Two Red Bull wingsuiters made history flying between the towers of London's iconic Tower Bridge, all captured by Canon technology. © Mihai Stetcu
The producer and the director both pictured it as like a scene from a super-hero movie: two colourfully-costumed figures soar through the air above the River Thames and fly right through London's defining landmark, Tower Bridge. But this wasn't shot in a studio with computer-generated special effects – it was real life. For this incredibly ambitious Red Bull extreme sports shoot, two daring wingsuiters leapt from a helicopter at 3,000 feet above London and flew through Tower Bridge, becoming the first ever to do so and reaching speeds of 153mph (more than 245km/h).
It was all over within moments, and there could be no retakes. This made capturing the wingsuit flight as important as executing it, and doing so was made possible by the power, versatility and reliability of Canon imaging technologies.
Even by the standards of extreme sports, this Red Bull London event raised unprecedented challenges. Planning and preparation took months. The wingsuiters, Marco Fürst and Marco Waltenspiel, "did around 200 training jumps just for this day, just for this minute," as the latter put it. A total of almost 50 Canon cameras were deployed at locations meticulously mapped out to ensure that no angle would be left uncovered and not an instant of the lightning-fast action would be missed.
On the day, an army of film crew, photographers and technicians started setting up and testing everything in the darkness, hours before the helicopter took off at 5:22am. The wind, weather conditions and light all had to be right for the flight to go ahead.