Heroic shots over the rolling deep

Bill Randall's heroic shots over the rolling deep

Due south of Galveston, Texas, 130 miles from shore, a massive pumping platform floats in the Gulf of Mexico. The platform, which pumps oil from 5300 feet below the surface of the water, was towed to the spot from Finland by the exploration wing of the Kerr-McGee Corporation. When the company wanted to feature to giant rig in an image campaign, it hired AFI/Filmworks of Miami to produce the spots. The target audience for the campaign includes institutional investors. The spots are currently airing on Sunday morning political talk shows.

Cinematographer Bill Randall, who co-founded AFI/Filmworks in the late 1960s, says his goal with the Kerr-McGee spot was to make the giant industrial rig heroic. Randall and the agency, Ackerman McQueen, had previously made industrial image campaigns that included stately aerial shots. This time the agency was asking for something different. Randall envisioned aerial shots done with an extremely wide lens. "We came up with the idea of shooting with an 8mm lens on a Tyler Nose Mount to separate it from the usual aerial shots you see," says Randall, "I imagined the shots very wide, and very close. It was a radical idea."

Randall says they also shot using a Wescam as well. The Wescam is a gyrostabilizer, remotely controlled camera mount that is fitted to the outside of the helicopter. The Tyler Nose Mount depends more on the movement of the pilot, but also has tilt control through a remote joystick, operated in this case by Randall. During the two-days of shoot, the weather was stormy, with winds up to 55 knots on the second day. Randall says that pilot Al Guthrie was crucial to the shoot's success.