Pre-viewing pleasures

This is going to be just a quick update as my schedule just got a lot busier with unexpected commercial shoots.

First off.... Holy crap Avengers movie is pretty amazing if I do say so myself!  Got called "the other Captain America" haha!

Last Tuesday I was in San Jose with Harry shooting a commercial for a clothing company.  I'm working on a behind-the-scenes video for our YouTube channel as I'm building the 4 spots.  So expect a separate blog just for that.

Yes those are ninjas dressing.

No you can't touch them.

Can you find all 3?

I spent most of the week editing the 4 commercial spots and wrapping up the Martial Arts event I did work for on April 28th.  As well as prepping a design documents for a meeting I just held yesterday (Saturday) to start a video game project with a private group.  Things are going to get very interesting.

And finally, today I've been trying to just catch up on some editing projects.  Whetting my hands on some Red 4k footage from the ACE rail commercial shoot to practice 4k R3d workflow in Premiere Pro.  I may get around to posting on that one specifically as I'd like to go in depth and really explore everything with working with 4k.

 However, just a little while ago I got another call from Harry to shoot back out to San Jose with him all day tomorrow to pick up a reshoot for some spots I'm already editing, and then shoot a whole new commercial with a new client of which I have absolutely no details of yet.  These are fun times indeed!

Oh........ and a little secret I'll let you all in on... there's a zombie apocalypse coming... Stay tuned for more information ;)

Aces and Trains!

Wow, where to begin...  The last couple weeks concluded the production phase of the McClure sessions:  an upcoming EP project Troy and I are just now starting post production on.

Just finished drum setup

Chris Gettin' down on some drum-tracking.

Drums, drums, drums.

I captured as much as I could of the sessions and plan on building a new video update for our studio channel by the time the mixes are done so keep an eye out for a brand-spankin' new video soon!

Left: Chris McClure, Center: Troy Reed

During these past couple weeks I've also had to wipe my main workstation clean and reinstall windows Fresh, as I just acquired Pro Tools to add to my studio DAW list.

Pro Tools 9+10, so awesome!  and yes, my shirt does say "Talk nerdy to me"

I have QUITE a bit of stuff to reinstall and I'm just barely finishing up all that, but while I have I managed to restring both my guitars, major issues with my BC Rich as usual (I highly dislike Floyd Rose Tremolo bridges).  If that isn't enough, this week alone has been very busy as I help Nick with pre-production for a commercial shoot this coming Monday and Tuesday for ACE train!

On Wednesday we arrived at the Ace station in Lathrop at about 6:30 am to shoot some pre-viz shots and plan out everything for the production.

It was a super tight schedule to figure out how to shoot arrival and departure shots, so we hurried onboard.  The rest of the day was the "hurry up and wait" as it usually is for production trying to get the timing just right for shots and then waiting patiently in between.

Thanks to Troy's T2i I was able to get plenty of test footage as well as these wonderful stills.  These just underwent some SUPER quick post correction for visual reference.

I'm hoping these are good enough to help Nick establish some groundwork for his D.P. Yuki to have a solid, all-encompassing reference for production.  All in all there's easily 2 gigs of photos and over 12 gigs of temp footage.  I believe on production days Yuki will be shooting with a Red Scarlett and I'll be helping with data management as best I can.  I'll try to keep posting more frequently as the days get busier!

As always, I enjoy any and all feedback!  Please feel free to leave comments of your thoughts on the subjects, opinions, suggestions, even flaming rants!

Cut Your Teeth on some Commercialism

The last few weeks have been pretty up and down with my back problems. However I've been extremely productive this weekend and this week with commercial production and networking for some jobs lining up soon!

First, take a look at the behind the scenes I put together:

Hope you enjoyed that, it was definitely fun working on these 3 shoots on 3 days, even despite the long odd hours!   Let's take a short trip back to Thursday the 17th.  Harry and Michael contact me to ask me to help out with some commercials they wanted to shoot and they had put together a couple scripts for their separate ideas.  I get the scripts in email and read through them roughly.  That night we went to the house where we were to shoot Hot Diggity Dawg and plan out lighting and camera angles.





