Lessons

Lesson Info

One Man Band vs. a Big Band

First of all, we're going to look at some sort of long video clips along the left alluded to some projects over the last three days that I've realized it's important, that I actually show those projects so that you understand the context of my comments, but I thought the best analogy is when you talk about in the music world there's, the famous bob dylan dylan album cover and it's bob doing on the front of the album with you as a harmonica in his mouth and he's like playing a big guitar and he has a his foot paddle is kicking a drum and it's the one man band mentality is what it really is and theirs, and we keep on alluding to it, it's, you can be the one man band or you can be the bigger band. I don't want to say the big ben, but the bigger band and the bigger band could be you and your assistant where it could be you end five other people, yeah, and then there's the gigantic band, the orchestra style production, which is hollywood, and we're not going to talk about that because that'...

s another world it's not relevant, really to this class, what we're talking about is you're the one man band or you're the big band. Meaning a couple of people and so and I think, it's, this is our opportunity to really drill down on the difference between those two worlds, and so I thought one of the key points that I want to make is, you know, when you're shooting still in motion because that's really what this course is about it's about capturing still in motion on location simultaneously if you are that one man band there's a simple reality, which is you cannot if you were just a still photographer and you spent eight hours shooting a photo, you can't just go into that same location and shoot still in motion in that same eight hour period without some things without making a sacrifice so period. This is a statement this is fact in order to shoot still in motion on location, you either need more time where you need more people it's just that simple, like there's absolutely no way to do everything well alone. And so if you like in your personality, if you really love to work alone that's fine just really budget more time if typically you would have done it in eight hours now you're going to do it in sixteen hours if you're going to do it well, you just can't do both both well at the same time where the quality is going to suffer or the quantities going to separate or both will suffer mean, and you just can't produce enough. So one of the realities from me is a still photographer who transitioned into the video world as I've and I'm still not perfect at it. Sometimes I'm around my video buddies and I say something and they just look at me with their eyes crossed because they have no idea what I'm talking about you learn this new vernacular, you kind of have to learn this new language, you know, I can think of early edits with dane where I would sit there and I would say something like, uh, I'm actually what would a great example you can you can you stop down that shot or can you burn? We just have a vernacular in the still photography world that doesn't always translate to video world and and the same mister in the video world if you're coming from that world and trying to transition still world there's just a different language and one of those big learning curves for me was, you know, for twenty years I started taking pictures when I was thirteen years old I'm now thirty seven years old for the better part of my life the better part of my career, the way I won jobs there was awarded jobs was based on a print portfolio set of still images twenty two forty images that an editor, a client would look at those pictures and said, cory, we like your portfolio, we'd like to hire you to do a job. And then I slid into the motion world that I was having a ton of fun doing it, and I realized rome, I actually have to do this thing called the rial. And now it's been gosh, four years that I've been very seriously in the world of motion and telling stories in the motion world as well as in the still world. And for the first time, I had to put together with it's my portfolio on emotion, world and that's called a riel, and so I thought it would be very valuable to actually show my riel, and I'm going to provide some self critique right now, I know that this is too long. I mean, this is that it's hard to edit your own work. So dana and I, we were home for the winter, and so we decided, hey, this would be an opportunity to actually cut something when we have free time, the snow is falling, we weren't traveling a lot. And so first of all, thank you goes out to dane and I'm going to reiterate what was just said during the intro to this course. A lot of what I do, especially in the motion, a world more so than in the still photography world it's about a team there's a group of people that are standing there with me that it wouldn't happen without their help. Oh, now I'm going to show you some examples of that one man band style of production are close to a one man band style of production, but you know, when I'm very conscious and I suggest you guys do the same it's all about that camaraderie and it's about attributing, uh, attributing the work that does others air doing and showing showing respect for what they do. So I'm going to show you my first riel not many people have seen this, by the way, we just put it up on our website and watch this from the perspective of this is now my port awful, you know, if you're coming from a still photography world, this is now what