David Alan Arnold has one of the coolest and scariest jobs in the industry.

Every year he goes to Dutch Harbor, Alaska to film Deadliest Catch from a helicopter. 

In this week’s episode David shares how he got started as a helicopter camera op, and the crazy stories that come with the territory…from death spins and crash landing near hungry grizzlies, to the Cubs winning the World Series and running out of fuel over the Bering Sea.

Listen to hear some amazing stories from Alaska. 

Show Links:

Contact David
Help From Above: How I went from Sweeping the Floor to Painting the Sky
Cineflex

Key Points:

1:36 – How He Got Started
10:26 – Favorite Story from Adventures

Skip to: 14:55 Time on Deadliest Catch

18:02 – Why Do This Dangerous Job
24:01 – Tools of the Trade
30:30 – Favorite Old Piece of Gear

Skip to: 32:48 How To Get Started

37:03 – Close Call on Job
41:19 – Favorite Shot
44:52 – Skills Learned Outside Film Industry 

Full Transcript

David Alan Arnold: (00:00)
The windows and wind screen are full of just the ocean going by and seagulls and rocks and waves are crashing outside the aircraft and thundering through the sky. We’re rocketing 100 miles an hour and we come around and we do a hard bank. So now we’re being sucked into our seats and the pilot accelerates and pulls us towards the set where everyone is standing, ready to go. And every time we got there, the director wouldn’t pick up his radio and yell, action. Imagine the ADs are screaming, what happened? What’s wrong? Why? They’ve got hundreds of people all waiting to go.

Tanya Musgrave: (00:40)
Welcome to The Practical Filmmaker, an educational podcast brought to you by the Filmmaker Institute and Sunscreen Film Festival, where industry professionals talk nuts and bolts and the steps they took to find their success today. On today’s show, David Alan Arnold tells us his favorite heart-pounding and memorable stories from being a helicopter cameraman for the Deadliest Catch. Find the full transcripts and more at thepracticalfilmmaker.com. I’m your host, Tanya Musgrave, and today we have Emmy award-winning helicopter cameraman, David Alan Arnold. His cinematography has covered anything from the Superbowl and rescue efforts during Hurricane Katrina to James Bond and most insanely, Deadliest Catch. He is also the author of the book, Help From Above. The man, the myth, the legend, welcome to the show.

David Alan Arnold: (01:27)
Tanya, thank you so much. It’s an honor to be on this show. Thank you.

Tanya Musgrave: (01:30)
I’m so shocked about this. I’ve got a ton of questions for you, so we better get started. How in the world did you get into helicopter camera operating?

David Alan Arnold: (01:41)
I love for kids today to hear my story because the number one comment I get as I travel the world that I bought really expensive cameras on the helicopters and airplanes, the number one comment or question I get is people look at the expensive equipment, the high-tech gear that I use, and they see these million dollar aircraft and they look at me putting everything together and they go, “Did you go to school for this?” And the second question they always ask is, “How do I get a job like that?” And so I love for kids today to hear my story, because I knew that I wanted to work in the entertainment business. When I was in high school, all we had for entertainment, we didn’t have YouTube, we didn’t have Instagram, all we had were movies and television. I took a few classes in college, but I right away figured out that even back then college degrees were valued.

David Alan Arnold: (02:43)
However, I looked at what they taught in college and I said, no, thanks. That’s not where I want to go, I don’t want to do typing and the bizarre prerequisites that you had to take biology and stuff, I want to work in film and television, I want to work movies, why do I got to go take the ninth class of biology? And so I immediately dropped out of college and I’ll never forget it, the Dean of the college had found me and he was making fun of me in front of all the other, this a room full of college kids. This Dean was mocking, he was making fun of me, and he was trying to scare me back into college and he just made fun of me and he had a great time.

David Alan Arnold: (03:30)
And he goes, “Where do you think you’re going to end up without a college degree? Who’s going to hire you?” And I said, “well, you have a good point. I have no idea how this is going to work.” I just knew I wanted to work in movies and that didn’t mean that I wanted to spend years of my life paying expensive college tuition for stuff that has nothing to do with the movies, so I left. To his point, I had no way in to anywhere, I’m just a hungry kid off the streets. And so what I did was in those days we didn’t have Google, we had phone books, which were this thick, any town in America. And so I went through the phone book and I found any company that had anything to do with video or film anything.

David Alan Arnold: (04:22)
And I would go to their address and I would knock on the door and I would offer to help them. And I would always tell them, “Hey, I’ll work for free. You don’t have to hire me, I’ll just be here. I’ll just help you with whatever’s going on today. And later on, if you want to hire me, you can.” And finally one of these businesses, the guy at the front desk had had enough, because I would come every about two weeks. And finally the guy at the front door said, “Look, will you get out of here? We have no use for you. All we do are helicopter cameras.” And obviously I knew nothing about helicopter cameras, so he had a good point. And so I said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I won’t bother you again.” I scratched them off my list and I quit going there.

