We were approached by a wealthy Saudi philanthropist who wanted a film commissioned. The aim of the short film was to progress the slow movement of gender equality in the Kingdom. What we ended up with was a 4 minute film that was slated by the international press, wasn’t filmed in Saudi and ended with the slogan “behind every Woman is a great man.” So this is the story of how we got to that end result.
The production company needed a married couple to play the wingsuiters. Although this film was to show Saudi’s culture becoming more liberal, It was beyond thinkable to have an unmarried couple flying beside each other touching hands- that would be far to western. So myself and Ewa were chosen as the wingsuit stunt double.
We were excited by the prospect of opening up wingsuit exits in Saudi, with a big enough budget to make it happen. So Ewa applied for her visa, and I was told my visa from a previous trip was still working. We then begun scouting mountains in Saudi for possible exit points while trying to explain to the production crew what we needed for an exit to be viable. Emails were sent back and forth. The production team sent us pictures of hills that they thought might work, while we tried desperately to explain what “150m vertical” meant. The shoot drew closer and closer and Ewa still didn’t have her visa. A week before the shoot her visa application was declined. She was a western woman under 50 and they needed more time to issue the visa. So I was to fly to Saudi and meet the production crew. At the airport, my visa was declined.
The crew asked us about other locations that would look similar to Saudi. I had always wanted to visit the Wadi Rum so convinced them it would be a great place to film. So it was onto plan B, the whole team flew to Jordan where we would film in the desert. I had to buy a new flight to get reimbursed at a later date. So of course I bought a business class ticket, telling them there were no seats left in economy.
It turns out Wadi Rum wasn’t a great place to film. We spent 4 days driving around the Wadi rum. Huge 500m monolithic sandstone towers everywhere, but the only one with a wingsuitable exit was inaccessible by hiking. The only helicopter available in the country was a military black hawk, costing $10,000 dollars an hour. We met the production team at 2am in a Hilton hotel to discuss plan C, and also to paint our wingsuits the same as the actors burkas.
The next flight to Milan was in 5 hours, so we drove to the airport to salvage what was left of the film. Jarno shot Ewa and myself against the left hand wall, carving around us, shooting from below up at the blue sky. In post production the cliffs were set against the sands of the Wadi Rum and you couldn’t tell it was Brento, Italy. The 10 second wingsuit scene was Ewa and myself flying at a conservative non western distance from each other, shot in Italy, with Jordan as the background, pretending to be Saudi Arabia.
After landing from the 5th jump we were exhausted, we were relieved it was all over. It had been a stressful experience, traveling to 3 different countries, shooting with a time restraint and conforming to the cultural barrier. After all that we didn’t get to keep our painted wingsuits, the Prince Alwaleed kept them, but at least Ewa got to keep her Nike Burka.