by Irene Byers

ven though he truly likes pushing things to the edge, he still is what I call a cautious, thinking dare devil. Not quite an Evil Knievel, but close. When he was younger, this pushing-to-the-edge stuff included cars and motorcycles. For Tim LeBlanc, it’s the concept of seeing how far "I can push it without quite killing myself that thrills me."

In the Powered Parachute (PPC) community, Tim is known for his expertise in testing canopies to their limits. Flying any canopy that is safe is fun for Tim, especially since he loves to use trees and various other obstacles for target practice. (Not recommended without extensive experience and the skill of one such as Tim.)

Soloing in a PPC in 1992, Tim bought one immediately afterwards and has been hooked ever since. His 600+ hours differ from the usual, ordinary hours of the "normal" pilot. You see, practically all his hours have been used in testing canopies to the max. As Tim states it, "I’m the guy who goes up and stalls them, and tries to see how much it takes to stall them." There we are — pushing to the edge all the time.

Without particularly aiming for it, Six Chuter dealer Tim LeBlanc found that his polished skills opened the doors to a means for putting that testing urge to the test.

To a guy that tests for the mere thrill of testing, it was a complete shock to be called in December 1998 by a production company in England requesting that he participate in the making of a James Bond movie. It took the third phone call for this to finally sink into Tim’s head that these guys were for real. After all, how many times had he ever gotten that type of phone call before? Never.

The deal was that he would need to spend about six to eight weeks in Europe, and would need to fly PPC’s. Realizing that Tim was in a bit of denial, the caller decided to have the stunt coordinator call Tim and elaborate on the details involved. Hearing such specifics as what he was to do, where he would stay and his compensation, Tim knew that this was one opportunity that he could not pass up.

As anyone would, Tim wondered just how they had zeroed in on him way down in Louisiana. When he was told that the crew at Performance Design (maker of PPC canopies) had recommended him for the movie, Tim’s remaining uncertainties were finally laid to rest. Still, it took a few days for all this to gel and make sense.

And just how was Performance Design in on this? As Eon Productions looked over the myriad styles of PPC’s available in the United States, they settled on the PD canopy as their choice for the Bond movie. "Mary Ann and John (at PD) had both heard things about me, that I was one of these kind of wild flyers," stated Tim. "John knew that I had pushed his canopy to the max."

Adding meat to the recommendation, Eon Productions proceeded to interview LeBlanc to further determine his capabilities. They questioned the level of his experience and wanted to be sure the machines could perform as would be demanded in the filming of the movie. To observe Tim’s expertise, Eon sent him to Florida to observe his skill level and to study the Blue Heron produced by Heldeberg Designs of New York, their PPC of choice for the movie.

Being a PPC pilot, Tim was to teach three or four guys to fly the units, especially since there would be multiple units in the movie. Three of the guys were skydivers in England, and one was a professional stunt man/skydiver. However, the Florida time ended up not yielding a great deal of training time for the type of training Tim wanted to give.

From Florida it was straight to France to prepare for filming. The remainder of the flight training was to be on site. Due to equipment complications, this did not take place.

When Tim had traveled to a Florida dealer and examined the Blue Heron, he was impressed with the machine and its quality. But when the equipment actually arrived in France, Tim quickly recognized that these machines (all except one) were not the same as the one that he had first examined in Florida. Instead, the Florida company had substituted a poorly-put-together imitation produced by a different manufacturer. For that reason, time that should have been spent in valuable training had to be spent in rebuilding the machines.

"I was told it was a Blue Heron from the beginning and I called it a Blue Heron, but all, except the one, were rough replicas. We had to beef them back up to where they should have been, and to make sure nothing would fall apart. That they were safe," explained Tim.

After the safety corrections were finalized, the crew dressed up the machines with big black fiberglass pods, including machine guns mounted on them. The souped-up PPC’s took on a skidoo-type appearance with the pods and skis, and exhibited a striking contrast with everything being black against the white snow. Black for everything meant just that — pods, framing, skis, canopy, uniforms, gloves, boots, helmets, the works.

Unfortunately, the enhanced appearance was offset by the negative of increased weight. Since the pods were designed of thinly molded fiberglass, their weight was incidental. However, the four metal skis became the main culprit in adding heaviness to the units. In addition, some frame modifications requiring mild steel (the type available) added to the weight.

Then came alterations (more weight) in steering, brought on by the encompassing presence of the pod. "Since we were contained inside the pod, we didn’t have pedals to push. So, we needed some type of slide to push them straight forward as we needed a lot of turn for the tight spots. So we built these two tracks on the sides with sliders on top of them that we could work from the back. A pulley system was added for turning," explained LeBlanc.