David Alan Arnold: (05:12)
Three weeks later, the vice president of that company called me and we had the funniest conversation. He could not figure me out, but he was curious because he had heard that there was some crazy kid who kept showing up at his building. So we had this really funny conversation and he said, “I could hire anyone from Hollywood or New York with a huge film resume.” And he said, “That’s what I should do.” And he looked at me and he goes, “I’ll tell you what though.” He said, “The one thing that you have going for you is you seem hungry. Are you hungry?” And I said, “Oh yeah, I’m hungry.” And he said, “I’ll make my decision in a few days and I’ll let you know who I’m going to hire.” And that was it, I went back to my little apartment and I lived in the simplest way you could possibly imagine. I lived in a small apartment and no joke, most of my furniture came from dumpster diving. I had a television that was this big, that sat on a cardboard box in my living room.

David Alan Arnold: (06:28)
And so I’m sitting in front of my cardboard box television, and I’m just thinking over and over my head. I’m thinking, man, how do I convince this guy that I am hungry? How do I show him that I really am hungry? I’m going to do a good job. And I was thinking about it over and over again. I took the trash out, it’s just running through my head and I threw my trash pack in the dumpster. And in the bottom of the dumpster, I saw the most perfect thing I had ever seen and I literally dove head first into this dumpster. And I got my hands on an old greasy work boot that was tripped up and someone had thrown it out. This was like the Holy Grail, I brought this old work boot back to my apartment and on my dining room table I made a plate and a knife and a fork. And I took a picture of me cutting into the old filthy, disgusting work boot with a big smile on my face like I was about to have the best meal ever.

David Alan Arnold: (07:33)
I didn’t have a computer, this is before computers. I actually cut and pasted the picture onto a letter and I typed it on a typewriter and I mailed it to him. And one of the executives at his company told me one day, she said, “When he saw that picture of you eating your boot, you got the job.” And he hired me. Believe me, when I tell you it sent shock waves through the entire company. This was a very high profile business that worked on all of the biggest television shows and movies.

David Alan Arnold: (08:10)
And for me to show up in their shop with no knowledge, no skills, no experience, it rattled the entire company and people would walk up to me and go, “What are you doing here? How’d you get here?” He knew he could hire someone with the skills, but he had learned that those guys usually were kind of difficult to work with and they had built an attitude over the years. And so what he wanted was he just said, “Screw it.” He said, “I want this kid who shows up to work, whether I pay him or not.” And that’s how I got my first big break in film and television.

Tanya Musgrave: (08:55)
Marcy, that’s incredible. I know that there are a lot of people who they try the cold calls and then they give up, I’m raising my hand on that one. That takes a lot of… Even just these days to knock on a business door, that’s pretty awesome there, but to actually get them to hire you, that says a lot about your personal skills as well.

David Alan Arnold: (09:24)
To me, it’s really simple. Most people look at a job as what they can get out of it. My approach to work has always been, what can I do for them? If you’re bringing coffee to someone you don’t work for on a regular basis, I guarantee you, they will consider you over a random stack of resumes that they caught through the mail of people they don’t know.

Tanya Musgrave: (09:52)
Absolutely. Wow. Yeah. And it seems like such a simple concept.

David Alan Arnold: (09:57)
If you just be of service, if you just help people, wherever you go and are nice to them and friendly and have a good sense of humor, you may be surprised at what opportunities get handed to you.

Tanya Musgrave: (10:08)
Yeah. So speaking of those opportunities, you’ve had some pretty crazy opportunities. The book, Help From Above, this has been a highly entertaining read. What is your favorite story to tell from your adventures?

David Alan Arnold: (10:23)
It was one of a thousand days where I just look around and I go, “Oh my God, I hope I survive this.” And I had this really funny, matter of fact, conversation with my pilot. I looked out the windows as we were flying across the Alaskan wilderness, and I saw a whole bunch of really big bears, these bears were the size of Volkswagens and they’re lined up along this stream, just sitting there, it looked like a bear convention. And I thought, what am I looking at here? And I asked the pilot about it and he goes, “Oh yeah.” He goes, “You know what’s interesting is the salmon haven’t started running yet.” And I suddenly realized what I was looking at is a bunch of hungry bears who haven’t eaten since last year. And they just woke up from hibernation, they’re waiting for their first meal and the salmon are late. So they’ve all come to the salmon stream to grab a fish and bite it, bite it’s head off. And there’s no salmon.

David Alan Arnold: (11:25)
So they’re just staring at the water. And my life flashed before my eyes, I thought, oh Lord, I literally said, please let every nut and bolt in this helicopter keep working because if I have to land here, I’m probably going to get eaten. And I asked my pilot, I go, “What kind of gun do you have?” Because every helicopter in Alaska has one if not two elephant guns. The bullets are this big, because they have to be able to stop a bear. The reality of Alaska that people don’t tell you on the Alaska Tourism Commercials is if you land a helicopter and get out in the wilderness the bears will eat you. So every helicopter has big guns. And I was kind of curious, I wonder what this guy has, maybe he’s got a giant musket, maybe he’s got a Desert Eagle, who knows what? And I said, “What kind of gun do you have?” And he goes, “Oh yeah, I was just thinking about that. I forgot to bring a gun.”

