Q & A with Paul Swift, Precision Driver
What are you working on at the moment?
I'm currently working on the top gear live world tour. I lead a team of stunt drivers who perform the motoring theatre alongside Jeremy, James and Richard. So far this year we have been to Moscow, Stockholm and Copenhagen, then later this year we are off to South Africa and Australia.
When did you start driving and how did you transition into Film and TV?
I started driving in 1987 at the age of 7. My father taught me to balance the family lawn mower on two wheels and I set a world record as the youngest stunt driver traveling 230m on two wheels. (pic right)
We mostly provide live entertainment for car launches at motor shows so the manufacturers themselves tend to recommend us to production teams for their TV advertising.
Lots of your commercials feature many cars in action at the same time: do you know the other drivers?
Yes, I recruit all of the drivers you see in the commercials. You really need a team you can trust when the stakes are so high so I use very professional people who can handle the pressure.
Did you have a driving icon you looked up to?
My dad (Russ) was an inspiration to me, he was British champion several times in the 80's and I always wanted to follow in his tyre tracks. As soon as I was old enough to have a competition licence we restored dads old mini and I started auto testing. He helped me go professional in 2004 when I had to leave my job to work with him at the British Motor show.
When you are working with directors, how do you illustrate the suggested choreography?
More often than not its matchbox cars on a tabletop. We thrash out a few moves that could work then get all the drivers to walk it through. If we don't walk into each other there's a fair chance we won't collide in the cars.
You’ve driven almost every car imaginable, what do you drive personally and which car is the best to drive?
I've got a couple of classic minis, a mk1 & a mk2 escort rally car. 4 focus's and an mitsubishi Evo. My day to day car is a Ford Kuga, I use this for trailering the rally car and the car i drive on two wheels. The best car I've ever driven and probably the most expensive would be a Focus World rally car. 0-60 in 3 seconds and worth about 300k
Can you talk us through your preparation and execution of the Audi R8 ad? Any scrapes?
It was titled beauty and the beasts and directed by Sam Brown at Rogue.
We we're sent the storyboards few month before the ad and met the production team to discuss the vehicles. ,
They basically wanted the R8 to navigate its way through chaotic beast cars which were coming at it from all angles, these beast cars were made up mostly of stock cars, hot rods and vintage racers from the 1920's & 30's,
The week previous to the shoot I'd been out in New Zealand doing a gig for Top Gear and I used the 23hr long flight back to the UK to plan the choreography. Chaos isn't a word i like in my job so i had to choreograph it just make it safe but also keep it as realistic and unpredictable as possible.
We had a couple of days rehearsal on an airfield in Essex then headed down to excel for the real thing.
It was a massive expanse of white paint. Much larger than the rehearsal space so we pushed the whole thing up to the far wall.
I split it into 4 zones and had 4 drivers in each zone then had 2 perimeter drivers and 2 who traveled between the north and south zones. I talked each and every one of the drivers through their own routine and then walked it through step by step, firstly with each zone then all four zones together and finally with the perimeter and cross over drivers. Even they were just walking it though and I knew everyone's routine individually it was so fast I found I couldn't watch everyone at the same time and the whole thing just looked like a blur, I realised then we had created chaos.
We did this same thing several times again and nobody collided so we jumped in the cars and ran it at 50%.
All the drivers had radios so I could feedback from the sidelines what worked and what didn't, once we had this nailed down I drove the R8 through the middle of it shortly followed by a million pounds worth of camera hanging off a Russian arm!
I'm very proud to say we didn't have any major incidents! I was delighted when we finally parked the R8 up safely at the end and the title pops up Audi - "mirror signal outmanoeuvre"
A clip from ITV's Ad of the Year
If you could give a producer one piece of advice to consider when using precision drivers, what would it be?
Best bit of advise would be to allow time for a test drive make sure the car can do what is expected, cars are so complicated these days with electronics and safety devises and more often than not it takes a technician with a laptop to allow the car do what we want with it.
What’s been your best day at work ?
Best day at work was probably the Emmerdale title shoot, i got the job of driving the range rover through Emmerdale village for their new title sequence, it was probably the slowest drive I've ever done but a lot of fun passing the wool pack!
What do you do when you are not working?
I spend time with the family, my wife (Sarah) and I have an 18month old daughter Evie who keeps us both massively entertained. She has no fear at all, we got her a little bike, and has already taken on the name Evelyn Knivel
Is there any film, commercial or film maker you would like to work with (that you haven’t already)?
I've never had the opportunity to drive in a film but often watched them and thought of stunts they could do, my all time favourite is the original Italian job. I was involved in promoting the remake when it came out at the premiers New York and Amsterdam but didn't do any of the driving in the film.
You can check out Paul's profile page on thecallsheet by clicking here. You can also visit his website here and follow him on twitter