A few weeks ago I was up at the Pikes Peak Hill Climb filming for Jeff Zwart and his Luminox Porsche GT3 Cup car with my bro Will Roegge. Jeff ended up setting a new world record in the Time Attack Class with a time of 11:31.095 – 30 seconds faster than the previous record holder, Rhys Millen. It was a big deal for me to shoot for such an accomplished Director, Author, Photographer and driver, so I had to step up my game. This proved to be a difficult task with 2:30AM call times, 7-11 breakfasts, between 11,000 and 14,000 feet elevation, crazy temperature swings etc. etc. etc. The “glamorous life” of a photographer!
While I was there, I met a really nice guy Brandon Parker that was a part of the 15+ person Red Bull Moving Images video crew. Upon checking out his site I saw he did something really cool- upload screencaps from recent projects before the final edits were cut. Post production usually takes a while, so these screenshots show some of the work in a timely manner. Will should have the video cut soon, and I will post the final video when its all said and done.
So, here are some of what I was capturing on the mountain with my camera at the 2010 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.
Recently I was hired to do shoot behind the scenes video footage for a NOS Energy Drink commercial. The commercial was based around the driving skill of 2009 Formula Drift Champion Chris Forsberg. For those not familiar with drifting, it is a judged motorsport that calls for drivers to control a high horsepower car while it slides sideways at high speed through a marked course. It is similar to rally racing, but is done on a closed course and judged on execution and style rather than who finishes the course fastest.
So the other day I ran into an old friend that does some work with Contour Cameras. He mentioned he had seen some of my videos and wanted to equip me with some of the latest and greatest POV cams on the market. I gladly accepted and looked forward to seeing what these cameras could do and how they compared to my Sony XHR-MC1 POV camera. The street price of $329.95 made these a lot more user friendly than the Sony- which cost about 10 times more than one of these cameras.
A few days later I had a knock at the door from the UPS man with 3 pretty large boxes for me. I was FLOORED when I opened the boxes and saw TONS of goodies from Contour Cam. Here is what the spread looked like:
A few months ago I was approached by a division of Hyundai called the ThinkTank. Its an online community of avid Hyundai enthusiasts providing feedback directly to Hyundai Motor America. With the success of the RM460 at the 2009 SEMA Show, they wanted to produce a video about the car. We wanted to do something unlike the traditional car clip- as this car was anything but traditional.
The RM460 was dreamed up by Rhys Millen – inspired by the Ferrari 599 FXX. He wanted to build his own mid-engine supercar for SEMA, so he took the 4.6 Liter Tau engine from the Genesis Sedan and essentially put it in the back seat. So much incredible fabrication and attention to detail went in to producing this car. We had a tight timeframe to work with- filmed this in 1.5 days at 3 different locations. It was a blast to film and to do something a bit outside of what our industry typically produces.
Here is a teaser video I put together for Rhys Millen Racing. They wanted to show the changes they made for the 2010 season and that the car is competition ready for the first race this week. There will be a full writeup about this shoot coming soon…
I have recently had the opportunity to create a video about the new RM460 – Mid-engine TAU V8 powered Hyundai Genesis Coupe. This video was created for an online focus group at Hyundai Motor America. The video is done and in Hyundai’s hand for the next week or so. As soon as I can share it with the world, I will.
Mr. John Pangilinan was around during the studio part of the shoot to take some behind the scenes photos. Here is a sneak peak until I can show the whole video…
Here is a quick POV video I did for Rhys Millen Racing at a Time Attack event at California Speedway. He wanted to show what it was like going around the track at 155MPH and give a season recap at the end of the video. Shot with a Sony HXR-MC1 and a Sony Webbie.
I made this video for Rhys Millen Racing. They take a new Hyundai Genesis Coupe to a Redline Time Attack event at Willow Springs Raceway. This was a test to see how the new RMR parts help to lower lap times with each group of additions. They started off with a stock car, got a base time and then started modifying everything from wheels, tires, intake, exhaust, differential and suspension.
The day was sooooo hectic that we never really had a chance to sit down and record interviews between each session telling about the modifications. I shot the footage during the event, running back and forth from the pits to the track, trying to get a different angle each session. I had to head down to RMR the next day to get a voiceover of what happened and match footage to the audio. Not ideal, but it worked out well to tell the story of the RMR parts.
This is a video I put together for my buddy Ian Blackburn from Learnaboutwine.com Ian is a very talented Wine Educator and holds high-end events all over LA. He wanted to put something together for sponsors of his program Subzero, outlining the benefits of wine storage and how it differs from wine refrigeration. Shot on location at Snyder Diamond in Pasadena. B-Roll by WIll Roegge.
So this is the big one that I have been working on for a while, but couldn’t talk about. Now that they have officially unveiled the car at the Chicago Auto Show, I can talk.
I have been doing a lot of work for Rhys Millen Racing in the past few months and he recommended my work to Hyundai. I have been helping out since before SEMA- creating a video of the “Art of Speed” car as it was being built. This was blasted all over the internet and at SEMA. After the great response from the media and consumers, Hyundai decided to go drifting with Rhys behind the wheel. This is where I came in.
We needed renderings of what the car was going to look like for the 2009 season. I used the studio photography from the Art of Speed car and built upon it to make the car look real so it could be painted, put on the RMR transporter and media CD’s for the Chicago Auto Show. See the process below. MANY painstaking hours went into this final product, with Rhys at my side for good deal of them saying “Move that higher, lower, bigger, smaller…”
Here is the final car image- I didn’t take this one…
Can’t forget the team transporter..
And the media CD Cover for the Chicago Auto Show:
So from this rendering came the final car. Hyundai hired me to shoot photos of the vehicle and also to make a video for the unveiling of the car at the Chicago Auto Show. Here are the results:
So from this came the video… Hyundai used this video as part of the unveiling in Chicago. They had PR people and Rhys talking about the project, showed the video and then pulled the silk off the car. This was debuted on Edmunds.com Inside Line concurrently with the unveiling of the car. Here are some shots of it happening on Autoblog. They were looking for something dynamic that showed the car moving… QUICKLY! “Sideways with lots of smoke” was the actual request… This was all shot in one afternoon, using my XH-A1 and Rhys’ HVX-100A, edited in Final Cut Pro and color graded in Color.
It has been an awesome project to be a part of. Hyundai is a great company to do business with and I am pretty stoked that they have given me creative license to do what I want. I am sure this is not the last time you will hear of me cranking out projects for Hyundai. Heck- I might even have some in the works as we speak- but of course I can only tell you later.