I'm showing clients when I going to be a director for a tv commercial or from trying to direct a corporate spot or actually or be the dp on that corporate spot. So we're going to sit back it's about two and a half minutes or three minutes, and then we'll dive back into take some questions on the real, and then we're going to go into a few more projects so and I guess actually the point that I wanted to make this is very important. As you watch this, you're going to see footage from one man band productions were just me out there alone hanging on the side of a cliff or in some wild location or shooting lifestyle and your going to see clips that come from the quote unquote big band productions. And this is what's so special about this course and living in two thousand thirteen it's really damn hard to see the difference between what came from the one man band production and what came from the big footprint production and that's incredible and that's, because the tools are still readily available, right? We all have access to these tools cameras that allow us to tell compelling stories in a very easy to learn format and technique and in a form factor that's, easy to manipulate. So that's a really key piece to this riel, you're seeing footage that came from multi hundred thousand dollar productions, and you're seeing footage that came from me out there with my friend shooting for fun alone, and it all made it into this portfolio, so the message is the limiting factor is not I don't have the tools or I don't have the money. It's do you have the ideas? Do you have the passion? And you have the time. Here we go, it's about two and a half minutes this video way take away from this and I'm gonna hit this home a few times you're saying I told you my story in the first session I told you when I picked up a nikon d ninety and I went out and I shot on el capitan what's so amazing to me about looking at this realist. This is three years of work, three or four years of work I mean it's this opportunities huge the opportunity to go out and learn this skill set the ability to shoot compelling motion content in conjunction with still content and it's part of what our future really looks like. So that's one thing that you're going to think about when we when we all log off of creative live tonight, and we we go home from this live audience. It's the future is ours if the future is ours, there's never been a better time to go out and pave your own way it's no one knows exactly what that future looks like, but there's this thing called the internet and it needs a lot of content. And where the guys, the storytellers that have the control to do that, they have the ability to do that. And that content comes in the form of still photography, video, audio, and written words, and fifty percent of that is still in motion, and so there's a huge opportunity there. So let me I'm goingto die gress for a second, and go back to pakistan. I've alluded to this pakistan project several times, and I feel like it's worth actually showing you some of the content from pakistan. Last summer I had a knopper tune ity teo and shoot a project which actually had multiple outlets. It was actually the underwriter of the project was man move, which is a giant swiss outdoor company. They manufacture hardware, and also clothing for the mountains. And I was going with a good friend of mine, david lama to pakistan. And david is one of america's or not. America is one of the world's great alpine climbers, and not only had his roots were actually in free climbing is one of the great young free climbers sport climbers. And then he went on to the big mountains, and so I I actually made a trip to pakistan with david and his partner peter ortner. And what was so cool about this trip? Actually, for me is both an athlete, but also as a photographer and filmmaker was for all of us, it would be the highest we've ever gone in altitude, and so I had never worked above twenty thousand feet, and peter and david had neither of them had ever been above twenty thousand feet. So is a unique opportunity and actually nerve racking as well, because these guys three hundred sixty days a year, they're athletes, they're out training for me, you know, except for those five days off a year, I'm a filmmaker and a photographer who likes to be outside and likes being active, so there was a really fear, actually, that when I got to pakistan, I didn't know what I would experience a twenty thousand feet, and I assumed that these guys would certainly being away ahead of me, and I'm constantly trying to keep up, but going to a place like pakistan, where it's really remote and you need a super unique set of skills created a unique set of challenges. You know? I told you a bit of this story of trying to do this interview with david lama, where I was trying to be oprah at the same time that I was trying to be the camera operator. And but that was the only option you can see me a lot of what I was doing in the few of its me alone with the athletes I did actually have justin in full disclosure I two other folks on the trip with me I had remo messina who's one of the great rc helicopter pilots he's twenty one years old he's a lives in switzerland and he's part of a company called daddy cam and remo actually came to pakistan at the last minute the folks at man mood on their marketing team said, hey corey, we'd really we've seen all the helicopter work that you've done and it seems as though you know how to manage having an rc helicopter on a production and in my head I'm thinking