several takes to record. Anna says she would
first chat with him without the camera rolling, or ask him to narrate their progress toward their destination. “Then I’d say: OK, I
will get the camera rolling, then I’ll ask you
the question again and I want you to tell me
the piece you just said.” At times she asked
him to repeat what he said more succinctly
or clearly. He surprised her by spontaneously
crooning a song he composed about the road
trip. She used her iPhone to make notes for
the editor on suggested takes to use in the
finished videos, and to keep a checklist of the
shots she had to take.
Gear: Anna took two Canon 5D Mark II cam-
eras on the trip; she used one and had the oth-
er on hand as a back up. Her “go to” lens, she
says, was a 24-70mm f/2.8; she also brought
a 16-35mm f/2.8 and an 80-200mm f/2.8 she
used when she needed shallow depth of field,
as when she shot a truck rolling by through the
Mazda’s side window. The “single most useful
piece of gear I had with me,” she says, was a
Fat Gecko by Delkin Devices, which allowed her
to mount the camera to different points on
the car with suction cups. “I mounted it on the
hood looking back at the driver, and then I had
it on the back of the car near the bumper so you
could see the logo.”
At times she also handheld the camera, set
Above: To give the video variety, Anna shot the
car and Bardwell from a variety of angles,
both inside and out. Right: Anna also used the
Fat Gecko suction-cup mount on the exterior of the
car to capture the logo and the passing road.
it on a tripod or used an indiSystem DSLR rig.
“They’re great and economical,” Anna says of
the indiSystem rigs. She found that changing
from one rig or setup to another was time consuming, as she tried to move quickly between
the front and back seat to grab footage.
The wireless lavalier mic she brought picked
up interference from the car’s electronics, so
she relied on a Zoom H4n sound recorder. “In
windy conditions, I used it with a windscreen,”
she adds.
For lighting, Anna says she used LED bars
that were “short and compact, about 12 inches
long.” These she was able to place in the visor
above the driver and on the dash while shooting Bardwell during the nighttime drive.
Post ProDuctioN: She stored the video on
32 gb Kingston cards. She gave the clips, audio
files and her log of shots to Bosch at Novus
Select. During the editing she also suggested
places for color correction, or as she put it,
“spots that needed sweetening.” The two-and-a-half-minute video is now posted on You Tube,
and is linked to on Mazda’s Web site.
