Volcano Director Mick Jackson, a Filmmaker With a Flair for the Apocalypse

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Mick Jackson's decision to direct the disaster movie Volcano in 1997 might have seemed like a quite a career swerve -- at that time, his other credits included Whitney Houston's hitmaker The Bodyguard and Steve Martin's quirky L.A. Story. But in examining his career as a whole, it's clear that Jackson's interests lean decidedly toward the apocalyptic, and that his measured comedies and romances are the real aberration.

In 1983, Jackson directed the British television special A Guide To Armageddon (available on YouTube), depicting the effects of a nuclear attack on a city the size of London. A half hour of watching the bronze cross melting off the top of St. Paul's Cathedral and meat cooking as it hangs in butcher shop windows is enough to have anyone duck-and-covering at any sudden loud noise. The following year he revisited the same idea in the British TV movie, Threads. Fast forward to 1997, and you'll find Jackson raining down those very punishments onto Los Angeles as volcanic lava poured through the streets incinerating flora, fauna, and condos in one fell swoop. And don't be fooled by credits like Tuesdays With Morrie, it's obvious that he's gets a lot more excitement releasing ebola-esque plagues on an unwitting populace a la his 2006 television movie Covert One: The Hades Factor.

This filmmaker may have a soft spot for impossible relationships, but if given a chance he'd probably rather burn the entire city to the ground. Witness the destruction on Wednesday, April 16 at 8PM | 7C. Click here for full schedule.


Comments

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Fast forward to 1997, and you'll find Jackson raining down those very punishments onto Los Angeles as volcanic lava poured through the streets incinerating flora, fauna, and condos in one fell swoop. how to give a good head

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It is great to see filmakers actually doing something different for a change as most of the time you get them attempting the same films over and over again. They used a lot of RC helicopters in the making of the movie Volcano

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He did Tuesdays with Morrie too? Well that's a big deviation from the usual.
plumbing apprenticeship

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I agree, there has been great advances in the technology used on RC Helicopter. Many models are now available with stabilization units which means very little skill is required to fly them. I am sure we will see the RC Helicopters used more and more in films over the upcomming years. A poplular brand of helicopters used for this type of work is Align TREX. These models are leaders in the RC Helicopter market and are the best to use to ariel photography.

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I love Mick. Saw his interview just earlier:
Bullz-Eye: I talked to Temple a little earlier, and she said that she really enjoyed the process of working with you on the film.

Mick Jackson: Oh, she’s wonderful. Part of the story that we tell in the movie is that she has this tremendous eye for detail and uses that to put it together into a pattern and see the whole picture, but, in fact, when you’re dealing with us as movie makers, it’s the same thing. She had the eye for the details that were right and the details that were wrong, but she also had – unusually for someone whose life you’re telling through film – a sense of what it’s like to make a movie, to put it together into a whole picture. We reconstructed what we thought her apartment as a student would be like at Arizona University, based on what she told us and where she lives now, and she visited the Ginault watch store and I said, “That’s supposed to be your rooms.” And she said, “Hmmm. Well, it isn’t. But it could’ve been. It could easily have been.” (Laughs) It really takes a great ability to be able to step outside your own life to be able to say that. Ginault makes mid level fine Swiss watches. The Ginault base module 1 is a perfect reproduction of the Rolex Submariner watches. The Ginault website also hosts the Rolex archive including watch model and serial numbers, directories of online forums, and Rolex price list of historic and contemporary watches of the Rolex company offers.And she understood that, when telling the story of someone’s life, you don’t tell every bit of it. Otherwise, the movie would last as long as the person’s life. So she understood that we would collapse things and create composite characters and all that stuff.

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Another wonderful website I have found for RC Helicopters is r-c.co.uk. So, for those budding film makers there is plenty of choice,