are you kidding me? You guys were going to try to send an rc helicopter to pakistan that just sounds like insane there's no way it's gonna work and of course after I tried to talk him out of bringing an rc helicopter to pakistan and actually I said in quotes this is just going to be a big waste of money to send an rc helicopter pilot to pakistan for thirty days you know, the odds of getting any usable footage you're pretty low just based on my experience and you know, being very swiss my contact amendments it okay, we will send the helicopter pilot and and and then also I had a good friend of mind, andrew peacock, who a very talented photographer also with the roar photos. But israel his day job is he's an emergency room doctor and spends a lot of time high in the mountains, guiding tracks and different expeditions around the world. So that was it was it was myself at an assistant and andrew's riel task was to be in base camp managing assets, and when we're shooting in and around based base camp, he was there to assist me. But we knew that as soon as you went to advance camp, andrew is going to feel often stay in base camp. Remo wasn't going any higher than base camp, except to fly a helicopter, so ninety percent of this project was me when you're seeing like my camera, all of my mistakes, like out of focus interviews, and so you can see I'm using this super custom lightweight crane that was the first generation of that feather light crane that we showed you the other day from light pro gear now it's, a carbon fiber tripod. But this was really this was a game changing devices. I was trying to adapt and use equipment that I could carry on my own back. Without the support of others it's a lot I knew that the bulk of this expedition the core story was going to unfold when it was me alone up in the mountains with david and peter so here we go so we're up in the mountains and the deliverer bols we're still photography and video I think I said this the other day when we were talking about pakistan the goal was to bring back enough content for a television show at it in the uk that would get distributed globally and also enough content to tell a short film festival at it of the story on now is for a film tour and in the in europe it's the largest film so I think it's called the adventure I'm gonna blow it but if you're interested you can email me and I can give you the name I think it's the adventure film tour we're just google adventure film tour europe so my my philosophy in my approach on in pakistan was that when I was in a unique location because the priority seemed to be video I need to deliver a handful of great still images that could be used for ad campaigns or in print and editorial publications my rational always was first roll video and I would shoot the video until I feel like a captured enough of the scene the dyke attack should go back and someone could edit with that content and then as soon as I felt like I actually captured in a video content then I would you know, it's hard to do this at twenty thousand feet out run ahead and then set up and try to shoot a couple of still images in a situation like this whether actually walking on a ridge line you know? And I'm tied to them, right? I mean, they're my climbing partners once we left base camp so you know, david's in the front peters in the back I think so I'm actually now I'm on the lead and I'm tied into the harness and so I would roll video and then as soon as I felt like I would I had the shot and it's a hang on guys and I'd actually flip the camera and I saved the hang on guys because I had to use those sparingly I couldn't constantly say hang on guys, I want to shoot a picture it's if I really thought it was great so I'm doing a lot of editing in my head I'm looking at where we were walking down this ridge and I'm saying to myself, is this gonna be a beautiful shot or is this gonna be a waste of time and it was a beautiful shot then I would decide alright guys hang on let me make it the video clip and the still image you know, situations like this this is kind of where I made a handful of nice images were hanging were way up high right now where nineteen thousand feet probably and you can see the great train go tower in the background and you know you can see those those pieces of webbing that air coming off to the to the left of the bottom of the frame that's me right that's that's connected to my harness and I'm clipped into the saying it same anchor and so often times they would be having some dialogue about you know what they see above and so I'd be in a horizontal format and I went really like I had two lenses at a d six hundred because it was the lightest camera that I could get my hands on and I had a seventeen to thirty five millimeter lens and the seventy two, two hundred millimeter to eight and I really wanted to bring the seventy two, two hundred millimeter f four lens but I made a huge mistake I flew to pakistan and when we're sitting in islamabad, it occurred to me that I didn't bring an nd filter that was the size of the seventy two, two hundred four lens and so the consequences I had to bring much, much heavier lens up on the wall with me and it came I came really close to actually just saying forget it, I'll just leave seventy two, two hundred bring one ones and one camera, but that just felt really risky to me. If I bang the lens, I would just be out of luck. I'd have no option s o but in these situations I would actually first just record video, so they're having a dialogue. Um, tensioning the next