The idea was pretty simple and according to how he wanted to shoot it pretty much a majority of the audio would be built in post.  So on production evening the next night: Friday, I brought my Rode NTG3 and my Audio Technica AT3035 and ran some creative mic placement with the AT3035 in different positions in the room for when we did voice takes for when Lori had to say her lines.

I should mention that Friday before the shoot, Michael and Courtney showed up here before to do some quick foley session for all the sound elements we would need.  We had just enough time to record all the material.  That night Mok came by after and we dubbed the tape and brought it into a project to start a rough build, as well as capturing a separate session for the Door and gargle noises.   I didn't get to start cutting and editing the sound recordings until Sunday.

The first Foley session with the chip and bag noises I set up out in my living room for a large open space.  I used my Audio Technica AT3035 running through a snake which fed into an RME Fireface 800, and an SE Electronics Reflexion Filter on a 2nd mic stand (those things are beastly and heavy).  Michael was more than happy to oblige eating Pork Rinds and Tostitos,  I actually had him stand almost a foot away from the mic even with a low gain. 

The 2nd half of the session I brought the mic down toward the floor, and the Reflexion Filter as well.  We have a huge area rug but I brought in a small thick carpet mat and laid it down and covered it with a coupe strips of plastic wrap.  We did a few takes with a pair of sandals crunching on Pork Rinds, and then the same with Tostitos.  Then, we removed the thick carpeted mat and just did it again on the area rug which a much harder surface.  Several passes of "pitter patter" in various configurations.  

Later that night for the 2nd session, I employed my AT3035 outside the bathroom door in the hallway with the reflexion filter on for more direct sound and less room interference, close proximity to the door.

The NTG3 was placed inside the bathroom aimed down toward the sink, and then after a couple takes aimed up toward Mok.  The room tone inside the bathroom is very prominent but the door sounds after the gargles used the NTG3 aimed directly toward the door handle. I decided I'd share these with everyone.

Notes about samples provided: All the samples provided below are recorded at 96k / 24-bit and are provided in mono microsoft .wav format.  These are the raw unprocessed cuts, no processing, noise reduction or manipulation have been applied (not even gain adjustment).

Copyright notice: These are provided free for use in any form private or commercial use and I don't even require credit for use or duplication.  Feel free to share, distribute, edit, mangle, destroy and make the sounds into whatever you like, for whatever you like. 

Bathroom Gargle & Door.zip

• Size: 4.28 mb
• 4 files

Footstep Crunches.zip

• Size: 7.84 mb
• 19 files

Bag Ruffles.zip

• Size: 9.45 mb
• 13 Files

Eating Chips.zip

• Size: 16.41 mb
• 12 files

Download all Assets (37.1 mb)

 
Saturday I spent most of my time processing and cleaning up audio making cuts to Hot Diggity Dawg and revising, all before production was supposed to start for It Takes A Lady.  We were to meet at Mok's location for shooting at 5pm.






When I got there everyone was setting up lighting and rehearsal.

The same two mics were used for all three commercials: Audio Technica AT3035 for room tone and ambience, and the Rode NTG3 on the boom for dialog and close-up.  We shot a ton of material that didn't make it into the 30 second spot, but perhaps later on we'll post up the 1 minute spot that the full commercial could have been.  

I placed the AT3035 right along the right wall just passed the cable hanging from the window sill to pick up a wide stereo effect for the scene where Troy Allen gets a kiss-assault on the couch.  I boomed the NTG3 slightly left overhead to pick up the left hand grabbing the couch and the AT3035 picked up the whole wall early reflections and movement ruffles Troy did when slamming himself into his seat for dramatic effect.  The Rode also helped for getting the close up of Arielle in her heels when she steps into frame as Troy Allen looks up at her in shock.  I blended the two mics to get just enough room tone and low-end to give some body to the heel sound but still have the prominent click for the impact on the hardwood floor that made it a definitive heel sound.  

It was difficult working in some tight spaces between the wall and the couches even with a long boom as trying to get the angles right for all the actor movements would tend to fall out of the scope of the mic or in the case of dialog with head rotation would cause severely noticeable off-axis sonic characteristics because of the narrow field of focus for the shotgun mic.   Luckily in the best takes that we used for the final cuts those issues weren't a problem.

