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

Phoenix, AZ

Stepping off the plane, Skip picked me up and we heading to downtown Scottsdale, AZ to shoot some scenic shots of the area. Immediately I noticed the difference in the landscape and I could not help noticing the red mountains in the background of the city. Something else was missing that made this place feel unique, ah ha, no grass. Along the streets there wasn’t much greenery like I was used to being from the east side of the country. Here there was just a lot of red rock. I still wore a jacket as being in a t-shirt was still a bit chilly. With the lack of greenery, cracked wood, and cactuses, I could tell that some days this place could get hot!

Skip and I spent the afternoon shooting timelapses and scenery. I got a chance to learn more about how to shoot timelapses and I learned more about the Mattebox.

The matte box is the big square that fits in front of the lens of the camera and allows you to put various filters in front of the lens. The filters are usually glass and can be rotated in place. We used this technique at a rock formation. Getting a wide shot with the sky and rock formation can be tricky because the sky is many times brighter than the rock or shadow areas in the rock. We place a graduated filter in the matte box to shade the sky area of the frame. Skip was able to rotate the filter to line up where the sky transitions to the rock in the frame. You can actually see transition in the frame but it definitely looks pretty cool.

The next highlight of the weekend was an interview with the Daytona 500 winner, Trevor Bayne. Thankfully we had a long time to set up this interview and Skip had a pretty awesome idea for the background.

We went to Home Depot and bought 6 sets of 8ft fluorescent light fixtures. In the Interview room, we rewired the fixtures so the the fluorescent tubes would turn on while standing vertically in the room. Skip positioned these glowing vertical tubes throughout the room as a background and foreground. The challenge was that the lights were so bright that it made it a bit tricky to actually light Trevor. But Skip is pretty awesome and I think the finished result looks absolutely awesome.

Here is the final video: Trevor Bayne Interview

Back at the track we continued to shoot various footage of the cars in the garage. The cars are so unbelievably loud this close up. I made sure to always pay attention so that Skip or myself wouldn’t get run over as the cars would make their way to the track and back for practice. But sometimes they would get close.

Cars pulling out of garage

 

Finally race day came and we shot more scenic and time lapses of the race for the Fox to use for future use. It was a much shorter visit than Daytona but so far I definably liked Phoenix.

I was right there when Taylor Bayne spun out, I felt bad it happened for him after winning Daytona.

When we were at this posiiton, a crash occurred and the cars slid against the wall right past us! The smoke covered us and after it cleared Skip looked at me and said in a nervous tone “That’s never happened (In front of me) before”.

Daytona 500

Kicking off the NASCAR season with the biggest race of the year means it’s time to pull out all the stops and bring your A game. Seeing and experiencing the big race at Daytona is an experience not to be forgotten. Starting with the hanger shoot, where crews spent two days constructing sets, which would be used to capture drivers for various promo tidbits. Seeing the whole thing go together was an amazing site to see as grips, electricians, cameras, and lights were orchestrated together to create six different rooms inside an airplane hangar, each with its own theme.

Drivers would make their way from room to room spending a few minutes getting all the shots and sometimes some sound bites. Skip Clark used some new Ultra Prime Lenses mounted on his Panasonic Varicam to create a unique look and feel for his room titled “Portraits”. Sometimes using a Wally Dolly, he was able get some great shots of the drivers in a set that looked like the inside of a garage. What was incredible was the speed of the shoot. Over 40 drivers came in that day and we had only about 5 minutes with each of them to get the shots we needed. This required many set ups in a small amount of time.

The days leading up the race were a flurry of various shoots, ranging from interviews to skits created and acted by some of the NASCAR celebrities. One skit in particular was a mockup of the TV show “TMZ”. It was a multi-camera shoot with 8 people on camera. We also had a great time with a little race with R/C cars that were incredibly fast. Tom Wells tried to get some great lower angle shots and was often struck by the cars themselves as they raced around and around.

Skip Clark got a chance to try out his new camera, a Sony F3. Coupled with the new Ultra Prime lenses, we spent some time getting some great shots of Daytona. It was great to learn about different ways of pulling off some amazing time lapse footage, something Skip really likes to do and does very well.

Finally race day was upon us and the crowds filled the track. Most of the time, I was always trying to keep up and stay with Skip as he went through the crowds. I was ready to hand him any lens he needed throughout the day and made sure to do it as fast as possible. It was awesome to be there and experience it all, definitely challenging at times, but fun too, knowing that I got a chance to do a lot of things others might never get to do. A highlight of my time in Daytona would definitely be getting a chance to ride around the track in a limousine full of people, at 120mph! If Daytona is any indication of things to come, it’s definitely going to be a wild ride!

Daytona Week 1–Highlights

I have only a few hours tonight to have any time to myself, gotta get some sleep…..freakin tired. Its been a long week so far, spent a couple days with a grip crew setting up sets and spent a while day shooting some really cool stuff with some really cool NASCAR drivers such as Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhart Jr. I even got to see a mini daytona with RC cars. Above all I fanally met Skip Clark. Very Cool. I will write more about the details but I will leave you with some pictures for some highlights.

 

Skips Camera – Panasonic Varicam with Zeiss Prime lenses and Matte Box

Skip Clark with a sweet dolly move.

NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson posing for our shot.

More info to come later…….