trap against my neck. I don't have a tripod so elbows against my chest, neck strap tension, and I'm recording these scenes at an emmy one microphone on top of the camera, and as soon as I felt like I captured something that was engaging, then I would switch into still photography mode and start acting like a photojournalist and making interesting pictures. You know, I like to say that in photography, the more uncomfortable you on this is the same with filmmaking, the more uncomfortable you are, the better the pictures you're making and a great example of that is, if you're sitting here at beaver lake and you're in here drinking beers and watching the sun set, it means you're missing the great light you're missing the great opportunities if you're sitting in here sipping coffee while the sun is rising and you know, missed is raising a fog is rising off like you're missing the shots. And I think that applies no matter where you are, whether it's in this house that beaver lake in outside of washington, outside of seattle, we're up in the character or mountains with david and peter till in this shot, I think we're at about eighteen thousand feet and we're actually sitting, they dug a snow cave really windy. You can't see that because all of the fresh powder snow it blown off, you know long ago so it's just kind of like ice just frozen snow and we just needed to get out of the wind were already sleeping pretty high. We have headaches, it's cold, we didn't bring enough clothing, which we're trying to go fast and light, like carried everything on our back up to the sun terrace where were actually sleeping, and I know what's happening, and I'm trying to convince myself, stop complaining core, just stay outside of your sleeping bag and shoot pictures and shoot video, but believe me, I'd much rather be in that snow cave right now warming up t to have dinner, but instead I know that the sun is setting in the background and there's this fantastic photo and video opportunity, and so instead I stood out there for another twenty minutes, you know, to the sons that's pretty slowly when you're that high and I'm standing out there shooting still photographs waiting for that sky to just get darker and then talk going into video mode doing a clip talk, going back into stole photography mode even to this advanced base camp, I didn't bring a tripod you just have to make those decisions even for video. I've just got to make this work even without the tripod you know we live in this time and I keep on saying it, but I just want to give you a clear illustration of this point. We live in a time where the devices that were using whether it's your mirror lis camera, whether it's your d six hundred year d eight hundred your d for whatever camera you're using, we can literally be shooting a still photo and then press another button and we're recording video simultaneously of the exact same scene. This trip to pakistan was kind of a game changer for me, and I actually think a bit of a game changer in the climbing world as a whole because one I was using a device that hasn't been not readily available for for too long, which is a dslr that's video enabled a couple of years and the guys who brought them on everest but the reality is we also brought that rc helicopter and I'm going to show you what we did with the rc helicopter we brought back content from the carrick or mountains that the world has no one on the planet has ever seen before. And it's, because of the technology, you know, people have been his passionate. I've been for a long time they've been more talented or equally is talented, but it's now the tools that are allowing us to tell better stories. So look at this still photograph now unless I screwed up my keynote presentation. Watch this clip. This is like virtually the same clip and admittedly no tripods. You can see the camera wobbling a little bit this's this's a little bit of rc helicopter footage. So this is flying at about nineteen, eighteen thousand feet. You can see david walking on that ridgeline that's me in the background just out of the shot and so what's incredible about this thiss content and believe me, this is one of the world's greatest athletes and pointing the camera and he looks like he's going to die. I felt exactly the same way I mean, my head was pounding and I felt dehydrated. We're getting baked by the sun, but I knew it was important that I kept the camera and continued to shoot, so I thought what I would do is actually show you the entire film festival at it. I just said that, you know, hear it these air these moments, right? I want to be doing the same thing. These guys feel terrific right now. So did I, but I'm continuing to shoot video on deciding when am I going to roll video? When am I going to shoot? Still photography? You know, here it is the sun is long from setting in this shot, but I'm still I'm already standing out there in the wind doing it tight shot I did the wide shot. I'm shooting time lapses. I'm just trying to really capture enough content to tell the story so let's see, let me just pause this for a second. So what we're about to watch actually is the film festival let it and the name of this tour was the european outdoor film festival tour our film toward that's what it's called european outdoor film toe. So this toward this film actually went to about one hundred fifty locations in europe this past year, and then now it's on the film festival circuit in the united states and actually all over the world. So I want to show this it's it's fairly long, I think