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…

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.

Enjoy!

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…

Shot at El Toro Airfield in Irvine, CA.

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.

Here are some screenshots from a recent proposal (22 page bound presentation) I created for Rhys Millen Racing. This proposal was going to be presented to executives Hyundai Motor America regarding the 2010 season.

This was a fun project to work on because I had free reign to get as creative as I wanted. I felt that images of past performance would be a good backdrop for each section and help to set the theme. It was broken up into Past, Present and Future, showing where RMR has been, what they are currently doing and where they want to go. I also had the opportunity to write a large amount of the copy for the proposal.

Both myself and the client were very pleased with the way that it turned out. Even one of the HMA execs commented on how polished the presentation was. It is very rewarding to create something for a friend that will help them out with their endeavors.

RMR 2010 Proposal Cover

RMR 2010 Proposal- Sample Spreads

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.

RMR 2009 Drift Team Poster

I ran down to Rhys’ shop and took some quick headshots to incorporate into the poster. I used a hero image of the car from the recent El Toro shoot. Coincidentally, it was the last frame shot of the day, after team photos as the car was about to be loaded onto the rig. The light kept getting better and better as time went on, but try explaining that to a crew of people that had been working on the car for at least 14 hours a day for a month straight. Yeah, they wanted to get home and fast… Combined all that together with an image of some of the burned up rubber on the runway to add some character and VIOLA- poster…

Lots of projects that have been going on, so I will make my best attempt to slowly sprinkle them onto the blog… New video in the works too! More to come..

Wow, time flies when you are busy… Thankfully things have calmed down a bit, and life in starting to get back in order. So many things to post, so here are the highlights of the past month.

Old vs. New

So while I was at RMR filming the Genesis being built, Cole went to the swap meet in Huntington Beach and came across these gems:

Old Camera Gear

Okay- so maybe just the ones on the right… What are they you ask? Well the camera is a Kodak Vigilant Six-20.  Some of the info:

“medium format camera was manufactured between 1939-1949 and originally sold for US $38 (about US $560 in 2007).”

Some more photos:

Quite a contrast from my new Canon 5D Mk II..  More on that later…

The other find was a General Electric Dw-58 light meter:    Made around 1946 and at that time sold for $26.50.

Once again- quite a contrast between that and my Sekonic L-358 meter.  I have yet to try them out side by side, but from what I can see, the GE meter is still in working condition, just like the camera.  Thank you Cole for such an awesome purchase…  I can’t wait to load it up with 620 film and shoot some interesting pics.

OK- now for the new toy- the Canon 5D Mk II.  Wow is all I can say- for so many reasons: razor sharp photos, 1080P HD video, HUGE file sizes and being able to see down to people’s pores when  you take photos.  It is seriously amazing…  One major gripe- the old 5D battery grip does not fit this cam, and the batteries are different too.  Oh well, get to drop $400 on new batteries and a battery grip- but one problem…  The batteries are not available anywhere…  :(  I feel awkward shooting vertically with my hand twisted all around- yes, a stupid complaint, but once you are  use to having the vertical grip, its hard to go without it.

Here are some shots from a recent shoot for Hyundai of the cam in action:

Here is the first video I put together using the 5D Mk II and a 70-200 2.8L- IS.  Nothing special, but the video I am putting together as we speak will show some cool depth of field and crazy fisheye shots.

Speaking of new video- another piece of gear that I got to help out in the video making process.. Sony HXR-MC1

Got a chance to use it at Formula D Long Beach and testing at El Toro.  WOW this thing is awesome.  Full 1080 video and it records onto Memory Stick Pro cards.  I will splice some of this video into the new cut as well.

Ok- time to get back to work.  Hopefully I will not neglect the blog like I have been…