Tanya Musgrave: (12:29)
Get out, no.

David Alan Arnold: (12:31)
And I go, wait a minute, let me get this straight. The bears haven’t eaten since last year and there’s a lot of them, they’re super starving. And if we have to land here for some reason, we don’t have a gun, this is starting to look like the script of a horror movie. And I was flabbergasted and I go, “Ooh, I hope we don’t need to land here.” So imagine me staring with this laser focus at all of the gauges on the instrument panel, just making sure that all the temperatures are in the green and the fuel pressure is where it’s supposed to be, and we got lots of gas. And I’m just staring at these gauges because I know I’m flying over a bunch of hungry predators that haven’t eaten in a year. And that was when I saw the smallest gauge started to quiver, my heart sank because the way the gauge work, it actually spins around to get to the optimal number where the engine is running correctly. So that little gauge started to waver and then it started to spin backwards as the engine slowed down. The engine quit and-

Tanya Musgrave: (13:46)
Okay. So wait, the engine quit. A helicopter is literally beating mother nature in a submission, if the engine quits, you’re falling like a rock, right or no?

David Alan Arnold: (13:57)
There is a principle of helicopter powered flight and pilots trained for this, they practice it all the time, it’s called an auto rotation. And so what they do is if the engine partially fails or fails what they do is they release the pressure off the blades. So they intentionally let go of the air and the helicopter falls. As the helicopter falls, there’s a wind that goes up through the rotor system, which actually spins the blades, hence the term auto rotation. And so out of the blue and all of a sudden we were instantly in an auto rotation and we were going very fast and we were very close to the ground. So we didn’t have a lot of room to get the blade spinning from the wind. And that’s where my book begins, that’s page two of the book.

Tanya Musgrave: (14:48)
That is page two. One of a thousand stories for sure, you documented a few others. I would also love to hear about your time on the Deadliest Catch in the Bering Sea.

David Alan Arnold: (15:00)
Well, the story of how they started the show or my experience of the beginning of Deadliest Catch is in Help From Above. Imagine 17 years ago they tell you, hey, we’re going to go and we’re going to bring an entire film crew out there in the middle of nowhere where no one ever goes in Alaska. And we’re going to follow these guys who are, they’re these fishermen, they deal with stinky fishing equipment and dead fish. And they’re these dirty boats and they’re in the middle of nowhere in the Bering Sea and there’s ice on everything. And we’re going to follow them and see what they do. Imagine if someone pitched that to you and you might say, “Sounds kind of messy, I don’t know if these guys should be the star of our network.”

David Alan Arnold: (15:52)
So I’m told that’s where we’re going, what we’re going to do. And I just go, “Oh, okay.” So I get in the helicopter, we fly out there and we land in this crazy place. People have seen Deadliest Catch on television, but they may not realize that Deadliest Catch happens in the middle of nowhere. You are more than 1,000 miles from anything. It’s literally just a bunch of guys on this fishing boat in the Bering Sea. And so we flew out there to the Aleutian Islands and I look at my phone I’m probably 1,000 miles from the nearest cell phone tower. There’s nothing here except this little fishing Harbor. And it’s crazy, this is just the craziest environment. When we landed for season one of Deadliest Catch, the coast guard had just crashed a Jayhawk nearby, and the Jayhawk crashed and sank.

David Alan Arnold: (16:54)
The coast guard guys came over to take a look at our helicopter, which is a tiny fraction of the size of theirs. We only have one little engine. I think they have two main engines and an APU, so basically three engines. And they have heated blades, so if ice starts to form on their machine, the machine can melt it off and get rid of it before the aircraft crashes. So they’re really well equipped. And they looked at our helicopter and they looked at me like they didn’t expect to see me again, and one of them literally said, “You’re going out there in that?” They had just crashed. And I said, “Oh yeah.” And that was the beginning of season one. And I just completed flying for my 17th year of Deadliest Catch. And it is absolutely an incredible thing to be a part of.

Tanya Musgrave: (17:53)
You mentioned in your book that you’ve lost close to three dozen friends to this particular job. It’s no joke, this is dangerous. I’m really sorry about that. I can’t imagine what this job is for you in two parts of… I’m wanting you to give voice to the debate in your head.

David Alan Arnold: (18:16)
Well, in the movie business and in story telling they call it answering the call. So every movie starts or every story starts and the hero is called to adventure. And most people say no, especially in our culture, we live in a very affluent society where all risk has… Children sit in four point harnesses and ballistic plastic cages inside their parents’ car. So that even if the car rolls upside down and is crushed into a ball, the kid will still be okay. So we’ve removed pretty much every element of risk from our daily life in America. It is a thing that I’m very honest about in my books. People don’t believe when I tell him I’m the dumbest guy in any room I walk into. But it is true and I have a long history of doing things that other people know better than to try.

