Electric Bike/Chair Dolly Cam

During the shooting of Beauty Day, Robert rigged up a sweet dolly by attaching a trailer with a chair stuck to it on to the back of his electric bicycle. I made use of it to get some sweet shots of Ralph on his electric skateboard. Check it out:

Tuesday, June 16: Equipment Pick Up, Face Casting

So today was supposed to be the day where we filmed Ralph buying back a bunch of his old video equipment he had previously sold to a local production company. We made the drive to Welland and entered the building only to find a couple of confused people who had no idea what we were doing there. Our contact was late, so we figured we'd wait outside and he would take us up and show us around. After waiting a few minutes, the woman we'd previously talked to about the shoot came outside and said she called our contact and he claimed to know nothing about our shoot. Needless to say, this was all a bit confusing. We told her what our intentions were but she still seemed unsure about the whole thing.

Eventually, our contact's car pulled up. Ralph introduced us and the guy claimed to have no idea about our shoot. At this point it was clear there was some sort of miscommunication. Alright, so no big deal. If he really has an issue with us shooting inside of the office, we'll just shoot Ralph taking the equipment out of the building and loading it into his car. Problem sloved! The guy responds to this idea with a dead stare followed by a very cold 'I'd rather you didn't'. Then, an awkward 'I don't even know if he'll be buying it.', as though he isn't sure whether or not he's even willing to sell back the equipment. At this point, I start thinking 'Well what the fuck does he think we set up this appointment for?' Ralph insists that he is interested in purchasing the equipment and wants to take a look, so I tell the dude that we don't have to film if he doesn't want us to. We'll just head up and look at the equipment and Ralph can make him an offer. Again, in a stand-offish fashion, he ends up making myself and Roman wait outside while they head into the building to check out the gear! WTF? I totally understand if there was a miscommunication and he isn't comfortable with the shoot, but really? You're going to make us wait outside? And this is a guy who's running video production business! I would think somebody who might have experience shooting productions -- even if it's weddings -- might be a little more understanding and have a little more tact dealing with a fellow 'filmmaker'. I guess we won't be hitting them up for post-production services. Not that we were ever considering it.



Luckily, Ralph ended up securing the equipment and we got out of there. The day wasn't a total wash though. We ended up driving out to the Sherkston area to visit Robert Buick, a friend/business partner of Ralph's and a great glass artist. It was a fun time. We shot Ralph getting a face cast for a future glass piece, which we hope to document right down to the final product. We'll definitely be heading back out there in the very near future.

Saturday, June 13: Go Karting Shoot #1

So yesterday me and Roman drove out to the wonderful city of Hamilton to film Ralph taking part in some serious go karting action. I haven't had much experience with karting outside of a lap or two at the local -- now defunct -- prudhommes landing 'amusement park'. I quickly realized this style of racing was quite a few steps above what I had in mind. People actually had racing suits! Pretty awesome indeed.

So the day was overcast, which was nice considering how much trouble I recently had shooting in extreme sunlight. My Ikan monitor basically goes blank when blasted with direct sunlight. This time I had a little more control over the camera situation, although we were somewhat limited in regards to where we could actually film from. You know, safety reasons and what not. Either way, I got some awesome footage of Ralph doing some laps against some formidable opponents. Below are a couple of screen grabs from the footage I've currently dropped into my timeline. Check it out:





I'm pretty excited that there seems to be a heavy racing element working its way into the film. It's a culture that fits perfectly, both aesthetically and thematically, with everything. Should be really cool. It's also worth mentioning that we'll be returning to the track to shoot some 'on the car' footage. Ralph is planning to build us a small camera mount for the front and back of the car so we can get some on board P.O.V. shots to build an actual race sequence. I'll be using the minute Sanyo FH1 for this, as the HVX is both too heavy and too expensive. There will be an image difference, but I don't mind a quality drop for a 'stunt camera'. Should be interesting!