August 21st was the 5th round of the 2010 Formula Drift season – Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It is not my favorite course on the Formula Drift circuit, but it is unique because it runs later in the night than the other rounds. Due to the later start, practice happens in the early evening also the time of the day with the best light – magic hour or the time right before and right after the sunsets behind the horizon. The colors are unbelievable in the desert sky of Las Vegas.

This is a screen grab from one of my video files. Team Need for Speed driver Mad Mike Whiddett creates a golden cloud of smoke with his Mazda RX8. Mike made first appearance in the Top 16 this weekend and drove like the mad man.  Formula Drift fans will come to recognize Mad Mike as one of it’s best entertainers.

Congrats Mike. Be on the look out for a new Team Need for Speed video – coming soon.

If you can’t make it to Vegas, too bad. Maybe you’ll be at Sonoma or Irwindale and scoop up those stickers instead.

Excited to hear Chris Forsberg’s new Nissan CORR truck motor in his NOS Energy Drink 350z.

There are some serious concrete parks here in Vancouver. Unfortunately, my skateboard setup is somewhere in Minnesota – with the Westy van. So in the meantime, I picked up this Kitsch board.

So clean, that changed the same day when I rode the park down the street and scuffed it up proper. A lot of my friends collect skateboard decks. Which are like modern day prints of artwork. Never understood it. Maybe after you’ve ridden them, I can’t look at a skateboard without wanting to ride it.

China Bones bearings are the jam. Reds are better than most cheapo ABEC 5 or 3 rated bearings out there. These Momentum wheels were a bit softer than my last set of wheels, but I wanted some more grip like I have on my sector 9 longboards – so I opted for a lower durometer wheel. Pivot turns should grip not slip for my style.

Rounded out with Enjoi hardware – with some bright colors to indicate the nose truck.

Skate or Die.

Team Need For Speed/Speedhunters – Behind the Scenes – Speedhunters

Production Company: Speedhunters/Need For Speed

Project: Interview and create a narrative thread that familiarizes the Speedhunters audience with the team that creates the content.

Role: Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Colorist.

Shot on the Canon 7D and the Pansonic HPX-170. Converted to Sony XDCAM HD422 50mb/s codec. Edited in Final Cut Pro. Graded in Magic Bullet Looks. Motion graphics by Josh Awesome.

Royksopp recorded two albums when they went into the studio to make Junior – the second half which comes out in September is Senior. Junior/Senior, nice. The senior sound, is a more mature and less vocal based than Junior – which had some of the most “pop” friendly tracks to date. Ever since my friend David introduced me to them in 2007 – I’ve been hooked. Catch a sample of the new album along with some senior characters in the video above.

Geezer for a day. I still need to shoot that short film idea. Until the album is released, take a listen to Junior. My favorite track is The Girl and the Robot.

NOS ENERGY DRINK – Drift POV: Chris Forsberg

Production Company: Keep Drifting Fun

Project: Cover Chris Forsberg’s Qualifying run with Contour HD Point Of View cameras.

Role: Director, Editor, Graphics, and Co-Camera Operator.

Shot exclusively with the CONTOUR HD cameras. Edited in Final Cut Pro. Graded in Magic Bullet Looks.

REDUX - re-imagined and re-edited short form piece of one qualifying run -t hat addresses the pacing and length of the original edit.

NOS ENERGY DRINK – Chris Forsberg POV @ Formula D Seattle

Production Company: Keep Drifting Fun

Project: Shoot an entire Formula Drift event with Contour HD Point Of View cameras.

Role: Co-Director, Graphics, and Co-Camera Operator, Edited by Joshua Herron

Shot exclusively with the CONTOUR HD cameras. Edited in Final Cut Pro. Graded in Magic Bullet Looks.

