Working in cooperation with the French Air Force, director Gérard Pirès was able to get some of France's top gun pilots to do the aeronautic dogfights that were used in the film. Initially at the start of the shoot, the Air Force had some particular rules regarding the minimum distances the aircraft could be together or be above the ground, but by the end of principle photography, the daring pilots got permission to bend the normal safety rules, thus allowing them to do maneuvers normally never seen (or possible) outside of actual combat. By the final days of filming, the initial minimum distance the pilots could fly above the ground (500 feet) had dropped to a tiny 10 feet, and the distance between the planes in the air (a varying range, usually of several hundred feet) had been reduced to a minuscule 3 feet, thus allowing some amazing shots that could otherwise never have been pulled off.
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