Chris Mann discovered independence at an early age. His passion for skateboarding around the city developed into flying through London's skyline. Confident he can master whatever he takes a fondness for, Chris left his production design career for West end shows and 12 years ago decided to become a helicopter pilot. Now he owns London's main tourist helicopter company based in Battersea. Again at the height of a pilot's career, Chris is reminded by his sons about his original love for skateboarding, they bought him a skateboard for his birthday this year; Chris is cautious as to whether he wants to try it out as he isn't sure whether he can be the best at it anymore. This film is part of 1000 Londoners Totally Thames season. 1000 LONDONERS This film is part of 1000 Londoners, a five-year digital project which aims to create a digital portrait of a city through 1000 of the people who identify themselves with it. The profile contains a 3 minute film that gives an insight into the life of the Londoner, as well as their personal photos of London and some answers to crucial questions about their views on London life. Over the course of the project we aim to reveal as many facets of the capital as possible, seeing city life from 1000 points of view. www.1000londoners.com www.youtube.com/1000londoners www.facebook.com/1000londoners Twitter: @1000_londoners 1000 Londoners is produced by South London based film production company and social enterprise, Chocolate Films. The filmmakers from Chocolate Films will be both producing the films and providing opportunities to young people and community groups to make their own short documentaries, which will contribute to the 1000 films. Visit www.chocolatefilms.com Transcript: British 33, single sprilled, spot five, 3POB request start for London sight-seeing trip for Hotel 4. Pole position after departure cleared Hotel 4 1014 and London Bridge is the limit north side of the Thames on departure. Before I was a pilot I was a production manager for an events company, actually working just across the river from the heliport, looking at the heliport from time to time thinking about going flying. I was on a tourist flight in Cape Town on a holiday doing the same thing we do here, so a sightseeing helicopter trip, and I was just fascinated by what the pilot was doing. He appeared to be doing absolutely nothing, moving the controls very very slightly and commanding this flying machine to do fantastic things and I just had to find out how it worked, so I did a trial lesson. That, that sort of got me hooked. You know, to make a massive change in career was a big risk at the age I was at the time so mid-thirties it was. I had an absolute passion and I was convinced I was going to get to the end of the transition. And it was really that belief in myself and having the support of my family behind me that enabled me to do it. Well what could beat this view, hey? It’s a great vantage point and not one that many people get to see. There are moments when you stop and think about what you’re doing and that’s a weird moment because you suddenly find yourself at maybe two thousand feet above the ground in an armchair, or in a chair with a load of glass in front of you and then a fantastic view. You are removed from the immediacy of the people’s lives. You don’t see the individual people but you see order and it is an incredibly, or appears to be an incredibly ordered society when you view it from 1000 feet or 2000 feet. You can see sometimes how communities have grown, so you can see the centre of communities where churches were, also where churches are, and then a community that might have been built up around a church. Or a village area, that you can see the centre of a village and then how it’s expanded. You can see all the arteries really, the roads and railways that link all these places together. Obviously, the areas themselves don’t necessarily fit together like a grid city but yeah, you can see areas of order within that chaos. From above it’s just a sense of how everything is, it looks neat and tidy, you know.

• published: 21 Sep 2014
• views: 4628