Filming in the Wild Wild West

Cameras are not something that pop into your mind when you think of the Wild West; however, the pictures these old fashioned cameras took have been instrumental in giving us the impression that our ancestors were much more stoic and much less emotional than we, as a society, are today. You don't really pause to consider how long the subject's had to sit completely still when viewing when one of these pictures, instead you imagine that the hardships of the frontier chiseling those somber expressions permanently into the subject's face when in reality, the limits of the technology of the time called for these stiff portrayals of people. I thought about this when I drove up to the back entrance of Old Tucson in order to shoot a promotional video for a rally car race that is going to be held at Old Tucson in a month.

In fact, this shoot ended up being the largest shoot that I have been on so far featuring three large, mounted cameras, one drone, and a handheld camera mounted on a gimbal for stability. Previously, the fanciest setup I had encountered was the set of dollies used on the NWMC shoots, yet here I was in Old Tucson surrounded by cameras and being circled by a drone.

Though the number of cameras allowed the crew to capture a variety of different angles and vantage points, the setup was also plagued with some logistical issues.

The cameras would have to stagger out to make sure they all had a view of the subject but that would also restrict the area in which some of the cameras could shoot without catching a glimpse of the crew in the shot. Because of this, panning was risky. Most of the time the gimbal operator and the drone were the cameras recording dynamically, while the mounted cameras chose to catch snippets of the action from their fixed locations.

Notice how Evan doesn't pan with my iPhone's camera. This video also briefly shows how the drone was used to continue covering the car as it threw up clouds of dust, concealing its path from the mounted cameras. Rather than try to keep up with the rally car, the drone would intersect the vehicles path and remain fixed on it.

In this video, the way the drone manages to stay focused on the car and hover over the plum of smoke is much more obvious

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Furthermore, the drone was able to catch incredibly dynamic shots of the race between the horses and the rally car by moving anti-parallel to the motion of the vehicle and horses.

During these shots, the mounted cameras would close in real tight on the horses and the cowboys so that there was no chance that the drone could creep into their shot. The drone did interfere with any attempts to try and record the sounds of the horses galloping by. When attempting to record those sound, the drone would have to be grounded in order to give Fred a decent chance of recording the audio for later use.

One of the most interesting shots of the day was a shot of the horses racing directly side by side with the rally car through Old Tucson.

This was one of the only parts of the add where the horses and the rally car had to physically race besides one another. Every other shot of the two racing would be cut together from footage of either the horses or the rally car going around the track alone. This shot that showed the two actually racing together was a little awe inspiring. Furthermore, we took multiple shots, so I got to see the race multiple times. When the cowboys got worried about exhausting the horses, Scot and Evan got in the back of a truck and had the rally car and horses "race" at around 10 mph while he got footage of them actually racing. However, time constraints prevented us from getting any additional footage with the drone.

It's been incredible to see the process by which filmmakers will manipulate the shots they are capturing to read well on film. The best way to explain this is to show an example of what I am talking about. In this clip, the crew was filming close ups of the driver's feet and hands as he shifted gears and went through the motions like he would if he was actually racing around the track.

Nate was throwing light wildly around the cockpit to simulate the changing angle of the sun and add the illusion of movement. Furthermore, Scot was slightly shaking the camera as he closed in on the driver's movements to also add the illusion that the camera was strapped to the car while he was driving.

In post, this shot will be interlaced with the footage of the rally car zooming around the course. In context, the shot will flow with the rest of the piece but you and I will now how they actually filmed it.