One thing i tried to keep in mind as production sound mixer and boom operator is what the camera operator's position is dealing with.  During the productions we had 3 connections running to the camera (2 XLR's for phantom powered mics, and headphones so I could monitor sound).  

Both mics were run with 50 foot cables so there's a lot of  free cable all around the floor, and my heaphones (a pair of Sennhieser HD280 pros) are a much shorter length coiled cable.  One solution I tried was to use velcro cable wrap to attach to the operator and hang some of the cable up through his belt-loop.  However, Michael and Harry both were switching the camera between them fairly often so this became impractical.  

They were pretty good about it but I kept my eye on the cables for them and for complex shots where they needed the freedom to move I held the cables out of their way while operating the boom;  The Rode boom I have is extremely lightweight even with the mic attached which made it very easy to operate for longer periods of time and even one-handed.

The daytime on Sunday I spent an hour or so with Harry and his friend he had brought down from Sacramento to do the voice-over for Hot Diggity Dawg, and then that night I proceeded to post and sound design which was the most fun on this one as it called for a little "enhancement" and the use of sound design elements really helped sell what was happening on screen.  

The first shot where Troy slaps Daren's hand away I utilized several sounds layered in over the production sound track.  The swish sound of a whip through the air and a separate bullwhip crack together with the sound of Daren's hand being slapped and the ruffle of the Doritos bag sit well in the mix that really draw the attention to the fact that he's getting his hand slapped away.  

The biggest sound design elements I took my time with but still went really fast to make were the whooshes in and out of Troy's delusional dancing around in his head.  The first whoosh I used several layered elements including the noise of the water running in the sink I had recorded the other night, and some quick on-the-spot recordings I did with my mouth to mimic wind.  I processed these all heavily and mixed them together to get the final sound.  I used some parallel processing of dry and processed with some distortion, delay, and lots of reverb.  The result are some very crunchy and in your face whooshes that I pushed even further in the final mix for the comp.  The final element was an orchestral cue I had created just a sustained chord.  

The last element was the record scratch sound, and I re-used the whip noises for the butt-slap.  Doritos has a ton of assets they provide for the contest which includes music.  The rules are also extremely specific and limiting for the contest but I believe by sticking with the actual music from the contest assets they provide (which is what they specify) and venturing just a little bit outside of that for the orchestral cue just from my own sampler library and triggered with a midi keyboard, we were breaking the rules in just enough of the right ways. 

Another mixing decision that the rules were a bit vague on (they specify that you are not allowed to alter the music assets) was "Lo-fi" affecting the classical song that plays in the beginning to emulate the sound coming off a flat-panel TV,  Band-Passed EQ very heavily compressed and then a subtle distortion applied after compression.  All in all I edited audio late into the night (about 4 am) into Monday morning.

Monday morning however I had to be up at 7 AMto meet at Mok's location at 7:30 AM to shoot our final commercial he had thought up just the other day.  Running on just a few hours of sleep we were all a little tired and tried to get into it quickly.  Dewitt also had to be at work after 10 AM so we had to get as much as we could shot with him before he had to go.  

I had to operate the camera this time and got to cut my teeth some more on cinematography helping Michael get all the shots he wanted for this one, but even then the idea was so simple and quick there wasn't much to do.  A big factor in the difference between this one and the previous two is Natural light.  His open window with the blinds provided much of the light, but we still used some CFLS to help fill in, as well as Michaels new portable LED panel to accent key light.


I'd like to point out that shooting with the Sony Z1u I was happiest with the look of this video out of everything else we've shot on that camera.  It's an older one though it does HD well it's anamorphic (squeezed pixels at 1440x1080), and due to the age of the sensor even with a nice big lens it doesn't look very crisp especially when you starve the sensor of light.  The lighting on this commercial definitely came out the best, all the others just felt under-lit.  






