The Brains Behind SALT

The brains behind SALT? It's not Angelina Jolie nor Phillip Noyce nor Kurt Wimmer. It's a humble Russian PhD engineer from Tula, Russia.

On the first leg of my journey to Tunisia today I sat side-by-side with Lev Yevstratov. Oh the irony, this is what you'd call pure serendipity.

All week I was tempted to corner the crane ops while they worked in downtown Albany to ask about their gyro-stabilized camera equipment. But between tight security and hectic schedules I didn't dare bother the Hollywood filmmakers.

Then, voila, I'm sitting next to Lev, co-founder of Adventure Equipment, the brains behind building the most stable camera crane in the industry. Lev and his buddies play a vital role in the making the action scenes of SALT really fly. For the past 13 days they have assembled and engineered a giant camera crane to dolly, pan, tilt and shoot dozens of scenes around the 787 bypass.

As soon as Lev saw how anxious I was to meet him he launched into his career history. He's expertise helped craft Titanic, The Dark Knight, 007 Bond films, PineApple Express, The Hulk, Live Free or Die Hard, G-Forces, Yes Men, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the list goes on.



"Did you enjoy filming in Albany?" I asked.

"Yes, it's a beautiful city with wonderful architecture," said Lev, "too bad we had no time to enjoy seeing it."

Working day in and day out can cause accidents though and Lev admitted that one of the cameras 'bit the dust' when the moving crane smashed into a road sign. There goes $60G down the drain.

Lev is originally from Tula, Russia, ironic too that his hometown should be Albany's sister city. Having been to Tula with Benita Zahn on assigment for WMHT we had plenty to talk about and photos to share.



Tula is also where most of the mechanical parts of the Ultimate Arm were built. Which didn't surprise me since it developed as a major iron-working city centuries ago. Nobody can weld, bond, braze, cement, fix, fuse, join, link and unite metal like the engineers in Tula.

If meeting Lev is any indication how the rest of Tunisia will play out, I'm in for a truly star-studded trip. Come along with me on this blog for the next 10 days where more stories of filmmaking will unfold.