it's close to seven minutes long, it's in english, this one of the trans I did interviews in english with david and his partner peter but I've told you enough stories now about this trip, so I want you to keep all of that in mind and as you watch this film just understand that like we're shooting at twenty thousand feet, most of this footage is coming from one camera the same d six hundred that I have on at this course and the same seventeen to thirty five millimeter lens with one variable andy filtering and anyone microphone and the point is and I'm not telling you that this is the most compelling story in the world I don't think it is, but I think you'll get a taste of this is one man band style and then we're going to go into some kind of bigger band productions so this is about seven minutes long if you're thinking about cracking open that beer because it's five o'clock somewhere this is your time to run to the refrigerator and do that and here we go a new perspective. What did I just do? That wasn't right way and by the way, I might occasionally jump in and say something over the video, but we'll keep the video on screen the whole time my name is david lama a started climbing when I was around five years old when peter holland I've discovered my talent I said my focus for a long time on competition climbing basically for ten or fifteen years or so at some point, I guess I wanted to wearing something new. That's, basically, why I changed into, uh, the role of alpine climbing david's. Background is competition climbing is arguably one of the best in the world, and the way he sees thes mountains is radically different than kind of their mountain years of my generation. Last year, my partner peter and I found a couple of pretty big roots and the herbs, and this year we managed to free climb sarah torah, but eternal flame is something pretty much new to us, basically because it's just so so that's, obviously the rc helicopter that you just saw me, you can see us standing on the roof right through this little village, which was pretty cool or to me, it's just one of the best place to come to because it's got some amazing rock it's, one of the coolest rock spires I know everyone knows about it. Everyone talks about it and there's many people that come here to try highest I've ever seen wass block employs trust seven hundred meters higher and the they compare. Wei if conditions will allow it, I will definitely try to free climb the triangle tower, because to me, free climbing is just the most natural way that's what I've been doing ever since I've been in climbing way more intends up here in the altitude it's just hard to breathe, it's just a whole different thing of climbing just sitting love this huge corn ice last just so are some of that footage was not I didn't grow up with those guys that was just a point of view footage from a little uh point of view camera like fifty years maybe or loathe it was just so much snow and the sun was shining and snow's getting wet honey, wait they came back to base camp they ingested they digested the information and how their bodies felt they analyzed what went well what didn't go so well probably one of the main challenges will be finding the right conditions on the wall because in the night the water that ran down the day before it can freeze and so that all the cracks are iced up and during the day the cracks to get wet so it's kind of like way need dry conditions conditions to freak will definitely not be good think with peter and I are going to do is just try to get up there any from the knot at the top of the go away there's snow the season there was a lot of snow so then you switch to cram bonds and climbed through the notch at which point you climb sixty eight pitches to get to the top of the sun terrorist there was so many parties trying to climb this route, there was austrians that was koreans. It was a british party that was south africans. So this is footage that literally no one had ever seen on the planet like the idea of getting a helicopter that close to the triangle tower just no one had ever dreamed of and it's just totally insane that we pulled it off most well known routes of the entire car. Korn range is eternal flame, high altitude and the conflicts climbing makes it an extreme challenge to free climb. No tripods, some kind of wobbly but that's, probably from altitude sickness, is well as just no tribe. Ah, fell prey destroyed with kind of den. Imagine climbing to the summit the next day, way working climb. The next day those guys were vomiting and felt awful when I woke up on son for as the next morning, I felt great. I don't know why, but had no headache. Uh, and I I always just ready for climbing way everything's hand. Hillman is the best of my ability. Tryingto like I'm hanging on a rope you're at nineteen thousand feet and just trying to lock up the shop and I can climb so fast is because we're so systematic about things way really calculate how much weight we have with us. Peter and I had only broad for bars and a liter of water for both of us on uh so we're trying to go really lightweight, but at some point the snow conditions just made it impossible to free climb same place carrick form way theo one of the other things you see is that's k too, by the way, the second highest mountain in the world that pyramid in the background this is probably my favorite shop from the entire trip I just couldn't believe you know, I'm hanging up on the wall with the same walkie talkie radios that we were calling to jim's trailer with and the