Some thoughts on music scoring and comedy:

A few things I noticed when it came to this contest in particular is that working under constraints can be very rewarding in ways you weren't expecting.  Before we had finished editing we were still looking up all the rules for the contest and I was expecting to be able to write original score material.  And, while I noticed with a fair bit of examining competitive content on the crashthesuperbowl website had broken a few rules, all of them had some kind of score or use of music to it.  I don't think there was a single contest entry up that didn't utilize at least the music provided by the contest, some went so far as to make music the gimmick by having kids rap about Doritos or something to that effect, but very few if any featured any kind of scoring outside of the approved assets.  

While it would have been nice to create custom music to make our commercial stand out that much more, we were already under time constraints and to our surprise the music they provided actually proved to be very easy to get the mood we were looking for.

On a side note, congrats to Trials & Memories on their hard work and effort over the year working on their album.  The EP Hits local shelves and online Black Friday:





My first commercial work with orchestration is on all 4 tracks at over 30 minutes for the EP and the full length album will be 11 tracks which I will be working on starting next year.

Thanks for reading, and as always these are just my opinions.  Most importantly I like to hear others' opinions, suggestions, and commentary on these topics.  Feel free to leave comments, they're much appreciated!

RPM Challenge Day 3

With 2 days down, and the weekend coming up quick, we have to get at least one or two songs ready to track.
With most of my free time spent sampling sounds from found objects to use in the Curing The Cure track with Steven's Lyrics, I had to start composing the synths and guitars and drums.  Most of the work on Troy's song Troy spent during his lunch and at home on his nights before coming up with ideas for the Indie song project of his. 

Most of the instrumentation was worked out and the basic idea for Curing the Cure has been conceived. I have the track ready to receive Steven's vocals so that I can start arranging the music, and getting it to it's final stages.

Troy and I were discussing influences for Curing the Cure and while we want the essence of what might sound industrial, listening to artists like Nine Inch Nails and clashing ideas together with the inspirational song from Linkin Park's newest album A Thousand Suns: When They Come For Me; we pretty much got the groundwork paved for the concept of what this song should be and sound like.  Many different ideas on mixing techniques and recording techniques to be employed, down to the timbre and EQ for various instruments and stem mixing as well...

Our biggest goal heading into the weekend is to get at least 1 song tracked in the studio and if we have time, start working on the next.  Troy's songs are coming together faster than mine, but mine tend to have a lot of production value put into them as the genres I cover tend to call for it.  Synth work, various guitar elements, complex drums, the arrangements themselves have more changes as well which need to be thought out.  So far, so good.  We're still on schedule and it's time to get back to work...  Check back tomorrow for Day 4's update...

RPM Challenge Day 1

RPM kicked off yesterday (yes I'm a night owl).  The first day may be pretty boring when the Video blog gets published, we'll see...  but we did get a lot accomplished.  We got a direction and a set of ideas we all liked and have committed to as far as the album goes.  We even went so far as to come up with a story concept for a fake film to base our "soundtrack" album to.

So why the soundtrack album?  I'll tell you why,  it works for us on many levels.  The first thing being that we're a studio primarily, and we want to showcase as many genres as we can.  Secondly, because we all wanted a challenge out of this challenge, and to span various genres would make a concept album very hard to pin in a commercial market.  Thus, the concept birthed many solutions, and a nice creative outlet to start honing ideas.

The back story is fairly simple, I mentioned that if we did a survivalist theme seeing as how these types of movies are very popular we can go for a wide ranging feel of emotions from the more upbeat to the darker and more sinister sounds we might like to explore.  We all liked the idea so we ran with it and Steven and Troy and I all came up with various ideas which amalgamated into this sort of stylized western zombie action survival story.  Without going into too much detail right now, suffice to say it gave plenty of inspiration for the various tracks we wanted to do that could "fit the bill" of a typical blockbuster movie of this genre. 

The next layer on the cake, was the production value, we wanted to experiment as a studio with recording techniques and challenge ourselves to just how far we could go to recreate the "iconic" sound of a particular genre, not necessarily going for cookie cutter imitation, but capturing what we feel is the essence of that genre's sound, and putting our spin on it.

