Italiano
“Levissima”: the commercial
“Levissima” (an Italian mineral water) , though a fantastic commercial was at the same time, the prototype of the difficult and unnecessarily expensive production because it was shot during the wrong season.
The American model on the set of Levissima at 3450 mt, on the Gornergrat glacier. Zermatt
The commercial was the last one before the arrival of the famous testimonial Rheinold Messner. We filmed most of the flight scenes on the slopes of Monte Rosa (at an average altitude over 4.000 metres) . The pilot was Gianni Hotz who performed the stunt replacing the American model.
The altitude gave many problems to the make up artist and to the DP who found all the time very cold lights also when he didn’t need them.
We spent 15 hours with 2 choppers to carry back at 4.000 meters and more the deltawing and the paraglider (we were shooting two commercials at the same time) after each landing to find the perfectly white snow desired by the client (we were on the 15th of july!!!)
In the commercial it seemed that the girl was the pilot….
but after looking for beautiful female pilots for an entire month ( the casting was extended to the entire world) we were obliged to make use of a stuntman. The pilot was Gianni Hotz, owner of “Icaro 2000” which was at the time the biggest maker of hanglider in the world (the famous “Laminar” built in Italy on the Lago Maggiore)
Gianni was made to wear a wig, he was given two oversized stuffed breasts and he was sent many times flying in difficult conditions because of a very complex aerology.
Gianni with the make-up artist…
Each wing was assembled and disassembled easily but for the delta we needed a second helicopter (on the first one there was the elivision) which traveled back and forth between the Silbersattle (at 4.500 meters) and the set or the valley to fill up.
Obviously the all thing seemed shot among the mountains of the Valtellina where there is the summit from which source flows Levissima….