Established in the UK in 1989 by Sara Hine and Jerry Grayson, we opened our office in Melbourne Australia in 2002, a further office in Los Angeles in 2005 and in 2006 an office in Cape Town, South Africa.
Helifilms specialises in supplying the full aerial unit to major international television productions and feature films such as Black Hawk Down and the James Bond franchise. Heading up our LA office, Film Pilot and Aerial Co-Ordinator David Calvert-Jones, worked on the recent films Domino, Déjà Vu, The Island, We Are Marshall, Waist Deep and Transformers. Our team worked on the BBC’s sequel to Planet Earth “South Pacific” and “Life”.
We also shoot large format (IMAX, Showscan and Vista Vision), tv commercials, corporate films and music videos and our clients in these sectors range from Honda and BMW cars to British Airways and Motorola, to the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney. We have, in-house, the most complete aerial crew of 2nd unit directors and film pilots, producers, production co-ordinators, directors of photography, camera operators, technicians and helicopter engineers.
We have our own helicopters set up for film flying in; the UK, the USA, South Africa and Australasia, as well as access to machines in the Middle and Far East, India and South America. Where we don’t own our own helicopters, our production team hire in local aircraft from local operators, but bring in our own experienced aerial directors, film pilots and cameramen. In this way we can always put together the best team for each specific project, always with the clients’ interests in mind.
For 35mm shoots, we have a range of nose and side mounts incorporating gyrostabilisation. Our 35mm aerial library of Australia, the UK, France, Holland, Denmark, the USA, South Africa and Far East is represented for us by www.gettyimages.com and www.corbismotion.com.
We have five Cineflex V14 High Def camera systems, incorporating the latest in gyrostabilisation. We have used these systems on tethered blimps, airships, helicopters, tracking vehicles, boats, cranes and on wires. Examples of our work using the Cineflex can be seen in the BBCs Planet Earth series as well as tv commercials and feature films.
In live television, Helifilms’ management and crew are currently the most experienced suppliers of a helicopter unit in the world today having supplied the aerial broadcast unit on the Athens Olympics 2004, Melbourne Commonwealth Games 2006, Doha Asian Games 2006 and FIFA World Cup Football, South Africa 2010.
Since 1990, we have produced simulator exhibits for the worlds leading museums and theme parks, the City of Arts and Science, (Valencia, Spain), The National Musuem of Science and Industry (London), The Powerhouse Museum (Sydney), The Imperial War Museum (Duxford, England), The Commonwealth Institute (London) and Europa Park (Germany).
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