The final layer to the cake, and is purely for the gimmick of making the soundtrack album sound more authentic is the matter of coming up with original custom voice-overs, foley, and sound effects to add into the various interludes as "sound bytes" from the fake movie concept we came up with.  One good example of an inspirational source is the Kill Bill soundtracks.  The songs that were cleverly used in the movie are sprinkled with interludes that were sampled from the movie itself, which was an idea i liked and wanted to go for on this album as well.  This added layer to our concept is going to also allow us to showcase our skills in these areas of audio production as well, not just that we know music, but know and appreciate all audio engineering; Sound design, ADR, Foley, and the like.

Obviously we've got big ideas for this project.  I came up with a rough day by day schedule to give us a good idea of the pace we need to be keeping to stay on track.  Basically here's what it breaks down to:

1. Week 1 - Pre-production
2. Week 2 - Demoing and Tracking
3. Week 3 - Tracking and editing
4. Week 4 - Mix, Master, and publish

As we have to move at such a quick pace, the schedule is just a guide, and can remain flexible.  But overall we need to be able to move swiftly through each phase of the project.  This will also mean that we may be working in a segmented fashion between Troy and myself.  While we may just barely get to tracking certain songs, others may already be in editing and mixing phase.

With a deadline of February 28th having to have the entire album published and online, we've got a lot of work ahead of us, and the clock is ticking! I'll try to post pictures when I can, and Check Neologic Studios on Facebook to see our latest status updates!

A Dashboard Confession

It's been a long October moving swiftly and not so diligently through a TV series concept and getting it off the ground.  Let's start at the beginning shall we?

A couple months ago my friend who happens to own a nice Sony Z1u approached me about a possible job opportunity he had been brought into the fold on.  This job consisted of developing and operating a production company around a tv series concept.  Lots of promises and lots of changes and rescinding on said promises later, and one bunk storyline and proof of concept after another we arrive at Friday October 15th.

The producer has me cabbing him around first to pick him up and we go to meet our private investor company whom, after an hour and a half or so of bantering and not even talking business really - decided to hand our producer a final check for the "production".  I can't go into detail on how much exactly but it's a generous amount to actually do something business-like with.

The plans change about 3 times in the span of an hour after getting said funding and our producer decides on a whim and without anything packed, that he wants me to drive him out even further to oakland with a stop in pleasanton so that he can fly out to vegas that same day.  God knows what for...

I advised that we get a business license set up, start planning out a rough schedule, and book hotel(s) and come up with a budget, as well as a contract that weekend so that we could have everything on solid ground before we depart for Vegas on Sunday by car.  Now,

• Lesson #1: never do anything without at least 10% pay up front.

• Lesson #2: Have binding documentation as to what the nature of everything is and how everyone is to be compensated (a contract, basically).  

I've known these for a while and our producer rushing out to Vegas despite my advising not to go made me very uneasy about the project.  However, he did pay for the travel (somewhat) around that day; he also paid 10% up front for both me and my partner to "get us out there".
So, Sunday October 17th, we depart late afternoon after a brief conference with our producer over the phone.  We have no idea what he's been doing out there the whole weekend.  I asked him to book us the hotel in the morning so we can have everything arranged for us to just come in and unpack when we get there at night.  The producer didn't book the room until we got into Vegas...  To make things worse, the next morning we were up early and on time to get prepped and ready to leave so we could make it to the shooting location we needed to be at by 9.  Our producer - being completely unprepared and came out with nothing but the clothes on his back, demanded I cab him to a bank and then to a Wal Mart to buy clothing and some miscellaneous items.  We also needed to purchase some groceries to minimize food expenses but we didn't have time.  Our producer bought himself new clothes just for the day (not the week), and we picked up some missing items we simply forgot to pack like shampoo and conditioner.

• Lesson # 3: make sure everyone is clear on expenses.

That being said, our first major shady act of the day, our producer says "so how should we split this? you guys pay for your stuff, I'll pay for my share of what we're all using?"  Now because he's carrying a minimal amount of cash I decide to go ahead and just pay for what we needed to get.  Except, in-case of any legal affairs later on that might happen down the road; i opted not to pay in cash, and instead use a credit card that hadn't been used in a while - no balance to pay.  For legal purposes I can show I was the one paying these expenses and track exactly how much I should be getting reimbursed for.

