Americas Cup Doc

[Taylor Morrison]

Hi
Just wrapped a 45 day project for Skydance / Mt Philo films on the Americas Cup in San Francisco. Wanted to report that my Epic captured +- 9.4TB's of R3D's in some hazardous conditions. We were "embedded" with the Oracle team and were on and off the water many times a day. Ran thru cold ,fog, heat(under rain covers), salt water, fresh water(rained one day), dust and finally some champagne spay (should have seen that one coming!) all with never (really) never a hiccup. Mostly handheld with canon lenses I can report that yes a Documentary can be shot with minimal intrusion with an Epic. I did have some advise otherwise prior to the job. I am really quite pleased with how it all went. If you all have any questions as to how I set it up let me know and I can do my best to answer. Film should be out within a year.

 

[Geoffrey Weate]

what kind of cover did you use to keep all the moisture out of the camera Taylor? Waterproof? I am Looking forward to seeing the results. Congratulations.

 

[Corey_O]

Did you ride in Oracles chase boat? What did you stabilize with on the water?

Those boats haul ass!

 

[Mark Andersen]

Sounds like quite an adventure, I'll be there is some great footage in there, can't wait to see it, congrats.

 

[Russ Fill]

I have about a million questions for you. But first how big was your camera crew and...yeah what kind of water protection?

 

[Taylor Morrison]

Hi again,

I used the Ombre rain cover at first but I found that it was a little on the light duty for this application and it was time consuming to take on and off. I went with the cover that Element is selling which I have to say was great. Although it was heavyish, it went on fast and really sealed the camera up. Velcro along the bottom to seal out spray from under and 100% waterproof from above. The only issue was that I think it was developed for larger cine lenses and I had some trouble sealing the smaller Canon lenses. I used a Variable ND rig as described by Mark Toia with 80mm fronts on the lenses from Duclos. The Vari ND got hit hard with moisture and needed a lot of cleaning but saved the lens.
Ill try to post some pictures today of the set up which includes a handy viewfinder rig and a leather pad under the battery module for shoulder mount. I was using my old Aaton wooden handgrip on short 15mm rods too. Got to keep it light for all day use.
No stabilization on the Protector boats (50+ MPH on San Fran bay in a 1000hp twin Diesel inboard 36' RIB is insane btw) as I was not really after boat to boat shots. I was grabbing shots of discussions between coaches and sailors during breaks and practice. On race days we had a Cineflex on a chase boat and a cineflex on a helicopter.
The whole team was made up of several cameras each with their own crew depending on what they were doing. I was the Oracle crew and due to a request to keep it simple and stay as invisible as possible it was just me and sound. We shot dual system (yea no cables) ala lockit boxes on camera and sound recorder. Each night we would turn in our cards to the DIT's and we would have media ready for us the next morning.
Pictures of the camera set up shortly.
Thanks for the interest.

 

[Matt Uhry]

Sounds like an adventure, Can't wait to see the film.

Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com

 

[Taylor Morrison]

Pics

Pics

Photos of camera as set up for lightweight handheld.

 

[kylebainter]

I'm looking forward to seeing this too! Sounds very cool!

 

[Andy Roberts]

Taylor, how did you attach the leather pad for shoulder mounting? Velcro? That's a cool idea.

 

[Mark Whatmore]

Hi Taylor - thanks for sharing - looks like a great project

 

[Taylor Morrison]

Andy Thats the middle pad from a Letus product. It comes in 2 parts and I only needed the middle. It has a sown in piece of velcro and I just put a matching piece on the underside of the quad battery module. Works very nice and simple.

 

[Peter Strietmann]

That AC blew away any other by miles. Not sure how you were stabilizing yourself in that rib but I'm sure it was not for the faint of heart. I can't wait to see what you guys have shot. That was not your fathers America's Cup! Such a crazy harsh environment to work in. Congratulations!

 

[Taylor Morrison]

Peter
The protector rib's came a close second to the AC72's as coolest boat on the bay. If you could get one, the seats are actually pneumatic and quite comfy and one of them had a enclosed cabin. Otherwise its the back of the boat!

 

[Jack Cooper]

Taylor...Thanks for sharing...I had been following the race and saw some of the engineering drawings from the website on all the embedded cameras on the actual racing boats...pretty amazing technical feat.

Were you guys wired into the comms for the captain, tactician, etc...? I saw the headset/boom mic, didn't know if they gave you access or were they going to sync that up in post?

 

[Taylor Morrison]

Jack, The ACTV people were recording 11 channels of audio including all comms from each boat. We have access to all that for the doc. What we were doing often was wiring up a coach or engineer on the protectors to get the audio not captured over the comms system. There was a master time code clock that each camera and sound recordist was synced to via lockits so any audio sync hopefully is a snap.

The ACTV broadcast set up (not ours)was massive! I forget the exact details but each boat had 11 channels of audio and 4 channels of HD video capable of transmission during each race. I think there were 7 total PTZ HD capable cameras on each boat and a couple of stationaries. Multiply by 2 (2 race boats) add 3 choppers with cineflexes, 3 chase boats with cineflexes, plus many eng cameras around the pavilions all transmitting to one massive wireless cloud over the San Fran bay. Completely nuts! Glad you enjoyed the race.

 

[Jack Cooper]

Taylor.

Thanks for the info...Yes, it was a visual treat for sure.