April ~ May ~ June ~ July ~ August

Who likes photos? Well we have plenty, to help keep your reading to a minimum, showing a bit of what we have been up to and recapping the past four and a half months, pictures and links to finished pieces below.

• we wrote and developed ROGUE's 2013 ESPN commercial campaign with their creative team
• we shot with Scott Pruett at Oakley HQ
• filmed the ROGUE commercials
• filmed Ray Flores, twice, with Tim Irwin (directed by Tim)
• Tim Irwin grew beard
• wrapped ROGUE R You Rogue profiles
• Chris Spealler
• Andy Stumpf
• completed post production on a Southern Virginia University tv spots
• One Word
• Financial Aid
• filmed with Josef Newgarden in Long Beach with Oakley (edited by Oakley)
• last minute commercial development and shoot with Rich Froning for ROGUE
• Who Is Rich Froning
• PR - Wash truck
• PR - Mow lawn
• APEX by Sunglass Hut rebrand shoot
• hung out with Heber & his crew while filmed some CrossFit commercials on our EPIC
• filmed ROGUE media & produced daily edits of new equipment & athletes (playlist)

PF Chang/Studio Party

Tim Irwin/Beard

Rich Froning/...Who is Rich Froning? for Rogue

Chris Spealler/Athlete profile for Rogue

The wall/Studio

Reclaimed wood desk/Studio

Rich splitting logs/Who is Rich Froning? for Rogue

Dana Dolly w/ EPIC/commercial for Rogue

Dawn drive to Salt Flats/Commercial CrossFit

Shoot n Cut/Rogue at 2013 CrossFit Games for Rogue

Keeping gear light/2013 CrossFit Games for Rogue 

Interview setting/Scott Pruett Interview for Oakley

Huh? / Commercial for Rogue

Tim with custom lens hood extention

Office reclaimed / installed

Office reclaimed / installing (not us)

Interview set / Scott Pruett interview for Oakley

Interview set 2 / Scott Pruett interview for Oakley

Interview location / Ray Flores portrait (directed by Tim Irwin)

Marsdon, EPIC, Helo, Car / Commercial for CrossFit

Edit suite / commercial for Rogue

Final review / commercial for Rogue

Filming a new branding video in Boulder / commercial for APEX by Sunglass Hut

Dudes / CrossFit Games for Rogue

ROGUE'S BAJA 1000 PROJECT IS WRAPPED

Back in October and November we were working on a hush-hush project for Rogue Fitness.  It started when Steve Sanders, a SEAL in the US Navy, wanted to go back to his childhood roots of riding dirt bikes.  But it wasn't a short cruise through the desert or hills in California, it was the legendary Baja 1000 he had his sights set on.  Rogue commissioned the documentary and off we went.

There were three main locations for this shoot; California, Nevada and of course Baja, Mexico.  We kept the film crew lean at the beginning as as the story begun to unfold, we increased the crew. Initially, on the first location, it was just Steve and I in California.  We then brought on James Masters as a producer.  James had spent nearly a decade filming and following the Baja 1000.  While James and a few production assistants were doing preproduction work during the race week, Tim, Nate and myself were in a helicopter in Nevada filming final bike prep and testing with Steve, Bill Witt, Ryan Sanders and crew.

Most of this film was shot on the Panasonic AF100 with GoPro footage for POV (point of view) and other pepper footage.  Once the race week arrived we beefed up our camera options with a wide variety of cameras.  The diversity of tech is almost comical.  We had 1 RED EPIC, 2 AF100s, 1 Panasonic GH2, 1 Canon 7D, 1 Canon 5DmkIII, 7 GoPro Hero2s and 2 iPhone 5s.

Here's the breakdown of race week.  Bret was stationed at Ensenada, Mexico--the starting line--with a 5DmkIII.  Down south we had three chase teams with a driver and a shooter.  And those teams played leapfrog down the peninsula.  We embedded Tim with Steve's chase crew and James and I shadowed them to sixty miles outside of La Paz.  Brandt, Lynden, Jon and Nate were our other two units.

