posted Jun 24th, 2006 - 2B Productions contacted the National Skydiving League in May looking for a few Colorado skydivers to act and jump in a promotional video being shot for RE/MAX. The National Skydiving League headquarters referred the producer to Colorado Skydiving League Director Travis Roth.

Travis Roth now reported how things moved on after the contact was made: "When the producer contacted me, she had a lot of questions. I mentioned to her that one of my 'day jobs' is designing lighting systems for productions, and as it turned out we knew a lot of the same people in our professional lives."

After solving some logistical problems for the producer, the CSL Director was invited to be the skydiving production coordinator for the promotional video, which included basically taking the script and vision, implementing it in the sky and managing it on the ground.

All of a sudden, Travis Roth found himself ordering equipment, getting city permits, reading scripts, looking at story boards and asking for resumes. He said that the hardest part of the job was the casting:

"Playing the role of a Casting Director with your friends is not fun - because I would have liked them all to be involved. Thankfully, the producer made all the final casting decisions trying to match the vision of RE/MAX, so I could sleep well at night knowing I did not play favorites or say no to a friend."

2B Productions asked John Behring, an episodic TV producer and director, to take a break from the TV show "Numb3rs", and he was hired as the Production Director. Norman Kent was chosen as the Director of Photography for all the skydiving scenes. He used a new HDTV camera and recorded digitally to a memory card instead of traditional tape, thus allowing a quick download to the editing system's hard drives after landing.

2B Productions opted to shoot at the Mile High skydiving center, the home drop zone for the Colorado Skydiving League, due to the quality of the newly rebuilt Twinotter and the mountains in the distance for the backdrop. Mile High supported the production well and was a great host.

CSL Director Travis Roth went straight to work compiling photos, resumes and screenshot videos of local skydivers that met the criteria 2B Productions was looking for. The female actor, who plays the leading role of a mentor to a new RE/MAX employee, needed to have a memorable smile in freefall and be a great actor on the ground. Travis Roth asked Arizona Airspeed's Eliana Rodriguez to participate: "I knew that Eliana would not only be a great organizer and coach for the dives, but she can also smile from ear to ear on cue."

Eliana Rodriguez was able to work around Airspeed's training for the World Meet 2006 and made the trip to Colorado. The rest of the chosen formation skydivers were active CSL participants.

Mile High Levitation's Steve Zeder and Glenn Frank took time off from their training schedule for the rehearsal jumps, and the team's videographer shot videos for the rehearsal jumps, too. CSL Scrambles participants Jan Stewart, Tom Reiman and Anne Klein also jumped, together with CSL Director Travis Roth himself. Chuck Owen, normally known as a swooper and freeflier, tried a bootie suit for the first time and played the role of the leading male actor.

Justin Thornton, Mile High's General Manager, was asked to coordinate the canopy shots. He worked together with Team RE/MAX demo jumper Al Saylor and local Skydiver Josh Nayham, setting up some CReW jumps and landing canopy formations with the RE/MAX parachutes.

Travis Roth commented the cooperation by the local skydivers: "This production required skills not normally in the mind of RW skydivers. For an example, on the hill we always had to turn our formation the proper direction for the camera angles - and, we always had to monitor where Norman was flying because we could not look at the camera intentionally. We had to give him what he needed, even when he was directly in our way on break-off, and when he was going to be setting up a very dynamic track off shot."

It was a learning process for the Travis Roth's production team, as he explained: "We were building a hot air balloon shaped formation with many computer generated skydivers finishing the formation. Or base was the basket for a few of the shots, and we learned in the rehearsal jumps that if we were not careful our minor corrections on formation heading would end up spinning the other end of the balloon hundreds of feet - something not possible in real skydiving - and thus something we could not do. Soon we had learned how to take the somewhat awkward asymmetric formation and maintain heading without any drift at all."

Jim Arthers, a computer animation expert from Image Shoppe, had the daunting task of adding 50 computer generated skydivers to the production. Travis Roth explained the mixed experience of animations and real skydiving to the NSL News:

"When we debriefed our rehearsal jumps, we were looking at our angles and exits, but we tended to forget that some of our hands were docked on animated skydivers. Jim reminded us that we have grips on his animated characters. Grip management goes to a whole new level when you are docking on invisible skydivers!"

Travis Roth's production team member Jan Stewart joked on the ground: "I really enjoyed the dive where we had to track back and forth in front of the camera. It was real fun to track 50 feet past Norman, turn and wait for him to give the hand signal for action and do it again."

She recalled her favorite part of the production jumps: "The funniest thing I remember was the scene where we jumped out of the plane onto crash pads on the ground. The skydivers were touching their cutaway and reserve handles on the way to the door out of habit, even though the fall was only a few feet into a bed of feathers."

Tom Reiman, known for his very detailed logbook entries, jokingly asked: "Should I log those jumps too?" During a lunch break the Production Director, John Behring, reminded the skydivers of the movie Fandango. He was joking about the student who missed the mattress when he jumped and then hit the ground hard. These were just examples for Travis Roth how much the whole production staff enjoyed the casual atmosphere during the work.

2B Productions and John Behring thanked the skydivers on the final production day. They commented that everyone did a great job. CSL Director Travis Roth was glad that his CSL staff worked so well with him and the producer:

"At no time during the shoot any of the skydivers had to be benched or slots needed to be switched due to lack of the required skydiving skills or attitudes on the ground. The production of the skydiving scenes turned out to be under jump number budget and beyond quality expectations, as far as the producer was concerned. Production Director John Behring said that he really enjoyed working with the skydivers, and he was very happy with the work done by our CSL participants."