The aim was to have the PPC’s appear to be like a snow mobile, so the steering wheel had to look like that of a skidoo. Plus, the front skis had to steer in the same manner. Obviously, these modifications required a fair amount of concentrated effort and the span of two weeks before filming even commenced. In this time, Tim’s job was to oversee and assist in such tasks as bolting the engines on correctly, changing out cables and cutting parts to fit. That is, Tim and about twelve special effects crew members working together everyday.

With the first unit totally readied, Tim’s adrenaline let loose with this new challenge for testing a PPC that had little resemblance to those back home. The first test indicated a need for switching from the originally intended PD400 canopy to the PD500. Thumbs-up on the first unit meant nose-to-the-grindstone on the next three. In all, five flyable units were ready for the onslaught of the cameras, with a spare unit standing by.

According to Tim, approximately 18 more machines were used for crashes and explosions. No expenses were spared even on the dummy machines. "You’d think they would use a fake engine, but they had brand new engines sitting in these machines and would just blow them up. I was saying to myself, ‘Why couldn’t you just get a cardboard painting of an engine or a styrofoam-looking engine?’ They weren’t even cranked," stated Tim, quite amazed.

When the flying actually started, Tim did most of all the low flying down through and around the trees. The only parts where all four machines were needed was in the high formation flying. Tim said, "That was pretty easy to do, though the guys were just learning to fly. Since they were sky divers, they were comfortable being in the air and also with the maneuvering of the canopy."

Though the producers, directors and stunt coordinators pretty much set up the flying pattern, they did engage in discussions involving Tim and the sky divers to verify the feasibility of certain routines. Sometimes it meant that two were flying toward the other two at designated angles to give a desired effect. It was an added benefit that the sky divers were not strangers to formation flying.

Tim’s description of this aspect allowed me to imagine his excitement. "We would fly out there, line up and come in close. That came together pretty quickly. We had plenty of time to get our formations lined up, get in real tight and come at the cameras. That came pretty easy, I gotta’ say. We didn’t have too many problems with that at all."

Doing a lot of this type of "stuff" with his partner back home, Tim had experienced tight flying and relished the formation flying challenge in the filming. "That came easy for me, as we do that a lot. That wasn’t like the bad parts," he said with a chuckle.

My mind immediately went to Tim’s adjustment from the southern warmth of Louisiana to subzero snowladden temperatures in the French Alps along the Italian/Swiss border. He was to enjoy this frozen tundra from January 6 through the end of February. The "freezing-your-butt-off" 6:00 am challenge was met with the struggle of the machines in coping with the increased weight and cold conditions.

"On top of all that I had to take the machine and fly it through and between trees that were not wide enough for me to fit. So my canopy was touching trees. In one spot where I kept passing through (they wanted to shoot it over and over), I kept rubbing the canopy pretty good each time and could feel it catching.

"It’s real ironic because it was the same tree that we actually used with the parachute crashes, where the chute catches on it, spins to the ground and is blown up. So, I was thinking, ‘My luck is going to run out while I’m doing this.’ While all this was going on we still had explosions, grenade drops, bomb drops and such, all below me. Some of them were making pretty big fireballs. So that was a safety concern,"stated Tim.

With all this action, Tim was instructed to keep a tight watch on his canopy for possible outbreak of fire as he flew the tree stint. He faced a true test with explosions so loud that he couldn’t even hear his own engine right behind his head. This was getting totally real and awesome, yet he wondered, "Do I really want to be in this?" Tim was grateful for his helmet.

When he returned to camp, Tim felt like he had just been through a war because of the explosions. To alleviate any apprehension, the crew took him down the mountain to the filming area to let him observe the explosions and to get a better picture of what had been happening while he had been flying.

As Tim further described the explosion stuff, I sensed that all previous thrills in testing canopies had now been surpassed by this new excitement. "While I was standing there with all the stuff going on, someone said, ‘Now watch this explosion. This is what’s going to happen when you are flying over it.’ When I say flying over, I was not more than eight feet in the air, just right off the ground. They blew one up so I could see it. The flame balled up and caught the tree on fire. That’s when the guy looked at me and said, ‘Make sure you check your canopy.’ Inside I was going, ‘Oh, my!’"

Retakes, anyone? You bet, anywhere from five to twelve with eight or so cameras positioned in different spots. It takes endless lengths of footage out of which perhaps two seconds might appear in the movie. The total action scene involving PPCs is roughly close to ten minutes, according to Tim.

Another action scene involves having the PPC units cut away their canopies and then become ground skidoos (other stunt men actually drive these) in pursuit of Bond as he is skiing. That scene will most likely occupy about four or five minutes, a long time for an action segment.

