After a very quick trip, a few long flights, wonderful hospitality and a mad dash to get it edited in time, I am proud to present: Climb Attack Brazil.

This video is a follow-up to the highly acclaimed Climb Attack from the 2009 record setting run of Rhys Millen at Pikes Peak that was directed by my buddy Will Roegge. The video was AMAZING. Will was actually nominated for a Motor Press Guild Association award for the piece- up against Audi “Truth in 24″ and also a segment of Top Gear. It was a Herculean effort with Will and Josh running all over the mountain to capture footage and a demonstration of finesse and attention to detail in delivery. Lets just say to use the name Climb Attack in this video, I had big shoes to fill…

This was a section of the road, Serra do Rio do Rastro, that Rhys had the opportunity to drift his RMR / Red Bull / Hyundai Genesis Coupe up. Lets just say the view was INSANE. The road started in Lauro Muller, Santa Catarina, Brazil and ran for over 9km up the canyon and onto a plateau. We stayed at an incredible resort at the top of the road called Rio Do Rastro Eco Resort. Ivan and his staff were absolutely incredible and made the entire RMR / Red Bull team feel at home. We rode horses, ate great food, drank incredible wine and experienced hospitality of the highest degree.

We filmed for a total of 3 days, with some delays due to weather, filming Rhys drifting up each section and a Time Attack Run on Saturday. At any given time I was operating 12 cameras at once- 2 x 5D Mk II, an HVX200 and at least 5 ContourHD 1080P cameras oncar and 4 spread throughout the road. This was also a testing ground for the new ContourGPS video camera- linking GPS data to the POV camera footage. I was busy to say the absolute least… Additional footage was provided by Red Bull Brazil.

Scenery was amazing, Rhys’ skill behind the wheel was nuts- lets just say it was an amazing trip. I am very thankful to have been a part of it and now a part of the Climb Attack series. Lets just say that this will not be the last. Next time I will have more help and plan on making the next one much, much better.

Thanks to Red Bull Brazil, Rio do Rastro Eco Resort, RMR, ContourHD and anyone else that helped out with this project.

Here is the final edited piece:

I recently had the opportunity to head down to Santa Catarina, Brazil with the Rhys Millen Racing Team to document their RMR / Red Bull / Hyundai Genesis Coupe up an EPIC mountain Road called Serra Do Rio Do Rastro. This 156 turn 8 kilometer stretch of road is one of the most amazing driving roads I have ever seen. This is a teaser I put together for a full video debuting next week entitled, Climb Attack Brazil. I will document the whole trip in the next blog with the full video. I hope this clip shows quite how crazy the road is. -DC

As you may notice by the content of my blog, I do a lot of work with Hyundai and Rhys Millen Racing. There is always something fun and exciting to produce from the ground up. Combine that with my affinity for cars and racing, and every job is better than the last. Its also fun to know that I have been involved from day one, producing the original proposal on the program, designing the renderings of the car, shooting the teaser video and soon, heading up to PIkes Peak to watch this new car in action.

The car I speak of is the RMR Hyundai PM580. This vehicle is a purpose-built racecar designed to head up Pikes Peak Mountain faster than anyone has ever done before. Here is a video I shot of Rhys and his father Rod talking about the family history at Pikes Peak:

As you can see, the family has a history with the mountain- which hopefully the PM580 will add to, breaking the elusive 10 minute barrier.

I have done some renderings in the past for Rhys, building on top of existing images to propose a new design, a new racecar livery etc. This vehicle was a chance for me to start from literally the ground up and bring to life the design that Rhys had in his head. Here is the final product- days of work, 247 layers in a photoshop document and lots of coffee went into producing this monster.

RMR Hyundai Genesis PM580

With the exception of the wheels, the rest of the car is 100% Photoshop and Illustrator. I shot a photo of the wheels at the proper angle and dropped it into the composite to add a level of reality to the car. So now that you have seen where I ended up, lets go back to where it started- at the body shop.

The start of the PM580

The start of the PM580

These are two photos I shot of the car in process- big hunks of foam, bondo and fiberglass being sanded, shaped and formed into what would be the plug for the mold. Once the shape of the car is finalized the build the mold around these pieces, a positive and negative for the final carbon fiber pieces to be produced from. I digress… These photos would be the foundation for me to create the rendering of the new vehicle. So where to begin? I started by pulling this into Illustrator and making a line drawing over the top of the car:

Vector Drawings of the PM580

At this point is was time to produce the livery for the race car. This can be tricky when working with so many sponsors, as they each have their own guidelines for how their logo can be used. Some can’t be tilted, some have to be on blue, ALL of them have to be bigger… I have some tricks that I used with layer blending modes, opacity and overlaying grayscale layers to make it look like the logos are actually on the car and interacting with the light. I would tell you how, but then I would have to kill you! Here is an animation showing the build up process:

And here is a 50% screenshot to show the level of detail in the rendering- from the vents over the fender to the way the Red Bull logo interacts with the shading of the car. Notice on the right side of the image a small section of the groups and layers of the photoshop file:

Screen capture of the PM580 detail

As if that was not enough work, this is only the front 3/4 angle. I had to do this process 2 more times for the front and the profile! All the hard work paid off, as Rhys and Hyundai were both happy with the rendering. It ended up getting blasted to all the major automotive sites like Road & Track, Jalopnik, Autoblog and even the Top Gear blog!

Looking forward to the next project with RMR and Hyundai…

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.