For Formula Drift Atlanta, Josh and I decided to follow each of Chris’ runs and produce a 7 minute video that was an in-depth look into the competition. For Formula Drift New Jersey, we made a widescreen cinematic visual narrative short. Both videos were radically different from previous drift videos and marked a new level in quality for individual driver re-cap features. For Keep Drifting Fun, we teamed up with Contour HD and started using their 1080p POV cameras on and in-car to capture a different perspective of grassroots drifting. I wanted to make an entirely POV based short. I worked on the Need for Speed – Driver’s experience films as a camera operator and had experienced the challenges of mounting cameras to drift cars and drivers. With Contour HD’s support and utilizing Chris Forsberg’s own Contour HD cameras we mounted around 6 cameras to the car for each run. Downloading each camera between rounds, making changes to camera placement, and settings. This is no easy task on a professional drift car – where body panels are zip tied in place and the fiberglass panels tend to vibrate and move under the violent action that is drifting.

Thanks to NOS, Contour HD, Chris, Kevin, and Sergio – for their support with this project. It was a big risk and I’m pleased with how Josh’s edit came out from the coverage we acquired with the Contour HD cameras. Another first.

Did a quick JOB, Jumping On Beds session in Washington state during Formula Drift Seattle. We had a solid crew of bouncers: Andy, Linhbergh, Hobo Herron, and I. Above, Linhbergh gets caught mid jump in a yoga like pose.

While I practice gravity defying one-handed handstands on the wall.

Andy dusts off his break beat record collection and spins a windmill out on the wall. I never knew he could break.

Hobo gets very swan lake with his jumps.

If Andy tripped while walking across the wall, this would be him catching his fall. Reality is more like jumping from bed to bed and smacking yourself against the wall in mid air. Dedication.

Stuck in a moment, mid air. Its hard not to flinch even when you’re about to land on pillow and mattress.

That’s it for JOB Seattle 2010. Hope you enjoyed.

Jeff Zwart | Luminox | Porsche Motorsport North America – GT3 Climb

Production Company: Medium Monster/Will Roegge

Project: Create a short film that captures the essence of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb & the Porsche GT3 Cup

Role: Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Colorist.

2nd camera operation by DC Chavez.

Special thanks to Red Bull USA & the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Very big thank you to Jeff Zwart, for giving me the opportunity to document his run and be involved on the project!

My first trip up Pikes Peak was with Rhys Millen in a Ford Focus rental car. We were scouting locations and camera positions for the 2009 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb short film I was creating to document his run. That film would later be called Climb Attack, a play on Hill Climb and Time Attack – the class Rhys was competing in that year.

For 2010, I shot my second Pikes Peak film with driver/director/writer/photographer – Jeff Zwart. With the support of Porsche Motorsport North America, Jeff had setup a Porsche GT3 Cup car to campaign at this year’s race to the clouds. I’m familiar with the GT3 Cup, having shot rounds of ALMS stateside and FIA GT-3 abroad. The 997 GT3 is a serious circuit machine, but how would it fare on the varied surfaces and weather conditions of a 14,000ft mountain?

This year’s strategy would be a less slip, more grip prerogative. How would the tail happy-mid engine 997 do on gravel? A bit out of place?

Pikes Peak 2010 seems to be a transitional year, more of the mountain is paved and the new batch of machines reflect this evolution.

Fortunately, DC Chavez was available to come on as a second camera operator and we split up the mountain based on my shot list.

On average, we were each operating 3 to 4 cameras at once. Coverage is key, especially with a practice and run schedule like Pikes Peak. 3 days of practice and 1 run on Race Day.

For this particular setup, I hiked out to a out cropping of boulders and shot between them.

These are all screen grabs from the final edit.

I’m excited to share the finished piece tomorrow – July 26, 2010.

Team Need For Speed – Introducing Team Need For Speed Drift

Production Company: Speedhunters/Need For Speed

Project: Introduce viewers with the Team Need For Speed drivers Matt Powers and Mad Mike Whiddett.

Role: Director, Cinematographer, Editor, Colorist.

Shot on the Canon 7D and the Pansonic HPX-170. Converted to Sony XDCAM HD422 50mb/s codec. Edited in Final Cut Pro. Cropped to 2:35.1. Graded in Magic Bullet Looks. Sound design by Ekstrak. Motion graphics by Josh Awesome.

Strokes front man, Julian Casablancas ‘11th Dimension’. On the tardy train with this album. As a Strokes fan, should have heard about Julian’s solo project a while ago.

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