On September 11, Alan Purwin was tragically killed in a plane crash while leaving the set of Tom Cruise’s new move, Mena. Both he and Colombian pilot Carlos Berl died when their flight crashed into the Andes Mountains during a storm. Purwin, a visionary film helicopter pilot and aerial coordinator, worked on movies like Anchorman, Transformers, The Hunger Games, and Pearl Harbor.
As a memorial tribute to Purwin, producer and director Michael Bay created this video: a compilation of some of Purwin’s best shots, footage of him speaking about his craft, and possibly unknown information about him, like how he was the first helicopter on the scene for Hurricane Katrina.