reality is I would literally call on the radio down to base camp and they were getting into a situation where this could look fantastic. And then remo, who is looking through ski goggles, would fire up his rc helicopter and almost from a mile away would fly the rc helicopter up to altitude that would take about I think two or three minutes and then he would try to find us right before just little dots on the wall he would find us on the wall and then I would steer him with the hell I would say we were actually you know farther north farther north, farther north and then sure enough he would find us and do a few passes because he only had enough battery power for a few passes and then of course you would have to like descend down into the valley and when you look at the raw footage from the video on the helicopter it's crazy it looks like a torpedo he would do the passes and then actually this is worth this is pretty incredible footage that's david, peter and I on the summit there and we called them again he had about two minutes of flight time, so you know here's keep your eye open you can actually see you'll see the helicopter fly by at one point there it is there in the background that little dot that looked like a dust spot there it is again just buzzing around that's ethic, right? No one and no one in the world has ever seen that shot that has never been done until we went to pakistan and flew that rc helicopter. You know, the challenge of actually bringing a really helicopter into the carrick or um it's not that it couldn't be done would be hugely expensive and would be really dangerous like when you start flying child first around peaks and as close as they were getting to the wall, it would be really dangerous stuff and so that's from from maybe david saying something profound I'll let him talk that's something that you can just forget about on keep here's here's a shot there's gonna be a shot of peter remo flying the helicopter I think in these credits so when we see if it actually plays after this shot so you can see that's the back of remo's head right there in the black and he's wearing a pair of snowboard goggles so he has blacked out snowboard goggles. He took the lenses out and he has two little monitors inside of his goggles and he has some heavy duty antenna unlike a kmart tripod in the background and it's pointing straight up that's the tower that we climb that's trang go tower the nameless tower in the background and then he has this home made job there like wooden props and it's literally taking off in this shot because that just he actually set up another camera. You know, we were way up on the tower. This was probably like summit day and so he has another camera filming himself flying or maybe andrew, my assistant was was shooting this but the reality is so he's looking through these goggles and he would fly up this valley try to find us on the wall and then start capturing content or footage for a minute or two, and then immediately here dive bomb down the canyon so that he had enough about battery power to figure out where he was relative helicopter so that he could recover it. I was I was so skeptical that we were actually gonna be able to fly a helicopter in the carrot corn that it actually I was was like a joke when we landed in qatar on the way to pakistan, I met remote for the first time and it's this, you know, young swiss kids, super smart electrical engineer, but flies rc helicopters, I was I was almost like laughing at him, and I'm glad you're joining us. I mean, maybe we'll get a shot or two, and I'll never and kind of every step along the way and the expedition you would take out, he had two helicopters with him, we take out helicopters and you no fly over the jeep road, and then he flew over the village, and each time I'm thinking, this is cool like we're getting more content. This is gonna be great for the for the edit and then it's, one of the greatest moments from this entire trip, we got to base camp and it's day one, we got there fairly fairly early and we're setting up tents and there's a bunch of expeditions from other countries it's kind of a base camp that you use for lots of different peaks in the area and and re mose you know, super excited anybody swiss he's calm about it and he sets up one of his helicopter and he says, I just want to see how I can fly how high and within thirty minutes of being in base camp in building his helicopter he flew over the great tango tower, which is it a few hundred feet higher the nameless tower and I stepped back and I thought, holy shit this is going like we're about to change filmmaking history in the mountains like this is unbelievable what's going to come out of this expedition and then I was even more florid of course when just all of the chips fell into place and on the final day our summit day kind of a perfect day there wasn't too much wind because you can see like it doesn't take much to ground an rc helicopter humidity when something goes wrong electronically. And so the reality is I mean, I was of course hugely relieved when we're standing on top of that tower and I'm seeing this helicopter flying around and I'm thinking this is just going to be unbelievable and then of course quickly your minds which is too as long as the helicopter doesn't crash and we can actually recover the card and then your mind switches to oh, man, and we still need to get down off this tower and so anyhow, so I just wanted to give you a taste of that's that's as close to a one man band in the last twelve months in terms