David Alan Arnold: (19:18)
But honestly, I like it my way. There’ve been so many times in my life when the people around me refuse or you could say they don’t answer the call because they can think of every reason not to. I just don’t dwell on those things, I focus on the goal. So I have been doing a dangerous job for my entire career. And I honestly believe that that’s the way to live. I miss my friends who died in my industry, but I believe that they really lived. And I think you can have an entire lifetime and not really live. One of my closest friends on planet earth was killed in a helicopter crash. And I miss him and I love him, but I also admire that he did what he wanted to do.

David Alan Arnold: (20:18)
And although the laws of physics took his life, I see no regret there. I feel like so many people live their whole life knowing that they’re called to something, whether it’s to make music, whether it’s to not work in a stock market, but instead to go out and help people every day, whatever it is that they know they’re meant for that they never get around to doing, because they’re always too busy playing it safe, paying their bills, and they never follow that dream or answer that call. And I can honestly say, I’ve always done that. So don’t feel bad for me if something happens to me because I can honestly tell you that I don’t know how long I’m going to live, but I guarantee you, I’m going to really live.

Tanya Musgrave: (21:16)
Reading your book and knowing that I was going to interview you, I was just like, all right, I know this sounds morbid, but thank goodness we’re here before something happens to him. And I was just like, I can’t… What it reminds me of it reminds me, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Free Solo. Have you ever seen that?

David Alan Arnold: (21:39)
I have, yeah.

Tanya Musgrave: (21:40)
Yeah. You remind me of Alex Honnold because they actually did an MRI. This was in the documentary, they did an MRI and measured the activity of the amygdala where the brain processes fear. And it didn’t light up [inaudible 00:21:54]. And I feel like that’s what she got. You’re just like, all right, this doesn’t bother me at all. Going into a death spin, no, this doesn’t bother me at all. Being in the Bering Sea and having no way back, being led by the ship that was going back to the Harbor, this is insane stuff, but yet at the same time what a life to live.

David Alan Arnold: (22:21)
My breath was taken by Free Solo. I watched it just like you did and I was in awe of it. People walk around having lived their entire life, having worked their entire career playing it safe. And there’s a part of their spirit, there’s a part of every human spirit that yearns for adventure, that yearns for risk and danger and reward. And so they walk around with that all bottled up, they never get into trouble, they never get into fights. And when they see each other on Facebook and they see that their neighbor voted for Biden or Trump, they go to war, they start yelling and screaming profanity. And it’s not that they’re evil, nasty, hostile creatures, I think it’s that there’s a fight in them that never gets out to play.

David Alan Arnold: (23:18)
And so any confrontation they can have, hopefully in the comfort of their own home on their keyboard, they yearn for that. They yearn for a struggle for something to fight against or for something to win, something that means something. And I think if you embrace adventure and risk and challenge in your life, I think that that part of your spirit gets filled. You can look at any time of my life and you can see me doing so many things wrong, but I do think one of the good things in my life is that I’ve always steered straight into the storm.

Tanya Musgrave: (24:00)
All right. Now I’m going to ask you about some of the tools of your trade. And I predict that nearly 0% of our regular listeners, the cruise shoots will be privy to what equipment you use, but I’m going to ask you to humorous anyway, because for some reason, all I imagine when I think of a helicopter cameraman is like some kind of Black Hawk with doors slid open some camera guys hanging out with Caribbean [inaudible 00:24:22] like belt loop or something hanging on the side. I imagine it’s a little bit more sophisticated than that. So tell us how things are set up.

David Alan Arnold: (24:30)
We do hang out of helicopters with cameras.

Tanya Musgrave: (24:32)
Oh, you do.

David Alan Arnold: (24:33)
We do, but I’m a little bit more specialized, I normally am operating a gyro-stabilized gimbal. One of the unique things about the equipment that I work with is the focal length. The longer the focal length gets, the more tricky it is to hold a steady shot. For example when I work on Monday Night Football, the cameras have 50 and 80 to one zooms. So these guys always zoom all the way on the football from way across the stadium. And what happens is even people just walking to their seats or to go get a beer during the game, that tiny vibration, when you magnify the image, 50 or 80 times causes the camera to get a little bit of a bounce and a vibration. You’ll see it on even major televised sporting events once in a while, there’s just no way to get rid of it. So the only camera that can see that angle is up in the stands and people just walking around causes the camera to move around a little bit because the image is so magnified.

David Alan Arnold: (25:42)
And so what’s unique about the equipment I use is we’re on an aircraft, which is very violent. It’s shaking and vibrating and pitching and moving in all axes, and yet the gimbals that we use keep those same lenses, we use 1,000 millimeter and we shoot with a red camera. And those gimbals remove all of the vibration and movement of the aircraft. And what you end up with is a lens and a camera that sit perfectly still while the aircraft bounces and shutters around and maneuvers. Honestly, there’ve been many times, even some big movies and TV shows that I’ve worked on where the director gets sensory overload if they do fly with us.

