American Cinematographer - February 1995 - 30

A remote

during his exploits). The stunt
people thought the bus would end
up at one spot, so we put the cam¬
mor

camera

attached to

Tulip Crane

a

was

eras

used to get

several feet in front of it. But

it's hard to calculate where

things
going when you're driving
through the bush, and the bus
hurtled past the spot, hitting the

footage of
water flowing

are

from the

Cleveland Dam.

cameras."
Because the odds of

some

kind of

equipment damage are
high, Eyemos are generally used
for crash stunts. In this case,

though, even the cage-protected
Eyemo was torn apart by the force
of the bus.
The crash itself turned out
to be a bit disappointing. The idea
was

to have the bus roll

it hit the bottom of the

over

when

ravine, but

because the Trail ways

had so much
weight and momentum behind
it, it simply plowed down the
mountainside and stopped. The
crew had to
stage the flip on the
following day.
"Basically, we flipped it
over in cuts,"
says Geddes. "We
did it via the 'poor man's process':
a

handheld

camera

inside and

ev¬

erybody moving around, making it
look like the bus was going from
side to side. We did just one shot of
the bus actually falling over on its
side, which was accomplished by
pulling the vehicle over with a
cable."

Originally penned as a $30
million feature film, Incident at De¬
ception Ridge had to be streamlined
when it was picked up by the USA
Geddes his first day on the bus,
however. "It was the ultimate

re-light the inside of the bus."
The biggest stunt - and

cable network. "The network still
wanted to make a big action pic¬

lighting nightmare," he says, shak¬
ing his head. "When we set up it
was a
very bright, dear day and I

the

which the filmmakers

ture," says executive producer
Brown. "They wanted all the stunts

didn't need all that much in the

way

of lighting. I used maybe two

HMI Pars. There

was so

much

natural

daylight that all I had to do
was
key the actors, but I didn't
even key them; I just gave them
highlights.
"As

'action,'

a

soon as

like

roadside barrier and

400 feet down

so

dark

a

brush-filled ravine.

mounted inside the bus to catch the
view out the front windshield.
"Our

camera

placement

worked," laughs Geddes. "We got

good visuals. But the bus ended up
hitting three of the

American

February 1995

Cinematographer

plummet

Multiple cameras were set up
along the crash route; one was

nighttime. It rained, it
was no light to shoot
inside the bus, nothing to give me
a proper exposure. It was horrible,
because on a film set you have to
keep shooting, and I had to say,
'We can't; we have to stop.' I had to
was

hailed; there

28

a

John called

huge cloud rolled in over

the mountain and became
it

one over

had the least control - was the bus
crash. The script called for the
Trail ways vehicle to plow through

was

cameras; one

damaged and two

were

de¬

kept in. Instead of eliminating the
cut the number of char¬
half, cut 30 pages from the
script, and tried to concentrate the

stunts,

we

acters in

action into

a

very

limited number

of locations."

Only six locations in and
around Vancouver were used in
the film: Mt. Seymour, Lynn Can¬

yon, the town of Horseshoe Bay,
the Cleveland Dam, Lynn Head¬
waters and

the Capilano Fish
Hatchery. The proximity of the lo¬

stroyed, including one we put in a

cations and careful

fancy crash cage called a 'Ned
Kelly' (named after the infamous
19th-century Australian outlaw,

helped maximize shooting time.

who

wore a

homemade suit of

ar¬

scheduling

"Moving is what takes
time," says Geddes. "The one thing
you don't want to do during the
American Cinematographer - February 1995

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