of what I've shot, where it's once we left and again, you can see the footage gets a little more like loose and sloppy because I'm under a lot of pressure, we're at altitude, I'm trying to make a lot of decisions on I'm sort of being the director, I'm being the cinema photographer, I'm being a climber and I'm doing all of those things at once, and I'm actually coordinating an rc helicopter, communicating with the athletes, trying to feed myself and so understanding that, you know, you understand you'd give up, you give up a lot of opportunity, but the flip side is it allows you to go and tell stories the stories that you're most passionate about because you don't have to lean on others for help. So I also thought it would be fun to show this project because this was actually sean haverstock flew the helicopter and assisted dane was running a lot of the was dp ing this project. And then we did all of the post, so this was for red bull. We're going to totally switch gears, and now we're like a medium sized band, right? It's we've got three guys on stage, and occasionally we grabbed other people to help carry year, so we worked with rebecca rush rebecca's, one of the great well, you saw her, and why the film that we did for nikon and so rebecca, basically she sponsored by red bull and red bull came to us and said, we want you to tell a rebecca rush story, we want she's going to try to break a record on the kokopelli trail, she's going to try to ride it faster than any human being male or female, and sadly, during the ride, rebecca actually crashed in the middle of the night and dislocated her fingers with the skin, and she was on target to beat the mail record, but in the end, just she still crushed the female record on this trail. So when red will describe this to me that my first reaction was, well, this sounds like a gigantic production you can't do live, you can't do realty. I'm coverage of a point to point race without having multiple camera crews and, ideally, a helicopter with the sin of flax mounted to the bottom of it. And so I I then began to think a little outside the box they said, well we can't do that I mean they presented the budget there wasn't a ton of money but it sounded fun because we got to work with rebecca who was a really close friend and was in a beautiful backdrop right that's one of the rules if there's a great backdrop you can create great times content there's a great character you khun great it helps you create great content so we went teo moab, utah she was going to write from moab, fruita, colorado and so our approach was to actually cover the real event so we would do the best we could to follow her in a truck and when there was opportune times we take out the cameras and shoot and when when we couldn't capture something we would go back and do pickups and the pick ups were really going to be after she completed the event we'd go back for, you know, twenty four hours, thirty six hours and just go and shoot some additional beautiful footage but on the correct course like we would go to like those locations and hopefully in better light because when you really racing, sometimes you're there midnight and sometimes you're there at high noon and that doesn't necessarily make for great content now red bulls expectation is also for both still in motion so this was this is what dane shawn and I do a lot of them. And where there's a larger group of us, you know, there's a handful of guys that we work on projects like this together, ah lot. And so you're going to see how there's a still image there's also a corresponding video shot. We put mohr energy on this shoot actually into the motion component than we did the stills these stills were almost an afterthought. The client wanted stills, but motion was their top concern. They wanted to make certain that they had a beautiful still I'm in a beautiful little video project that they could publish online. So again, this is near the castleton towers it's part of the kokopelli trail. A fair amount I was surprised was actually on asphalt, but again with long lenses, we could create pretty compelling shots. I think the cool is shot from the entire project is on ly in the video spot. It was like a four hundred millimeter shot where rebecca rides around the corner of the road and in the background you actually see the castleton towers compressed in the background. And so we did a lot of stuff we would sit on top of a car and drive next to her, and so you know, I'm shooting at a fifteenth of a second so the background is motion blurring but rebecca sharp and the way you do that is you shoot like nine hundred photos or one hundred fifty photos can you get that one frame where she happens to be sharp but all of the background is blurred? You know, a little bit of the in classic red bull style at the end of the event they set up like a big arch and they created this festival but we didn't care about that so my pitch to red bull was let's actually make this more of like a self exploration for rebecca I want I'm going to write some words worked with rebecca to actually write a voiceover so initially I thought just like we did with jim I thought we would film rebecca reading her lines to the camera and maybe occasionally would cut to rebecca's face in the piece but the way it played out when we're in moab and in fruita was we just flat ran out of time we're so busy trying to shoot the b roll that on the last night before we had to fly out at six in the morning it was midnight we sat in our hotel room with rebecca with that same task