David Alan Arnold: (26:24)
And it’s wild, one time we literally had a cast of thousands and they were all over this huge set. And we came flying across the ocean and flew up to where the action was going to happen. And we literally have several hundred people waiting to hear action. They’re all ready for their queue, so there’s hundreds of extras all over this set. And every time we’re flying 100 miles an hour. And so inside the aircraft, the windows and wind screen are full of just the ocean going by and seagulls and rocks and waves are crashing outside the aircraft and thundering through the sky. We’re rocketing 100 miles an hour and we come around and we do a hard bank.

David Alan Arnold: (27:14)
So now we’re being sucked into our seats and the pilot accelerates and pulls us towards the set where everyone is standing, ready to go. And every time we got there, the director wouldn’t pick up his radio and yell action to 1,000 people. Imagine the ADs are screaming, what happened? What’s wrong? Why? They’ve got hundreds of people all waiting to go. And we would fly back, we would do it again. Every time we flew to the right spot, the director has to cue everyone. That’s his job, he’s the only one qualified to do it, he’s calling the shots. And we would be flying back to one and the pilot would say, “Are you okay? You know you didn’t say anything on the radio.” And he’d go, “Oh, I’m sorry. Oh, okay.” And he would get ready, we would fly back in 100 miles an hour, go up to the thing and get into the set and he would just sit there.

David Alan Arnold: (28:12)
And I’ve seen it many times throughout my career. It’s the deafening thunderous noise of the helicopter. It’s the violence of the movement of being held at 100 miles an hour through this environment, the human body is not used to that. And these guys just go blank. They literally get sensory overload they can’t function. And I’ll never forget, we were flying through Hollywood one day and we had a director with us and he was sitting in the front of the helicopter next to the pilot, both the pilot and I are asking him, “Well, we know we’ve got this big list of knockout, which one do you want to do next? Where do you want to go next?” And he’s just sitting there. We asked him like four times and he finally stammers out. He goes, “I can’t think you guys decided.” And by this point in my career, I already know. So I just reach out from the back seat and I grabbed his shot list [crosstalk 00:29:10] and I start reading them off, scratching them out.

Tanya Musgrave: (29:15)
The job description kind of expand sometimes for you then like, all right, yeah, we’re going to get this a shot list taken care of then you rest easy up there director.

David Alan Arnold: (29:27)
Some guys do great at it. The cameraman and the pilot do not know his entire movie script that he’s shooting. And they don’t know the significance of if the car goes a little bit left or right as it crosses the bridge, but he does, he’s supervising the entire story. So it’s very useful to have him on board to say, “Hey, you know what, that take was okay but I really need one where the car goes like this instead of like that, because of everything that leads up to that moment in the story.” There are guys who can do it and there are guys who have like ASC and their name. These are legendary guys, but when you throw them into that crazy loud, scary environment, they just cannot do it all at once.

Tanya Musgrave: (30:17)
You’re in the back then, and you have your screen and you have your controls and your joystick, you have that whole panel in the back. So if I were to ask you what your favorite old piece of gear was, your old reliable, even if we don’t know what the heck it is, what is it? What is your favorite old piece of gear?

David Alan Arnold: (30:35)
Well, the machine that I’ve used the most over 25 years is the Cineflex. It is the industry standard of gyro stabilization for helicopter cameras. It’s a machine I’ve been using for over 10 years on every show and movie. And it is just a really robust, reliable, easy to ship and incredible tool that I can zoom into the sun and I can see sunspots while I’m sitting in an aircraft, which is moving like crazy and ripping across the countryside and vibrating and rocking and rolling. I’m hitting my head on the ceiling because the air is rough and the picture from the Cineflex is absolutely perfectly still so much so that in a lot of the movies and TV shows that we would work on people don’t realize that what they’re seeing was captured from a helicopter.

Tanya Musgrave: (31:37)
There’s this iconic shot zooming into a sun with aircraft coming through and you can see, of course, the heat waves and all of that stuff. You’re saying more than not, that would probably have been on a gyro stabilizer.

David Alan Arnold: (31:52)
Oh yeah. Typically if it’s from our unit, it’s from a helicopter, but you can’t tell because our cameras are usually steadier and smoother than the cameras on the ground on a tripod. So when you see them all cut together, you can’t really pick out which ones are which, it’s just how it should be.

Tanya Musgrave: (32:11)
Yeah. That makes sense.

David Alan Arnold: (32:12)
When you watch a movie, you shouldn’t be distracted by how a thing was done, you should just be following along with the story. And so that’s why this kind of filmmaking became so popular so quickly. That company that hired me off the street as a hungry kid, with no experience, they had invented these machines for the military and they mostly build killing machines, but they also fabricated a few for movie cameras and TV cameras. And that’s what I started working with when they hired me.