After a twenty plus minute delay at the pit, Steve got on the bike at 20:00 and started his first leg of two hundred and thirty miles in the dead of night.  Steve and Bill traded the bike three times and Bill rode it to the finish.  Twenty-eight hours after the race started, and one thousand, one hundred and fifty miles later, Steve and the team finished the Baja 1000 fourth in their class. And as Steve put it, "Not bad for the first time."

If you haven't watched the series I strongly recommend it and not just because we made it.  It is really fascinating how much work goes into this race and how fast it is over.  For Steve, the question of what lights to use was a big deal since he would be spending most of his bike time in the dark.  A dark so dark people say it eats light.  They went with Rigid Industries LED lights and half way through the race Steve was completely stoked on how great they worked.

GoPro just released a new video that was shot entirely on the Hero3.  Their film complimented ours well because it focused on trophy truck driver Bryce Menzies ride during his first six hundred miles of the race and then flashes forward to the finish line. Ours focused on Steve in San Ignacio, which picked at mile six hundred and fifty.

If you watch in Steve vs Baja 1000 Episode 4 you'll see their truck narrowly miss Steve from non other than a GoPro we had mounted on Steve's helmet.  Watch for it at 7:29.  You can hear their siren screaming as they go tearing by.

We want to thank everyone who worked on this project.  A huge thanks to Rogue Fitness and their passion to not only building the best, American Made fitness equipment, but to documenting the lifestyles of the athletes they support. A big thanks to Ryan Arciero and Larry Roeseler from Team Herbst, the film units comprised of Todd, Nate, Lynden, Tim, James, Bret, Joh, Brandt, Chris and the two random guys that rode along. And thanks to Score International for putting on such a grueling race.

We've embedded the four Steve vs Baja 1000 episodes here and included GoPro's video that shows the first half of the race.  Let me just say we love how they just let the video live and breath during the race without any music over it.

2011 Reebok CrossFit Games - SouthWest Regionals // Day 2

The sun has set here in Aurora, a suburb of Denver, Colorado.  It is the end of day two and we are cranking away at wrapping the highlight reel.  It's been a really good region to produce.  I added Tyson Maughan to my unit and it has been extremely helpful.  He's a DP but has taken the reigns of processing all the footage from my cameramen, logging it and pulling selects to give to Kyle Kebert.  They're really cranking through stuff and I couldn't be happier.  Kyle is a great editor.  He edits for ESPN and he's just a stallion.  I'd take him on my unit any day of the week.

Yesterday's video was, I think, one of our best pieces so far.  Check it out HERE.  Today's will be even better.  Great footage, lots of drama, rain and tears.  I'll get you a link when they post it.

For the geeks reading, we've managed to land a fiber/Gigabit/blow your socks off Ethernet connection.  We effectively download 70MB and upload at 30MB.  It took us 8 minutes to upload a 2.5GB video file to the FTP site.  Not bad and certainly much better than the .5MB speeds we had at the Maple Leafs Hockey rink last week in Toronto.  Here's DAY 3 wrap up video.  I may have been editing the last two (men's 5 and 6) at 6am after my editor fell asleep and I felt a little kooky at the end.

I should probably get back to producing or something more helpful to my editors, whom I love.

CrossFit Games 2011 - NorthCentral Regionals - Day 1

It has been a long two days here at the CrossFit Games 2011 - NorthCentral Regionals presented by Reebok and Rogue Fitness.  Sorting out a lot of hick ups, missing packages, bad equipment and wrong equipment we've managed to shoot one successful day.  It's been a lot of fun.  We're on hour 22, yesterday was 19 hrs, and we're just wrapping up our edit for the Day 1 highlights.  I'm tired, Kyle is tired and the rest of the unit is sleeping so no everyone is smashed tomorrow.

Two more days of this and I think we're going to be a lot more efficient.  No more fighting with the facilities who wanted $10,000 for a 5MB internet connection over 3 days.  YEAH! $10,000.  Justin and I got them down to $1,000 for 7.5MB speeds.

It's been quite a bit different in the current roll; I'm a…field producer, or something.  I'm supposed to run 3 cameramen, an announcer, an editor and several runners.  Not my usual, one to three man -- I'm shooting and editing.  No one has proposed anarchy yet so I must be doing okay.  My unit is outstanding.  Everyone is gelling very well and we are getting everything we need.  It has been a little behind schedule but we're succeeding nevertheless.  More to come.