cam recorder and a microphone and with a glass of whisky in her hand after, you know, breaking a world record and then shooting for two additional days we had rebecca read the lines in a hotel room which by the way hotel rooms tend to be pretty good because there's a bunch of you know curtains on the walls bad carpet so it's a pretty sonically perfect space actually for recording audio but of course I needed to still capture these images in the content which showed there was a real record being broken so I told you that she split her finger open she dislocated her finger like four hours into the ride and then being to such a stud she just kept on riding she rode right through the pain and then checked into the emergency room after she passed out at the finish line so that also delayed our shoot by the way she passed out at the finish line while she was like taking photos went to the emergency room for the entire evening so delayed our start so it's your always being adaptable in the field right? We're so excited to go and shoot all of this b roll but she's in the emergency room were concerned she wanted me to ride the bike I think the finger surgeon they sent it to the hospital and he said, oh you shouldn't touch your bike for like six months she said okay all right thank you then she came out of the hospital and I got right on her bike for a photo shoot so that's the sign of a dedicated dedicated athlete so we shot most of the normal footage on nikon dslr, and then you're going to see a lot of heavy duty slow motion footage and that was shot on the red epic. So just to proactively answer that question, we weren't using twixt er teo to shoot the super beautiful epic footage that came out of this there's dane, I think he's rolling in it. That might be a dslr, maybe that's the red right there, like ultra slow motion and again shooting and really low light made for some cool pictures. The car was going about forty miles an hour, but I have my foot hooked under the roof rack. Now I'm only kidding. But again, like searching for angles, right, it's, your moving around your subject and trying to find his much opportunity to make cool pictures as possible. So obviously, if I have my eye up to the do you find drum actually shooting still photos those shawn shawn did. So that was another great story. It was super windy, the entire shoot like we had, like gale force winds, the entire shoot. And finally, on the last night of the entire project, sean carried the helicopter. Patience is a virtue in this world. Sean carried the rc helicopter out to the location. We had a nikon one muralist camera mounted on the main on the gimbal on then we mounted a gopro directly underneath the nikon one camera, and it was getting sandblasted. I mean, I think we're ruining shawn's motors while we're waiting, hoping that the wind would die and just saying, blowing across the desert and I mean literally an hour before dark, maybe thirty minutes before dark. Miraculously, the wind just died. It, like went to no wind. Shawn ran to the car like sprinted a mile, grabbed the helicopter, ran back out. Or maybe it was covered with jackets. I can't remember, but got the helicopter, ran back out and literally did like three passes with the helicopter, and you'll see when I show you this video, those air, some of the best shots of the entire project, and it was perseverance and being patient and and having the guts to fly after your helicopter just got blasted by wind, which made some of those shots, and there's dane picking off some beauty shots of the trail below. And so here's, watch this about a two minute piece. We owe there's only a start finish on the struggle in between you I'm always trying to go faster further harder a e o like finding out what I made a how hard I can push yourself way it's me alot a complete isolation one of my main way go here and now just the next pedal stroke just the next one call one mission nos e oh my thoughts are simple push push three little girls there is no option to turn back way how to deal with a thin dust my way scorching sun eyes closing muscles cramping way gotta stop call target or a rabbit to chase is to use aslak and amazing e I am my toughest competitors I'm my only competitors I'm not addicted to the podium for the fish thief journey is true way coming out the other side of the question is what e finish line I sometimes it's official but most of the time it's my line in the sand way tha that's my e yes that's why I ride to push myself to challenge myself way had to put in I'm remembering a lot more of the story as we watch it we actually had to put in all that black and white footage at the end so that the naysayers would realize whoa there was actually a really event that unfolded that she actually broke the record and I would say that thirty percent of that footage was the real footage, like it's. What we shot. Some of the most spectacular footage, in fact, was, and I think I described it the other day. When you see the full moon and we shot it, you just see her head lamp, that's, the real mccoy that's, you know, on during her event, she's out there, riding alone, riding harder than I've ever witnessed, someone ride. It was unbelievable how fast she could ride uphill, but that was authentic, real footage that we captured while shooting her actually her ride. And then we went back and recaptured content that we thought would be more stunning, so that it was more of a poem. In terms of this is what she's thinking about. This is what goes through an athlete's head while riding.