So just what is our jobs on this project, you might be asking...  Well, since I am in all ways not bound to any NDA agreement, and I myself actually wrote the contract (notice this is not notarized nor am I any type of legal representative, this is just purely for clear and concise documentation as to what the project is and who is responsible for what).

Crush The Record Production Contract

On behalf of Crush The Record Production, I ___________________________(Executive Producer)  hereby appoint ___________________________(Production manager, Production Sound Mixer) and ___________________________(Director of Photography, Digital Imaging technician) as project employees, and enter into the following terms of agreement:

1.       Terms:    ----- ----- on behalf of Crush The Record Production shall be known as Executive Producer.  Cameron Bashaw for the duration of the project shall be known as Production Manager, and Production Sound Mixer.  ------- ---, for the duration of the project shall be known as Director of Photography, and Digital Imaging Technician.  The three negotiating entities shall collectively be called the “parties”.  The pilot episode production for Crush The Record Production shall be called “the project.”

2.       Definition:     The parties wish to enter into the project on behalf of Crush The Record Production for the purpose of creating the pilot episode of a TV Series concept which technical descriptions shall be entered into agreement orally. The agreement discussed in this contract on behalf of all parties is for mutual assurance of satisfaction with exchange of services for compensation.

3.       Crush The Record Production Contract:  

a.       The Executive producer shall be responsible for handling the financing of the project which includes

                                                               i.      Handling of all fund(s) generated by project from initial private 3^rd parties and/or commercial entities entering into business with Crush The Record Production, and accept ON BEHALF OF Crush The Record.

                                                             ii.      Payment of employees and those associated directly with project.  Anyone involved in project doing work for hire directly for Crush The Record Production (i) only as considered part of video production (ii) involved in front of, or behind camera as a “personality” for Crush The Record Production (iii) not as a third party already being compensated by alternate source whether in front of, or behind camera.

                                                            iii.      Proper compensation shall be provided by the end of the project duration, and paid in full.

b.      Production Manager shall be responsible for organizing documents, and schedules, and coordinating the project once on-location and operating

                                                               i.      Handling of any task relating to disclosure of documents within project team and to third parties if necessary with approval of executive producer.

                                                             ii.      Coordinate with Executive producer on organizational tasks and oversee the project operation

                                                            iii.      Manage progress of day to day shooting and scheduling according to viable content that can be obtained throughout.

                                                           iv.      Create and organize documents and any bookkeeping throughout duration of project.

c.       Director of Photography shall be responsible for delivery of video content and production value throughout the duration of the project

                                                               i.      Creative control and consistency of videography throughout production

                                                             ii.      Communicate effectively with Production manager and Producer to obtain the shots needed for project, and stay on task.

                                                            iii.      Directs Digital Imaging Technician on all creative aspects of videography

d.      Production Sound Mixer shall be responsible for delivery of audio content and production value throughout the duration of the project

                                                              i.      Handling of audio equipment and content quality, including jobs of boom operator and Utility Sound Technician

                                                            ii.      Maintain audio equipment

                                                          iii.      Deliver audio content to executive producer for review and editing

e.      Digital Imaging Technician shall be responsible for

                                                               i.      Handling of video equipment and content quality

                                                             ii.      Operate and maintain video equipment

                                                            iii.      Deliver video content to executive producer for review and editing

4.       Mutual Agreement of the following terms outlining the proper compensation of the following parties by the Executive Producer: Production Manager and Production Sound Mixer, Director of Photography.

a.       Prerequisites:  The employed parties agree to (i) arrive at Las Vegas no later than Sunday, October 17^th for check-in, unpacked and prepared for production. (ii) Begin production schedule on Monday, October 18^th, conclude no later than Friday, October 24^th. (iii) Production team is allowed short-leave, but must return no later than Sunday, October 24^th, checked-in, unpacked and prepared for production.  (iv) Begin production schedule on Monday, October 25^th, and conclude no later than Saturday, October 30^th.  (v) Production team will leave Las Vegas on Sunday, October 31^st, ending production duration. (vi) Work per-Diem: set compensation for day, hours can be more or less than state labor laws as long as lunch break and breaks are provided.

