Britain From Above
The making of Britain From Above
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Achieving such amazing aerial footage was only possible with the skill and passion of the project's Aerial Director, Castle Air's dynamic helicopter pilot Michael Malric-Smith.
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A former Navy pilot, Michael cut his television teeth years ago on Channel 4's Treasure Hunt.
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Since then he has helped film over 1,200 film, TV and commercial productions including The Da Vinci Code, Coast and The Flying Gardener.
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Michael explains: "My job as aerial director is to use the helicopter as a camera platform, interpret the script and to get the aerial pictures in partnership with the aerial director of photography, Peter Thompson.
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"If we're not in tandem we're in trouble!
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"I've been in the job more than 20 years and we've certainly pushed the boundaries on this shoot and done things we've never been able to do before.
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"When filming a feature film like The Da Vinci Code, so much of it is actually achieved through CGI so it's really hard when you watch it to see what you actually filmed.
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"On Da Vinci the material we shot was changed from day to night. They put in a lake, chopped the top off the castle and added a village, so it's a different experience to filming television, where what you see is what you get.
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"Therefore the quality of the material you capture has to be as near perfect as possible as it won't be 'fixed' later.
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"We've had some great highlights on this and done some really new things: filming the coastguard in action up in the Scottish highlands in their brand new Sikorsky helicopter, which hasn't really been seen before, and it was in such an amazing location.
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"The hang-gliding sequence was great as we captured 50 hang-gliders swirling and floating around us.
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"The parachuting sequence has elements of things that I don't think anyone's pinned before.
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"I had to get the helicopter in really tight, be in a position to catch them as they came out of the plane and continue straight down with them, pushing in hard on the lens all the way through to the cloud level.
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"I think I'd imagined that someone skydiving would gently accelerate but actually they just plummet, so the fact that we managed to stay with them all the way down in one single long shot was pretty impressive.
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"We've tailed and filmed everything from little planes, vintage planes and microlights to the other end of the scale, the typhoon, the Eurofighter.
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"The Eurofighter is a highly technical, very complicated, very fast, fast jet.
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"To catch him I had to go at my best speed while he reduced his jet speed from hundreds of knots back to the magic speed enabling him to fly right along side us. And that was quite incredible.
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"We got in very tight on him, so tight that we were right above him. So tight that I had to tell the navigator not to look at the camera as we were only 20 feet away! That was great.
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"We also had to move in some tight urban spots, filming Andrew's pieces to camera from the top of Manchester's Beetham Tower, on Hampstead Heath or following the football crowds at Ibrox over Glasgow.
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"Filming over London is tricky as it's the most complicated air space in the world but, being from Cornwall, I was amazed at the complexity of the city on the ground too.
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"The series' experts pointed out all kinds of nuggets to us about how mass migrations happen around the city and how it all functions in reality. That was a real eye-opener."
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Despite buzzing about the skies for close to 30 years, Michael admits that filming Britain From Above gave him a completely new perspective of the country.
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"In Coast we were concentrating on filming the beauty of Britain, but in this show we're really interested in discovering new things and seeking out the places that we don't normally get to see. And that's been really exciting.
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"I saw lots of parts of the UK in a completely new way.
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"The whole environment that I am lucky enough to work in gives this view from above, which is privileged.
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"There is so much to see and some areas of the UK have a real beauty that places Britain's landscape on any world stage.
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"I still see new things all the time and go 'wow'."
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Meanwhile, series director Cassian Harrison, whose previous credits include Atlas: China Revealed and Beneath The Veil, was busy mounting HD cameras on anything that moved – including Andrew Marr himself, the heads of skydivers, kites, paraglider sails ...
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He says: "Basically, we thought if it would give an interesting perspective, we put a camera on it!
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"The biggest, most technically difficult day would have to be capturing Andrew paragliding at the British Hang-Gliding Festival.
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"It was magical to watch them all up in the air but it was ridiculous logistically.
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"At its most complex, we had eight cameras filming at any one time, shooting in eight different directions with liaison between me, Lucy (series producer), Michael (aerial director) and Andrew taking place with a make-shift system of walkie-talkies and mobile phones.
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"It's extraordinary that we managed to pull it off.
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"I started on the project about eight months ago, just at the time when we were starting to research stories and find interesting ways of telling of them.
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"And whilst it's become one of the most technically complicated productions I've ever worked on in terms of live action filming, we've also spent a lot of time working out new ways to look at Britain from above, and capturing a bird's eye view of the entire nation.
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"For example we've taken and visualised the GPS traces of 400 taxis travelling around the centre of London, 500 rubbish trucks crawling through Westminster and thousands of heavy goods vehicles journeying up and down motorways delivering consumables across the nation.
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"We live in a 'big brother' world where there is data for almost everything that moves anywhere in the country – although getting hold of it is something of a challenge.
