Movies - TV
Julie Andrews Struggled To Stay Standing During One Sound Of Music Scene
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
In the opening sequence of the film "Sound Of Music," Julie Andrews sings the title song with arms outstretched on a grassy plateau surrounded by hills in Austria.
To get the shot, a camera was poised from a helicopter, technically impressive in 1965. The chopper got just close enough before it began to blow Andrews' hair out of place.
Andrews talked with the Huffington Post in 2015 about that opening shot, and it seems that the helicopter may have gotten much closer than a casual viewer might suspect.
The shot required perfect timing, with a series of megaphones set up across the Bavarian Alps to give Andrews her cue when they saw that the helicopter was in the correct position.
Andrews said she would start at one end of the field and the helicopter at the other, and they would approach each other. After each take, it would go around her to do it again.
After ten takes, Andrews began to get furious. "Every time he went around me ... the down draft from a very close helicopter just leveled me into the grass," she explained.