Roadstarr Mercedes Mclaren SLR Shoot

This Blog entry was written by DP Austin Alhborg, about his Mercedes spec commercial shoot which took place on the weekend of January 22nd 2011:

NOTE: At the very end of this blog entry, I have attached the finished video.


Roadstarr is a high end car company in Los Angeles that specializes in selling luxury cars such as Lamborghinis, Mercedes, and other top notch sports cars. Nick Christopher organized a video shoot for them that was aimed at branding the company with its vision. To pull it off, Nick got us two main components in which to formulate a story around: a Mercedes Mclaren SLR sports car and a gorgeous model named Rosa Acosta. With these two locked in, he pulled together myself and Greg Whitehead to bring Roadstarr's vision to life.

We departed the Valley Inn in San Fernando at 5:00 am to head up into the Angeles National Forest on the Northern side of Burbank. We started driving down little Tujunga Canyon Road up into the mountains while the sky was still dark and there was just a hint of the sunlight popping up over the horizon. We arrived at the location and set up the beautiful Mclaren car alongside a cliff on a narrow windy road. We used a Canon 5D and 7D with Nikon prime lenses for this shoot. We rolled the cameras at 7:13am and just a minute after we started rolling, the sun just started rising over the mountains to reveal the Mclaren in a time lapse shot.




We rolled out until the 12min shut off time on the canon cameras for the time lapse and then set up for a scene that involved our lead actor driving down the winding road on a black motorcycle. We ran mostly the 7D camera for this scene because of its 60fps for slow motion. There was a mixture of jib and slider shots for this scene.

Our next scene involved mounting the camera on the front hood of the car. To pull this off, I hit up Adam Unruh from AGrip.net to rent his suction cup car mount. The mount consisted of 4 suction cups and various C-stand arms and knuckles that connect a Ball Camera Leveling Mount w/Wide Base. The Camera mounted onto the leveling mount and was easily adjustable from there for different angles. We were really pressed for time because of some setbacks (Motorcycle falling over...), so we needed to get our car mount rigged up as fast and safe as possible.


Film maker Nick Acosta banged this out for us and had the car mount perfectly secured on the hood of the Mclaren car in about 10mins. Nick has some experience with Car Mounts and he loves filming car commercials. We mounted the 5D and started rolling as the car drove down the mountain road. We rolled for about a 7 minute shot and then I was able to quickly adjust the car mount to pan left or right for different angles. We shot a wide straight on the car, a closeup of the driver and the scenery on his left, and a POV shot of the car driving down the winding road. We got all of these shots while driving to our second location and didn't waste any time. I'd say that these were some of our best and most efficient shots of the shoot because of the ease of use of the AGrip car mount.

This is a link to the car mount:
http://agrip.net/gripandlightingrental.html#car

Day two involved getting some shots of the Mclaren driving around the mountains, but from another vehicle. To pull this off, I really wanted the camera low to the ground. But how are we going to shoot low to the ground from a moving vehicle on a winding road? I met with our AC, Wes Tracy, earlier in the week, and we came up with the concept of mounting a Porta-Jib out the back door of his mini van.




This setup worked amazing. We were able to rig the camera nice and low to the ground and swing it in all directions to shoot the Mclaren while driving. Jake Frank killed it on the Jib as our operator and got us some amazing shots that swing across the ground while driving at around 40mph. This scene involved a lot of coordination considering that the camera van had to drive in the lane of oncoming traffic for some shots. Greg Whitehead held it down and kept it safe by keeping close contact on a walkie-talkie to a scout car driving about a ¼ mile ahead that was calling out approaching vehicles. These were probably the nicest shots of the video. Not to mention the most fun.

Overall, the shoot was a success. We had to crunch to get everything in there, but we ended up with some amazing shots. It was tough, a little hectic, and we all had to grind because of the budget, but we had a hell of a good time doing it. Wes Tracy nailed our focus. Zander Fieschko stepped up as or 2nd AC. Jake Frank saved the shoot by filling the role of AD on day two. Rosa Acosta was beautiful and great to work with. Roadstarr was great at whipping the car around corners and following the cues. The PAs held it together. And the Mclaren was... well, DAMN FAST. No seriously, those things are pretty fast....



It was a great shoot, and we will be posting the finished video here for your viewing pleasure! Stay tuned...

ATTN: HERE IS THE FINISHED VIDEO: Watch on Vimeo to see it full size.


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