Tanya Musgrave: (32:44)
Going back to that other question where it’s like if there was a daredevil that wanted to start in this field, where would he start?

David Alan Arnold: (32:50)
Just there’s 1,000 ways in. Fortunately today you can do almost all of that with drones. So if you’re interested in starting at the bottom like I did just go find a drone company and start bringing them coffee. Don’t ask for a job, just start helping them. This company hired me off the street with no experience, but when the gyro-stabilized camera got sent to the wrong state by accident, so there’s a film set that doesn’t have a camera because the camera’s in another state by mistake. And so they said, “Oh crap, quick, we’ve got to get another camera onto a truck. And we just got to drive it all night to get to this film set to do this job.” And so I said, okay. So I helped them load all the equipment, this was a box truck. I jumped in the back of the box truck because there were no seats. And I sat on the cases inside a box truck, as it drove from Florida, it might’ve been North Dakota, it drove across the country. And so I slept on top of these cases as we were driving across the country.

David Alan Arnold: (34:01)
And so they finally get to the film set, which is waiting to film because they need that camera. And the truck driver opens the roll-up door and I come out with the cases and in those days, the camera cases weighed about a thousand pounds. I get all the cases out, opening them up, I get this gyro-stabilized camera gimbal built and it’s broken there’s something wrong with it. So then I get my tools out and I start soldering wires to repair it, I finally get it running. And I jumped into one of the crew vans and they drive me to the hotel. As I’m walking into the hotel, the entire film crew is walking past me to go get in their vans to drive to the set where the helicopter. So this is now I’ve been going for like 30 or 40 hours straight.

David Alan Arnold: (34:51)
I walk into my hotel room, I take a shower, I turn around and I walked back out and I get in the van with them. Now we all drive together, I get out, I work on the camera. At the end of that shoot, one of the producers came over and he started offering me jobs. He said, “Hey, we have this part of our company, Dave, that does this, would you be interested in working there?” And he goes, “I have guys who do this, would you want to be one of those guys?” He was just throwing stuff out. And I said, “Oh, thank you very much. No, I’m okay I just do this.” And he walks away and I was an assistant on that job. So I was helping the cameraman I was assisting him to get the shots.

David Alan Arnold: (35:37)
And I looked over at my camera guy and I go, “That’s the strangest conversation I’ve ever had.” And I said, I can’t believe he wasn’t yelling at me and furious. My company sent the camera to the wrong state, how much stress did that guy have because he couldn’t even film because the stupid camera companies set the camera to the wrong state. And I thought, why wasn’t he mad? What just happened? He offered me several jobs at his company. The cameraman just laughed and he goes, “Dave, you don’t understand everything we do gets messed up, there’s always a problem. When we go to the next state, there’s going to be a problem there too.”

David Alan Arnold: (36:19)
And he says, “What that producer wants is people who will just pitch in and get the job done and make it happen for him, regardless of who did what and whose fault it is.” And he said something I’ll never forget, he said, “They noticed that you worked all night and then worked all day and you didn’t say a word to anyone.” He said, “Trust me, Dave, that’s who that producer wants to take with them to the next shoot.” And it doesn’t matter what went wrong, if you’re willing to simply pitch in and do whatever you can to make it happen, they want to take you to the next place.

Tanya Musgrave: (36:57)
All right, we have a couple of listener questions from our Instagram. My Instagram is @practicalfilmmaker. This one wants to know most sweaty palmed close call you’ve ever had on a job.

David Alan Arnold: (37:08)
There’s a story in my book, Help From Above, it’s called Lost In a Storm. And one night, unbeknownst to us, we were flying over the crab boats on Deadliest Catch, a blizzard came in on top of us and we didn’t realize until it was too late. And we were lost, we couldn’t find Dutch Harbor. We were just stuck in the middle of the Bering Sea, and we couldn’t find our way back. And we were blind because it was at night and we were in a whiteout blizzard. We couldn’t find Dutch Harbor and there are mountains between us and Dutch Harbor, we’re out over the Bering Sea. And our pilot was very susceptible, it was almost a guarantee that he was going to do what JFK Jr did, which is just flipped upside down into the water. And that’s where we were, I knew these were the last moments of my life.

David Alan Arnold: (38:01)
And I was talking to the pilot as this was happening and he suddenly said, “Man, I thought I was flying to the lights of town, but now I’m not sure.” And I said, “You turn this helicopter around right now and you go back to our boats.” That was a fateful decision because he could have just said, “Shut up, Dave, I’ve got to fly the machine. Leave me alone, I got to concentrate.” But he made a very tough choice to turn back to our boats because we could still see the lights from the boats, he knew that by going back to our boats he would probably run out of fuel. Didn’t have enough time to go back to the boats and fly to shore, but he did it. And so I go like, ooh, if we’re going to crash in the ocean, at least I want to crash next to our friends who can help us.

