The team behind David Blaine’s 60-hour upside-down stunt at Wollman Rink this week is the same team that helped Spider-Man soar through New York City in the recent movies.
Randy Beckman, an 18-year veteran of film stunts, runs a 40-person company based in Valencia, Calif., and is part of David Blaine’s “flying team.” (Mr. Blaine started hanging upside down on Monday morning at 8 a.m. in Central Park’s Wollman Rink, and he will end it with a “dive of death” at 10:45 p.m. on Wednesday on a live ABC television show that starts at 9 p.m.)
Among the stunts Mr. Beckman has coordinated is a 250-plunge from a building in SoHo for “Spider-Man 2,” during which the superhero reclaims his powers. For the plunge, the camera and the stunt man were mounted on separate rigs that were computerized to move in sync.
“Before we would go 10 feet a second, and now with the computer, we can go 43 feet a second,” Mr. Beckman said.
When they did everything by hand, they had to slow down the filming speed so it would be real time when it was shown on the screen. They are suspended using tech-12 cord, a Kevlar-based fiber commonly used for stunts.
“Before we would go 10 feet a second, and now with the computer, we can go 43 feet a second,” Mr. Beckman said.
When they did everything by hand, they had to slow down the filming speed so it would be real time when it was shown on the screen. They are suspended using tech-12 cord, a Kevlar-based fiber commonly used for stunts.Mr. Beckman’s projects, which generally have six-figure price tags, often take a day to set up. To help promote the “Spider-Man 2″ DVD in November 2004, Mr. Beckman was called upon to help the “Spider-Man” stunt man Chris Daniels ring the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange.
“We had to rig up in the attic of the New York Stock Exchange,” Mr. Beckman said. “Before the bell, we took him up, clipped him upside down.”
They then had Spider-Man swoop down to ring the bell, flanked by Sony executives. Mr. Beckman said, “They rung it as he was upside down, coming down.”
It was, he believes, the first time in the 212-year history of the stock exchange that anyone had rung the bell upside down.