Still another test came for Tim LeBlanc when he had to fly his canopy with a hole in it. This comes about when Bond (the stunt double) cuts a hole in Tim’s canopy with his ski pole as he jumps over the canopy. To achieve this effect, a couple of the flying guys took Tim’s canopy and cut a hole in it large enough to see daylight through it. Owning a parachute company, these guys knew just how to sew up the hole to prevent further tears. They also sewed on some extra material, having it hang off the back to add to the ripped effect.

Pulling to the left, Tim found the altered canopy a bit awkward. And to think he must now fly it back over the cliff and do so in a manner to appear being out of control. "I had to put some hard inputs on it back and forth to make it look like Bond had just knocked me out of control. At the same time, another machine was coming straight at me for a crash scene that is a head-on collision in midair. We actually parted both ways and gave the effect of head-on, but missing each other," described Tim.

After this scene, Tim’s chute was removed. With a camera mounted on the front of his PPC, Tim and his machine were lifted by a cherry picker and were swung by that same cliff, for a shot of Tim looking up and across his machine as if he was seeing Bond ski over him. Probably half a day was spent on this, and it may occupy one split second in the movie. The aim was to get just the right head movement to make the scene appear authentic.

The mountainous terrain brought additional challenges foreign to Tim’s experience with his lowland homebase. Flying anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 ft, they started above the tree line with mostly rocks and moved on down as the scene progressed into the tree area. One of the first takes at high altitude involved flying over a mountain pass, a cliff area, with the PPCs heading down toward the cameras.

In doing this, Tim stated, "We had to go through a bowl-type area. The winds got absolutely terrible and it was slinging us all over the place. We were mostly out of control. I was watching the guy in front of me with his chute dropping back and getting hit real hard with gusts. I wondered if we’d have to do this ten more times. Luckily, that shot was done only once."

Thinking of the mountainous terrain, I was curious about suitable takeoff areas for the PPCs. As Tim described it, "None of the runways were really acceptable. We had soccer fields where we just flew off the end with a drop-off area. In another spot where we did the cliff scene, we just barely cleared the trees every time we took off.

"For some of the spots on the mountain tops, we had to be helicoptered there — us and our machines. The first spot they brought us to had a little downhill slope with a drop-off right on the top of the mountain. This was our takeoff area. Knowing that we had no brakes, I was thinking that if my canopy doesn’t come up straight and I’ve crossed a certain line, I’m in trouble."

Fortunately, the flimsy-looking nets for catching stray pilots, forced to abort their mission, never had to be tested.

You might guess who is playing James Bond in this soon-to-be-released film, "The World is not Enough." None other than Pierce Brosnan, who has been aptly playing the part of 007. With avalanches causing the filming to be cut short by one week, Tim’s opportunity to work directly with Brosnan did not materialize. The stunt coordinators had to succumb to the producer’s decision to accomplish the affected scenes with digital adaptations rather than the real thing.

Having never been a part of movie-making before, Tim found the whole experience to be extremely fascinating. For instance, a camera was strapped at the top of the chute looking down at him, plus another camera was attached to the machine for a different perspective. This was the case with all the PPCs. In addition, many cameras operating from various angles on location cooperated with the helicopter cam to capture just-right shots for the final release.

Of course, none of this is possible without people power. Tim was taken in by the numbers of persons required to accomplish this small segment of the movie — producers, directors, stunt coordinators, cameramen, the grips people, caterers (so no one would become famished), and the list goes on. Tim commented, " It’s a massive movement — an unbelievable task. And quite frankly, everything, for all we were doing, went pretty smoothly from my point of view."

When I asked Tim if he would do it again, there was no hesitation in answering, "Yes! That type of flying I like doing, although they were pushing me a little to the edge of my edge. Because back home, I do fly close to objects, but not to the point of touching things. Having to rub stuff where I don’t have enough area is pushing me just a little too much."

Commenting on the give and take, Tim said, "When we did stuff good in the filming, we were commended on it. The first week before filming I noticed a smirk on the stunt coordinator’s face — it seemed they weren’t too sure about these machines. After a few shots in and around the trees, they seemed relieved. I feel like I gave them everything they wanted with the PPCs."

From my interview with Tim, I’m guessing that should another offer present itself in the future, his main stipulation might be that it should be done in a climate that more closely resembles his home territory. Though it may not matter, now that he has become a professional skidooer in the sky. In the meantime, it’s back to operating his Six Chuter dealership in sublime Jennings, Louisiana.

We are grateful for the enthusiastic support granted us from Eon Productions, England, in regards to this feature article highlighting the movie, "The World is Not Enough." Though Eon had no photos to share, Anne Bennett kindly directed us to the appropriate source and did so in a timely manner. Thank you Anne.