David Alan Arnold: (38:53)
I told the director who had the marine band radio, I said, “Call the boats and tell them to turn all their lights on and steam towards Dutch Harbor.” And I told the pilot, I said, “That’s going to give you your heading. That’s the way home. They’re going to show you the way home.” And so the Northwestern was the first boat to answer back. And captain Sig is one of my favorite captains, he’s five times smarter than me. He always knows what’s going on and he understood right away what had happened, which was that we had gotten lost in the storm and we were running out of fuel. And so he immediately powered up his lights, he pushed his throttle and he pointed the Northwestern towards Dutch Harbor towards home. And so we came and we hovered over him.

David Alan Arnold: (39:37)
So unlike JFK Jr, now we can see which way is up because of the lights of the Northwestern. So now we’re safe from crashing. And we just can’t see through the storm where Dutch Harbor is, but now we know which way to go. Captain Sig comes on the radio he said, “Just follow me, I’ll take you to the dock.” And that was when the pilot is relaying to the director, he says, “Tell him we don’t have enough time. We’re out of fuel.” Captain Sig came right back on the radio and he goes, “That’s okay.” He said, “You follow this heading. This will take you between the mountains to Dutch Harbor because otherwise you’ll hit the mountains on the way in.” And so without hesitation the helicopter pilot accelerated into the storm, we pushed straight into this whiteout blizzard and the lights of the Northwestern disappeared behind us.

David Alan Arnold: (40:28)
And now I’m just sitting in the dark, hoping that A, we don’t tumble into the ocean and B, that we have enough fuel to make it back. Because the Bering Sea is interesting, it will kill you in less than two minutes that’s how cold the water is. And so even if you could get out of your helicopter [inaudible 00:40:46] as it’s sinking in the Bering Sea, the water will kill your life in a couple of minutes. And so I’m just sitting in that aircraft waiting. That’s one of the stories in Help From Above, and fortunately everyone did everything just right at just the right moment to get us home. And we made it back with the last ounce of fuel.

Tanya Musgrave: (41:09)
You said in your book somewhere, I remember you saying every flight that you walk away from is a good flight. Okay. Next question, recall a shot that you’re proud of.

David Alan Arnold: (41:19)
A very memorable show to be a part of was the World Series when the Cubs won, after over 100 years, it was called the curse. The Cubs just couldn’t win a World Series for over 100 years. When I was flying over game five, they were in jeopardy of losing the World Series, they had to win that game. And people don’t know this, that the Chicago Police Department had surrounded the stadium. There were literally so many police officers there that they were arm in arm, completely surrounding the baseball stadium because they were afraid if the Cubs, after 100 years lost again, that the crowd was going to riot. And the Cubs pulled it off, they won, they stayed alive in the series. And for two hours, nobody left the ballpark.

David Alan Arnold: (42:20)
The entire stadium, every seat was full two hours after the game because everyone was so into this game and this struggle to finally win the World Series and their team had pulled it off. They stayed alive, they were still in it, they kept hope alive and everyone was celebrating. So nobody got out of their seats for two hours. When they finally started to leave the stadium, you’re looking at what, 80,000 people who are filing out of this stadium and I’m filming this from our airplane, we’re flying around them. As I look around this entire city all of which is watching the game, every building raised the W flag when they won and they stayed alive and stayed in the World Series kept hope alive they could possibly win again. As the people are leaving the stadium, 80,000 people walked through the police lines and they all were high-fiving. So watching 80,000 people give 80,000 high fives to the police officers who were all lined up to arrest them if they had to.

David Alan Arnold: (43:33)
They were all high-fiving as the fans finally left the stadium. And because I’m in a unique place, I’m not at a fixed camera position in the stadium, I can see the entire city of Chicago from our airplane, I can see the entire baseball field and all of the stands and all of the police that are there and to witness this incredible celebration that united an entire city of many millions of people who were all invested in that game and who all had their hopes raised that finally, after 100 years, the Cubs could possibly win a World Series. And they were riding this emotional rollercoaster together, and they shared this experience of this game. The fact that their team won everyone was celebrating, everyone was happy. It doesn’t matter who they voted for, it doesn’t matter what color they are, it doesn’t matter what religion they are. They can all sit down and watch these guys play this game and they can all participate in it together as a group. And so to me, it was not particularly my shot, but it was just an incredible human shared experience to witness and be a part of.

Tanya Musgrave: (44:44)
Oh, that’s incredible. All right. Next question, what skills have you brought to the table or had to learn from outside the film industry?

David Alan Arnold: (44:53)
What skills have I brought really simple, when I first started working at this company that gave me this big break, when I was a hungry kid off the streets, I didn’t know how to use any of the fancy aerospace equipment that they manufactured and worked with. But I knew I could clean up the shop because it was a mess, these guys were working on one big movie or TV show after another, and they didn’t have time to tidy up the place. And so the shop had probably never been cleaned, there were just piles of junk and dirt. This was a busy working environment and all of the work was on the road, so the guys weren’t in the shop. And so I’m there by myself and no one told me to, but I just picked up a broom and I started sweeping up the shop and I swept until the entire shop was clean, which took me till about two o’clock in the morning. So at six o’clock, everyone’s leaving the building and they see me in there sweeping the floor.

