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.

PPIHC 2010- Early Morning Testing

PPIHC 2010- Waiting for the official time

PPIHC 2010- A rear view of a record run

PPIHC 2010- Zwart coming around Brown Bush

PPIHC 2010- Zwart in the S's

PPIHC 2010- Starting line on Race Day

PPIHC 2010- Engineers Turn

PPIHC 2010- Luminox Check before heading out

PPIHC 2010- Rounding Bottomless Pit

PPIHC 2010- Flat out at Ragged Edge

PPIHC 2010- Lower Gravel Pit

PPIHC 2010- Roegge 5D Incar Setup

PPIHC 2010- View from the Contour HD

PPIHC 2010- View from the Contour HD

PPIHC 2010- Pushing to the summit

PPIHC 2010- Pushing to the summit

Full video soon to come!

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.

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.