Fontana, CA

First time in California and when I showed up, it seemed cold! Fontana is located way east of Los Angeles in a more industrial area near the airport.

First day of work was shooting practice and qualifying. Usually Skip shoots this on the new Sony F3 camera with the prime lenses. One feature of Prime lenses is that they are at a fixed focal length, meaning you cannot zoom with a prime lens. If you want to go from a wide angle to a telephoto angle, you have to physically take the wide lens off and put on the telephoto lens. My job during that time is to carry a small variety of these prime lenses with me in a backpack while following Skip. Depending on the subject matter we encounter, he may want to change lenses a couple times to get different perspectives.

So during NASCAR practice we usually get shots of the cars in the garage, lining up especially the drivers coming out and getting in the cars. Skip tries to find the most creative angles and shots of the drivers. Many times he’ll use slow motion or time lapse of signs and crowds. A few times in Fontana he would set up a shot and then leave, and I would have to stand by the camera until he would come back or the time lapse reached a certain time, usually 15 minutes of so. This was my chance to peer into the viewfinder and study the shot a bit.

  

Its hard to tell in this picture but it was amazing to me how much detail there was in the shadows with the sun directly behind. This camera really has some great latitude.

During the actual race we would drive around the infield of the track and find shots of spectators. Here we climbed up on top of someone's RV and it revealed a whole other world on this level.

 

I really neat moment was when a friend of Skip’s who usually shoots on the RED camera brought along a RED EPIC

http://www.red.com/products/epic.

The RED EPIC is not for sale yet but The guys were pretty excited about it.

Bristol, TN

Bristol was the first NASCAR race that I could actually drive to from Charlotte. Driving through the Smokey Mountains was a real treat.

 

By now I am becoming familiar with the workings of NASCAR and how a weekend race plays out. Bristol is a much smaller track with high banked turns, so the cars race around in what seems like a giant toilet bowl. The sound is incredible and reverberates all over the place. The racing is pretty hectic too as the cars don’t have much room to pass each other. By the end of the race it almost looks like a demolition derby. 

The most exciting thing for me was that Skip gave me the chance to shoot some footage of practice with the Varicam. Skip really is great at explaining things. He gave me some basic instructions, then I was off shooting some footage of the cars going by. Later on, he reviewed the footage and gave me some great tips. He told me that I would have to shoot victory lane on sunday so we went over some camera things, like what shutter angle means and determining proper exposure. I was exciting to have a chance to shoot this weekend, it was really fun.

We also shot some scenics of the town of Bristol. It has a great little downtown that we spent some time in. There were a lot of great things to capture, Skip just kept on shooting and shooting. I didn’t mind I could tell he was having fun with it, I probably would do the same.

 

 

Overall Bristol was a great experience. Mainly because I felt I was starting to understanding the flow of things and I had a chance to shoot for a little bit. 

Las Vegas, NV

This was definitely one of the longer flights coming from Charlotte. As soon as I arrived in Vegas, we hit the ground running. First on the order was a skit with Tony Stewart driving a Stock car to the MGM Grand picking up people as if it was a taxi. We first went to a small parking lot outside the MGM grand to get ready and get some small sound bites of Tony. When we arrived at the MHM grand I noticed the flock of people that started to gather around us. I got asked a lot of questions about what we were doing and stuff like that, but I really had to ignore a lot of it. What was cool, was that I got to see Elvis and David Copperfield. Both Rode with Tony in the car and Copperfield showed Tony a magic trick on the car. I didn’t get any pics of Copperfield, I was too busy at the moment.

 

The next day I went solo with another cameraman named Brad, Cool guy. We went to the Nellis Air Force Base which is home to the Thunderbirds.

Driver Carl Edwards was going to fly with the thunderbirds today and see how many G’s he can withstand. The Magic Number is 9G’s, which is a heck of a lot! We filmed him getting ready and getting trained on the procedures. Safety talks, things like that. We then walked out onto the airstrip where the jets where all lined up. Carl and Jeff Hammond exchanged some dialogue and Carl went up in the jet.

When Carl came back were were ready to get his reaction and see if he made it to 9 G’s.

He definitely did, with no problems, obviously… he’s a race car driver. But I could tell on his face that it was a lot of fun. I really wish I could ride in one of those someday, they are really amazing machines.

The next big thing was to get ready for an interview with Jeff Gordon. Tom Wells Filled in as the DP for this and I was Main Audio man this time. I was so Nervous about this one because when I first heard I got this gig I thought in my mind how crazy it would be to go and put a mic on Jeff Gordon, and now the time has come.

We were doing the interview because Jeff had won last week in the Phoenix race, which was a big deal. So on my end I had to figure out how to mic up 2 people facing each other and run the audio to at least 2 cameras. I’ve thought about this before and knew how I would do it, but it feels different when you actually have to. Your mind starts going through all these checks and double checks and triple checks. This was pretty much exactly the same sat up a couple months ago when we did the interview with Terry Bradshaw. The difference was that now, I'm the audio man.

We had about 2 hours to set up, in a media room inside the infield of the racetrack. First, I helped out Tom as much as I could with setting up camera positions and lights and staging. About an hour before go time started breaking out my audio gear and running cables. As go time got closer I focused more on audio and making sure everything was working right and even prepping for anything going wrong as best as I could.

Finally Jeff Gordon shows up and after a few hello’s I go up to him and introduce myself and start getting that mic on him. My biggest worry at this point was the mic scratching, but he was wearing a cotton black polo, so I knew the material would help and I placed the head of the mic in between the two buttons of the polo shirt. I made sure to button the shirt as this would help keep the material from rubbing on the mic too much. After putting the transmitter on his belt, I tapped him on the shoulder and told him he’s ready to go. I raced back to my post and threw my headphones to listen for any rustling or scratching. It was clean! Whew.

The Interview lasted about 35 minutes and all the while I was happy that the audio sounded clean. I got worried a few times when the race cars outside started going around the track, but after a few nods from the producer, looked like everything was ok. In the end I was happy with my first big interview. You can see the final video clip of the interview here:

 Jeff Gordon Interview

Later that day another cool thing happened. After we where done at the track we wen to the Hard Rock café on the Las Vegas strip. We had to get some footage of the Jimmie Johnson concert. The rest of the evening we were in the Hard rock Café enjoying a concert with guest George Thorogood and the Destroyers. The main song we were waiting for was “Bad to the Bone” but after listening to a few songs, I didn’t realize how many of them I actually knew. It was pretty awesome, wow, what a day at work, one I won’t forget.

 

Finally race day came around and by now I know what is going on that day.

And finally, the view from my hotel room in Vegas.

….Heading back to Charlotte