David Alan Arnold: (45:46)
After I swept the floor, I then started neatening up the place and I would take all the high-tech equipment that I didn’t know how to use. And I would just make it nice and neat so that when the guys did come in from a movie, they could have a place to work. When everyone came back into the building, the next day, I was still there wearing the same clothes and they didn’t recognize the place. It had never been cleaned like that ever. I’ll never forget my boss at the time, who was very frank with me, he said, “You have no skills, you’re basically useless.” He came in and he saw I was still there the next day wearing the same clothes I had on the day before and he didn’t recognize his own shop. And he was so excited. He started laughing and smiling and he pointed to me and he goes, “That’s it, you’re going with me on my next movie shoot.” So that’s a skill is just being willing to pitch in and help even if it’s not your job.

Tanya Musgrave: (46:47)
I want you to give a teaser to the ending of this first book, Help From Above. This is nuts, this took like a McMillions or a Tiger King mumble twist where you’re reading along about, oh yeah, this happened in my life. Oh yay, this adventure action, all this stuff. And then all of a sudden, it just pivots and leaves you on a cliffhanger and you’re just like, “Whoa, pump the brakes what’s going on?”

David Alan Arnold: (47:18)
Yeah. Welcome to my life. I have lived in a little tiny town in the mountains above Los Angeles for over 10 years. And one of the things I do as I go out, you know how you can adopt a highway?

Tanya Musgrave: (47:34)
Yeah.

David Alan Arnold: (47:35)
I go out and I take a trash bag and I pick up the trash that people throw out of their cars. And I put it in the trash bag and then I find a dumpster and I basically clean up the community. And as I’m doing stuff like that, I accidentally stumbled across an organized crime ring that had set up shop in my little, teeny, tiny little town. Whatever, organized crime is what it is, come on, I’m not going to change the world. Corruption and organized crime are as old as human civilization.

David Alan Arnold: (48:11)
However, I had a problem with them because they had set up their operation at a school bus stop. Gathered my neighbors and I said, “Hey, we have a criminal gang at our school bus stop in our little town, how do we fix this? How do we help the kids stay safe with this environment? And how do we get these guys out of here?” They go set up their criminal gang somewhere else, anywhere else, just not where children gather six times a day. In 2014, I found the body of one of their victims who had been murdered behind the hotel. This is at the school bus stop, in fact the guy who was killed was last seen alive at the school bus stop. And for five years I fought with them, for five years I told anyone who would listen, this is terrible, this is illegal, it’s criminal, it’s dangerous.

David Alan Arnold: (49:01)
And no one did anything. I couldn’t get the media to report on it, I couldn’t get the police to enforce the laws and arrest them and make the kids safe again, I couldn’t get anybody to do the right thing. My neighbors at first were helping, but then one by one, they all were threatened or attacked and so they stopped helping. And I wound up with a situation where it was just me against all of them, and I never gave up, I never quit. I should have, that would have been very smart, but I just never stopped pushing. And I just decided I’ll stop pushing when they leave the kids alone. That’s how I wound up writing a book about it. So my second book is that book and that book is the reason that I’m writing books, it’s the reason that I went back and wrote Help From Above, it’s the reason that I’m on social media, it’s the reason that I’m on your podcast. Let’s keep these kids safe and then the gangsters can go make their illegal profits somewhere else.

Tanya Musgrave: (49:59)
It mentions in your book about a documentary series. So when and what can we expect from that?

David Alan Arnold: (50:04)
Well, the gangsters threatened lawsuits so the documentary was supposed to be on television in 2015. It will come, and it will be basically a documentary series about my life. Everything that’s in the books you are now going to see in this series, the series of books as Help From Above. And you’re going to hear more and more about those books over the years as more people find out about this story and as the documentary series starts to move forward.

Tanya Musgrave: (50:34)
Yeah. So how do people find or follow that particular work? A shameless plug up, here you are.

David Alan Arnold: (50:40)
The easiest way to find me on any social media is my name, David Alan Arnold, A-L-A-N. And if you look for that name, you’ll find me on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and then there you can see pictures and videos of everything I just talked about. I fly with GoPros now, so I have a GoPro images of the cockpit of the helicopter flying next to the crab boats on Deadliest Catch or circling the stadium for the World Series. It’s all there, and it’s a great way for people who’ve read the book to then go back and actually see and hear what I’m talking about in those stories.

Tanya Musgrave: (51:20)
Yeah. Well, oh my gosh. I can’t tell you, this has been an incredible treat. If you enjoyed this interview, follow us right here and check out more episodes at thepracticalfilmmaker.com. If you have comments or know someone who would be a great guest on our show, send in your suggestions to tanya@thepracticalfilmmaker.com. Thanks for joining us, be well and God bless. We’ll see you next time on the Practical Filmmaker.