b.      Per-Diem  compensation:    The employed parties shall be paid for the duration of the project per day for services rendered and equipment operated and maintained.  Each party member shall receive the value of $------- per day.  The duration of the production shall be no less and not to exceed 11 days.  The total compensation to employed parties across the duration of the project will reach $----- to be paid to ------- --- for the jobs of Director of Photography and digital imaging technician, and $----- to be paid to Cameron Bashaw for the jobs of Production Manager and Production Sound Mixer.

c.       Coverage of expenses:    The employed parties shall have reimbursement for travel expenses incurred throughout the duration of the project as stipulated during development.  Executive Producer holds the option to either:

                                                               i.      Pay directly for any expenses incurred throughout the duration of production (i) based on its relevance to project, (ii) necessity to travel for project including but not limited to gas, lodging, food, and utilities for production.

                                                             ii.      To reimburse expenses incurred throughout the duration of production (i) based on its relevance to project, (ii) necessity to travel for project including but not limited to gas, lodging, food, and utilities for production.

d.      Exclusions to coverage of expenses include items that are purchased for personal use or have no necessity to travel or stay throughout the duration of the project.

                                                               i.      Miscellaneous items and personal habit materials purchased are considered personal purchases and not to be covered by fund(s) generated by and for Crush The Record Production.

                                                             ii.      Excessive purchases of any items that cannot be properly documented for production or have no receipt with which to claim.

e.      Proper documentation and clear and concise reporting by Production Manager to accurately document all expenses incurred; Production manager is not responsible for acquisition of receipts from all parties.

5.       Disclosure  of this agreement herein provided solely for the purpose of identifying parties, services, and compensation shall be considered for good and valuable measure sufficient to all parties for the purpose of conducting the project.

a.       All parties arrive to mutual agreement and act according to common code of conduct including but not limited to: professional behavior, representation of the company values, adhere to any dress code, and punctual attendance according to any derived schedule.

b.      Any and all compensation is considered final and non-refundable.

c.       Any exemption from transactions must be weighed with good and valuable measure within reason upon breach of any of the terms stated in this agreement.

Upon reading and agreeing to the terms stated in the agreement, Each party hereby validates and enters into business of the project.  Proof of this shall be supplied by signing below.  Each party must sign each copy of this document as required for authenticity.

Now, without going into a detailed day-by-day description, I'd like to describe more of the useful experiences that were derived from this whole project.  From someone who's come from a studio background and this being the first travel / on-location production, there was a lot of learning going on for me.

First off, business to business side of things were developing relations with the raceway association, the company building the car for their client to compete in the upcoming race event, and then getting a hold of the parts companies being used on the car that is being captured for the tv episode to see if they want any involvement.   The producer is actually decent at pulling in interest from companies but that's fairly easy considering they have a budget to spend on things like advertising and marketing.

Working with what's really only a 2-man crew: 1 camera operator, and 1 production sound mixer tripling as Boom Operator, and utility sound technician; was not actually that bad, but limited the scope of what we could achieve as far as capturing "cinematic shots" for the TV series' look and feel the producer wants. 
Working with only mono for external mic to capture sound and our location primarily being a large machine shop for fabrication, everything was extremely hard to capture.  To add to that, while our producer wants the end result to feel very "weekly movie" the true aspect of production is fully reality / documentary as we spent most of our time in the "hurry up and wait" mode.  We captured 90% of the footage as we were able to shoot them, if things happened (and often they did) we just got rolling and shot what we could without interfering too much in the business. Aside from a few key dialogue moments, a lot of the footage would probably end up on B-roll or secondary footage used without any real audio or character focus.

The entire first week was primarily spent at the shop with the fabrication company building the car for their client to race.  the Second week we started getting other footage needed while still basing our operations at the shop.  By Tuesday, October 26th, we had private access to the Bull Ring track at the Vegas Speedway to shoot some B-Roll footage of the track itself, as well as from the stands, some trucking / dolly shots, and transition shots. Thursday we started shooting interviews and prepping for Friday's practice, and Saturday's event.

Friday was perhaps one of the longest days we spent out there as we tried to get there as early as possible to get footage of the last bits being worked on the car, while our producer spent time with his dad who came through for the day, as well as at the track setting up onboard camera shots with a very lucky turnout.

