening first time around.
The first part of the exercise goes very smoothly and although I managed to get some great shots I realised that I needed to get in a lot closer for the next two parts of the exercise. We quickly checked and reset the cameras for the next stage and I then decided to wait for the Warriors to screech to a halt and then shoot as the soldiers disembark and move forward to prepare to fire their Javelins. While I shot that, my assistant Michelle, goes to the helicopter drop zone to shot the soldiers as they land and mount the Warriors to get a couple of shots early on in the exercise.
While all this is going on Billy my second assistant sets up for us to shoot some portraits of the six teams of soldiers with all their equipment. As each firing finishes both Billy and myself run down to check the remote camera and reset it for the next shot so as to maximise the number of different angles we can get for the magazine.
Almost as soon as the exercise starts its over and we spend a further 10 minutes getting the portraits we need. Then it's back in the transport and off to the car park to pick up the car. What a day, maybe next time I'll get to fire a missile!!!!