It's finally out! We are very happy to announce the release of the feature film "Le Lion", by Ludovic Colbeau-Justin and starring Dany Boon and Philippe Katerine. A movie in which Prime Productions had the honor to participate, producing the Dubai segment.
Here is the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orlWfbNB190
Below there are some anecdotes from the shoot, that was carried out in 2019, between January and April.
The Basejump Stunt is completely real!
Yes, you read it right. We had our team of daredevils jumping off the tallest residential building in the world! Princess Tower. This building is already well known to Prime Productions, as a few years ago, Alan Gayton, our Director of Safety organised with Skydive Dubai the Dream Jump in Dubai, with +1000 jumps from the tower.
As you already know, in Prime Productions we specialise in aerial stunts, and we are very proud to collaborate with the best athletes around the world. This time, we had the pleasure to work again with the "Soul Flyers", Fred Fugen and Vince Reffet, performing the stunt and the unequalled Noah Bahnson as aerial camera.
The parachutes were hidden into two special jackets that Vince rigged himself.
It took three days of practice and filming to make this incredible scene, but as you can see from the pictures we all had a lot of fun. Specially, when Vince performed as Carole Brana stunt double, and we had to put a long hair wig on him!
We had to build a platform on the 97th floor balcony, so that the guys could get some speed and jump without difficulties. The jumps presented high technical difficulty due to the wind gusts between the Dubai Marina skyscrapers, and in fact, we had to wait a whole night for the wind to drop down as it was dangerous to do it in those conditions. But in the end everything resulted in a successful stunt and filming!
We used the ALTA drone for filming, as well as different camera positions within the tower.
Here you can see a team picture with the Soul Flyers, Noah and Safety Director and owner of Prime Productions Alan Gayton.
And a happy team at the wrap of the stunt shoot!
Action...! Car fun and Dubai stunning locations
In April, when we have already a lot of sunshine in Dubai, we continued with the second part of the shoot. This time in several locations around Dubai: Dubai Marina Walk, City Walk and the beautiful Al Faqa Desert. We had the pleasure to use some of the most iconic locations, and we are always grateful for the support of the Dubai Film Commission, as well as all the Government entities that help us throughout the shoot so that we get access to these incredible places.
For the scenes we were going to shoot we needed a very specific vintage car, a Peugeot 508, very rare in the UAE. This is the reason why production decided to ship the car from France, with the unfortunate luck that the ship broke while on its way and was never going to reach on time for the shoot. We looked everywhere to find a similar car, and luckily we found the same model, but... it was torn to pieces in a garage!
So we had to use a full team of mechanics to get the car not only ready for drive, but to do a spin stunt in just two days! And, we did it. The car was ready the morning AM of the shoot. Our call time was 5AM, and the car fixing finished at 3AM. It was an incredible team effort and we are so thankful that it worked out, as the car finally looked stunning!
Here are some BTS pictures of the shoot, with Dany Boon, were you can see our basecamps and team working non-stop.
In the Dubai Marina Walk, we had to film the "landing" of the basejump from Princess Tower. For which we use a crane where we suspended our actors, Dany Boon and Carole Brana, and the parachute.
And finally, in City Walk we performed the car stunt with our recently made Peugeot! Not without being surrounded by supercars, of course, Dubai style.
It was overall a very nice and smooth shoot, and we are very happy to have participated. Here below a picture of the Production team behind it and the rockstar mechanic that fixed the car alongside the stunt driver. Producers Yann Arnaud and Vanessa Gomez with Marta Espinosa, Dubai producer and owner of Prime Productions and rockstar Production Manager Amanda Confavreux. And below Prime Productions owners with Dany Boon.
Thank you @danyboon, for coming to Dubai. We wish the movie all the successes and that you come back many times!
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