Our producer was lucky enough to have a couple reps from Go Pro buy into the concept of the show and loan us 6 Go Pro Hero HD cameras with mounting kits and memory cards.  Our producer set them up on the cars, while we stayed at the shop to wait around to capture the last moments of the car being built and hopefully catch them doing the first engine firing and tuning.

Friday's schedule for the Bull Ring consisted of practices for all the different leagues and classes of cars on teh track that day.  The first SMRA practice session was at 4:15 pm, then again at 6:15 pm, 8:15 pm, and finally at 10 pm.  the two of us stayed at the shop the entire day waiting around for our shots which didn't actually happen until 10 pm finally when they got the top wing fully assembled and on the car.  By now, 3 practice sessions had already happened and 2 competitor cars were at the garage already being worked on by their teams due to complications on the track.  After a good 20 minutes of clearing out the cars and getting our car prepped for it's first run, we set up and were ready to shoot the first firing.

Because of the type of design and the way the cars work, they have to be push-started, and our location made it feasible for the company to do this with their own trucks get the car in place, we were able to get static shots of the whole process, which at first, consisted of us running around the whole block keeping up with the push-truck and the car as they did laps around the building to make several passes at starting the car.  The whole firing attempt was successful but with some tuning needed on the engine which they promptly just pulled into the garage and started working on.  We rushed inside and stayed handheld through the rest of the shot and captured some amazing dialogue (compared to the rest of the production we'd done thus far).

Saturday we were up bright and early even though we had ended late the night before.  With some typical delays from our producer we still made it to the track early enough to beat traffic of the race event.  After checking in and getting our pit passes we started rolling out immediately and prepping gear for initial shots in the pits with the vaious racers.  The first practice session started at 1:15 pm, the 2nd at 3:15 pm, qualifying at 5:15 pm, and the main feature at 8:30 pm.

3:15 pm rolls around and we made it up to the track to start filming the practice session and plan out camera angles and get b-footage of the practice.  We weren't expecting to be involved in a crash on the track at 150+ mph!  The #85 car had a problem during his deceleration at the end of the straightaway on the track coming into the 1st turn and barreled toward us with a broken front axle.  The car slammed into the barrier at more than 150 mph and got airborne, slamming up against the upper fence where we were  filming a good 4-7 feet to our left.  Luckily no one other than the race driver was injured.

However the impact was extremely severe and he is hospitalized.  While we waited and watched what we could before the racing association cleared out the track area of all bystanders, we reviewed our tape and realized we had caught footage of the accident as it happened.  We showed the racing team that wanted to know what happened, and representatives of the track and racing association that asked to see what happened.  They also asked for a copy of the footage of just that portion for insurance purposes.  We cooperated with and respected their wishes and destroyed the footage after.

I just found out today however, that he is still alive, had just come out of surgery but is in stable condition though critical. Our prayers go out to the race team and family.  It was quite an unforgettable experience...

The show, however, rolled on.  Even with a 2 hour delay on the track from the crash, the qualifying round still happened about about 7:15 pm, and the main feature at 9 pm.  For the main feature we were able to get clearance to get down on the inner ring of the track behind the barriers.  After the race we finished up with some interviews of the various people racing, as well as final interviews of the builders and car owner we followed throughout the production.

Now, production may have ended Saturday, but we have still been very busy.  Sunday was an all-day drive back home, a very long and not very pleasant drive.  What was originally just me and the camera guy turned into his gf, and our producer riding home with us.  Everyone got home and unpacked pretty much killed the entire day, so on Monday we were supposed to capture footage.  Monday was pretty much everyone's rest day so I took it upon myself to work on some of the various other projects that need managing.

So, here we are at late last night.  My camera guy brings over the equipment and tapes so we can start capturing.  today we just brought the producer the footage we captured so far, as well as getting my primary payment.  Up next is discussing reimbursement of all the travel expenses.

All in all, I highly disliked the experience working with a shady producer, who's completely unprofessional.  That being said, the experience has allowed me to prove to myself I am capable of operating such a project at a professional capacity, whether or not I can put put this experience on a resume.