A hot afternoon, hot cars, and cool guys. That sums up a recent EO Charlotte team building event in Greenville, SC. It wasn’t your grandfathers handholding and camp fire kumbaya gathering. This was a foot on the floor, heartbeat bumping, smorgasbord of skidding. It was fifth gear fun not just for the guys driving the BMWs.
The videographers had a blast too. It’s not every day we get to see successful business owners act like kids. These guys definitely were giddy sitting behind the wheel of 500 horsepower cars. The characters, speed, and beauty of the day made our jobs easy. We simply turned on our cameras, focused, and watched the wheels spin. Ok, there was a little more involved than that to produce the video you see above. This shoot had its fair share of challenges.
First, we needed to travel light. We primarily shot on one Canon 60d, a Cartoni tripod, a set of lenses, a mic pack, and one slider. We didn’t have time to set-up for shots or pre-plan for the production. We needed to think faster than the action on the track. By far, the best video came from the rain track. The glitter of the water, the reflection of the cars, and the interior action more than made up for the lack of speed on this particular part of the performance course.
There’s one shot, where we focused on the falling drops of water while out of focus cars skid through the frame. We used our Sigma 18-250 to achieve this look. The iris was opened to it’s max, we upped the shutter speed to 2000, and powered down the ISO to 100. The scene came alive. The depth of field makes this shot. The video almost looks as though its been slowed down. Trust us, it isn’t.
In post production, we wanted to replicate the look and feel of the TV show Top Gear. A car show that is known for its cars as much as its video production value. We utilized letter boxing, vignettes, and anamorphic flares in the finished product. This is a hard line to toe.
While this makes the video looks good, it can be too much. We didn’t want the post production work to take away from the action. Looking back, we would have liked to use our drone. How cool would it be to see the action from a birds eye view. We opted not to use it due to convenience. Our clients seemed to love the final product. We think it turned out well too. It was different than the videos we normally produce. It proved to us that we can produce hot video in multiple settings. Now it’s time to hightail it to the next project.
Equipment used: 3 GoPro Hero3 Black Edition, Canon 60D DSLR, Sigma 18-35mm, Tamron 10-24mm, Tamron 18-200mm, Kenovo slider and a Cartoni Alpha Tripod. Edited with Apple Final Cut Pro X