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"We also worked on a smaller scale too: we gave 16 children GPS trackers to see how the movement of children differs to adults – and the answer is they move with a much greater sense of freedom and randomness!
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"These little details are crucial in unpicking the bigger picture of how we live in Britain.
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"It's been amazing to work with cameras mounted on so many helicopters and planes. But the one disadvantage is that when we film we're contending so much with the weather, we've had to be extraordinarily well prepared and to expect the unexpected.
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"Whilst at Glastonbury we had planned to shoot the series' closing sequence from a hot air balloon drifting over the site, but the wind was too high, so we ended up bringing in a Tigermoth instead in order to get Andrew airborne.
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"So it's been a battle with the elements, but a brilliant one, working out how many different ways it is possible to get up in the sky and look down the nation.
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"In a way, though, the biggest privilege is being able to look down on the world you know.
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"We ended up filming everything from rubbish trucks to schoolchildren over my own patch of West London, simply because I knew just when everything happens.
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"It's like Google Earth but for real.
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"One of my favourite places to film was Scotland, which has this extraordinary, immense landscape.
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"Spending time on Skye with the mountain rescue team was unforgettable.
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"We were in this fantastically wild place, filming a helicopter in a raging storm. That in itself was spectacular but then we started to uncover another secret world.
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"Obviously we'd been rapidly consuming our fuel – and I knew we were miles from any airfield.
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"But then we, and this immense Coastguard helicopter, peeled off to land at what was nothing but a tiny patch of tarmac at the head of a loch.
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"And there on the side was one single petrol pump, locked with a rather cheap combination padlock.
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"I was given the code, sent to undo the lock, and next thing there's two immense helicopters, rotors turning, being topped up out of one tiny fuel pump, in the midst of some of the most spectacular landscape in Britain.
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"And then I was back at my mother-in-law's outside Glasgow in time for tea…
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"Ultimately what I discovered is what a contradictory nation we live in.
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"It looks chaotic, disorganised and parochial from the ground, but our aerial perspective shows you just how efficiently and effectively we work despite the odds.
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"For example, we Britons value our freedom and our surroundings so much we put up with a slightly shambolic transport system, which experts keep maintaining and keep working, because collectively we're not prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to put in a TGV line to Glasgow, for example.
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"It would mean too much disruption and chaos, so we rely on a team of brilliant specialists to keep us going, some of whom we met in the course of filming."
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While Cassian spent most of his time directing airborne antics from the ground, series producer Lucy van Beek has spent much of her time in the air alongside aerial director Michael, an experience she revelled in.
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She says: "There is a profound sense of freedom when you're flying. It's addictive. And you can see the most amazing things.
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"My best day was in a Tigermoth flying over Scroby Sands in Norfolk, seeing the beautiful spit of sand full of sunbathing seals.
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"It was so beautiful I almost couldn't believe that it was Britain we were flying over."
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And she should know. During her career (with the 91Èȱ¬'s Natural History Unit and subsequently as a freelance producer), Lucy has been responsible for filming in over 42 countries, but this is the first time she has ever created a series in the UK.
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"It was embarrassing," she admits.
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"I'd be in a production meeting with people presenting great facts and stories we could include about Doncaster, for example, and I'd be asking 'Where is that? Bring in the map!' Or secretly checking out Google Earth at my desk.
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"But now I've seen so much of the country from above, with experts who can tell you all kinds of secrets and facts, I see Britain in a completely different light, and I hope viewers will too.
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"Our helicopter filming team have captured some of the most amazing footage possible and really broke the boundaries of what it's possible to shoot from a helicopter.
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"It's a complicated thing to capture skydiving and paragliding in a way that is effective on screen and not dangerous to any of the participants!
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"The downdraft from a helicopter is immense and would be fatal to a hang-glider passing below, so the aerial team demonstrated extreme skill in capturing the shots they got in very complicated situations.
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"And that's not to mention the huge complications of filming in urban air space.
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"The one piece that we recorded with Andrew on Hampstead Heath was certainly taxing as pilot Michael was in touch with multiple air traffic control voices in his headset.
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"And then we had to do the piece five times in a row – mainly because one woman obviously couldn't work out why Andrew had stopped running in the middle of Hampstead Heath and started talking to the sky.
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"She didn't really take the hint when he tried to wave her away.
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"It all looked slightly absurd from 1,000 feet up but also a bit frustrating when you're fighting with Heathrow Air Traffic Control to let you stay there in the first place.
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"But the highlight for all the team was shooting at Glastonbury.
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"Glastonbury is a good metaphor for Britain. It's a place where people want to come in (it's got a border). It's commercial, busy, mucky, noisy, class-ridden and has a sewage system which almost works but not quite.
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"And it's extraordinary that it holds together but it does – just like Britain.
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"The opportunity to fly over the site in a Tigermoth and witness all that activity, noise and excitement was brilliant. It seemed the perfect place to end the series."
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