Following a year in the life of a Go To Team Apprentice.
I had a chance to have to have some fun outside in Charlotte, I snapped some pics to give an idea of what I’ve been up to here.
Spent a day at the US whitewater center here. Its great! I havnt tried the actual rafting yet, but I have tried the adventure climbs and the Mountain bike trails are some of the best around. US Whitewater center
I also have been running into a whole bunch of snakes down here!
This guy was just hanging out in the parking lot.
Had to start off with a good picture!
We went back to spend another day at the Navy Seals Camp. This time to find out if our reporter, Diane McInerney from “Inside Edition”, could hack it.
If was a full day of scaling walls, smashing through windows, helicopters, explosions and firing some pretty big guns. It was literally an action packed day!
My job was to run audio this day, as usual. This time it was a bit more intensive. I had 3 wireless mics on any 3 people at one time, depending on who would be talking next I had to be johnnie on the spot moving a mic to someone new. The audio ran wirelessly to the camera from my bag so Jimmy would have the freedom to move around. Since we were running around a lot of times it was awesome not to be tethered.
Jimmy at the Hands of a .50cal rifle. This thing is such a monster, your picking grass out of your teeth after firing this sucker. The ammo is the size of my hand!!
More on the story here:
One day I got a call to run audio for the Show “Inside Edition” doing a story on the training of the Navy seals. I was really excited about this shoot, who wouldn’t be! I set off to Chesapeake, VA where Paul Boyd from Inside Edition was going to go through some of the rigors of Navy Seal Training. It was an awesome day. Jimmy Hall was camera, and things went so smoothly that they hired us again to come out for round 2 next week. I’ll keep you posted on the conclusion, in the meantime follow this link for more on what happened that day with Paul.
Its been awhile since I’ve posted anything in this blog, lately I have had the chance to do some other shoots during the week in between NASCAR races. One was a little story for ESPN about an awesome 16year old soccer player that is well, awesome.
E:60 Indi Cowie from Brian Liburd on Vimeo.
Martinsville reminded me of Bristol. Both are located in about the same region and both tracks a pretty small, but the Martinsville track doesn’t have the high banking turns.
We definitely had a busy schedule. The main feature for this race was an interview with Kevin Harvick. This was a 3 camera set up with lights and all the fixings. We used the same insulation sheets for the background as we did in Daytona. I mean the same exact sheets, I have no idea how they lasted until now, but they work surprisingly well. I have become much more comfortable with audio. This weekend there were a lot of things we did with audio, and I've been happy with the results so far. I thing my Boom skills need just a tad more practice, Skip gave me a few more tips, but for one or two person interviews and sound bytes, I think I'm doing pretty well.
We had to set up very quickly for some driver soundbytes in almost the tiniest space imaginable. I walked in and stopped, this space was like 4X10 and it was basically a breezway.
It was amazing how Skip was able to quickly and efficiently light this tiny space and make it look as good as it did. Using the F3 with a 85mm prime lens had a lot to do with it as it helped soften the background to help provide some depth. It was only a bust shot, so we could get away with the small space.
I also tasted the Martinsville Hot dog. Its not bad, a little different than what I’m used too, the dog has more pink in it, topped with mustard and coleslaw.
Shooting scenics in Martinsville was pretty fun, we saw a lot of interesting things that made us laugh.
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 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.
