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      When I got called for this commercial, the production company wasn't really sure what they wanted. All they told me was that it was for Japan and they wanted some skysurfing. A few days later I was informed that it involved a soda bottle in freefall. Then they faxed me a very rough storyboard in Japanese. The pictures were hard to understand and I sure as hell didn't know what the text said. So I went to my good friend Koji, who was a local Japanese skydiver. He looked at the storyboards and started laughing. He said "Ha, no way!"  He told me that it said there would be a soda bottle floating perfectly in space and a skysurfer would come up and grab it. Then I started laughing. But then I thought about it for a second and decided it could be done. Koji started laughing at me again until I recruited him to help me out.

    I came up with an idea. Looking back, it was a stupid and dangerous idea. I thought that if we took a soda bottle and attached some fishing line to the bottom of it, Koji could hold the end of the fishing line and the bottle would be pulled straight down behind him in freefall. Since the line would be very long, I could fly up to the bottle and Koji wouldn't be anywhere near it. That would make for a clean camera shot. So we went to the supermarket and sporting goods store to get the supplies. We rigged up a bottle, grabbed our gear and got on an airplane. We jumped out and got ourselves stable in freefall. Then Koji let go of the bottle but kept a grip on the end of the fishing line. Immediately the bottle started a radical oscillation. There was no way it was going to stabilize. I expected Koji to let go, but he didn't. Suddenly the bottle and line fell on Koji's back and then rolled through his armpit. The line started wrapping around his arm and I could see the concern on Koji's face. Then the bottle started bouncing against his head. I actually laughed for a second because it looked really funny, but then I quickly remembered how serious this was. If he pulled his parachute and it got caught up in the fishing line, it could be disastrous. He couldn't get rid of the line, so he just rolled his body to one side and pulled, keeping his arm as far away from his body as possible. His chute opened just fine.

    On the ground, Koji just laughed, which I figured. That's why I like working with him so much. We came up with a new plan, which was to connect the fishing line to the top of the bottle with a piece of fabric at the end and let it fall on its own. The fabric at the end of the line would act as a streamer to straighten the bottle out. We tried this and it worked alright, but the bottle fell to slow and I went right by it in freefall. So we went to the sporting goods store again and got some lead weights. Putting the weights in the bottle definitely helped, and after a couple more attempts, I was able to fly next to the bottle and grab it. We were totally stoked and called the production company to tell them of our discovery. They said that was great, but they would be using digital effects to add the bottle later. Koji and I just shook our heads and laughed.

    I ended up shooting the commercial with Joe Jennings in Key Largo. It was an awesome place to jump. The water was so clear you could see the manta rays while in freefall. The commercial went fine. The only tricky part was that I had to fly up to the camera lens and swipe as if grabbing an imaginary Coke bottle. It took a few takes, but was probably a much better idea than my ridiculous creation.