Multimedia
Blogs
Forum
Affordable HD
Whitepapers
Newsletters
Events
Advertisers
Blogcast
MillimeterBig, Fast Cars
Feb 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Michael Goldman
DP James Neihouse admits to feeling stupid at one point during filming of the new IMAX film NASCAR 3D: The IMAX Experience. The feeling hit Neihouse at the Richmond International Raceway last year while operating an IMAX 3D camera to capture up-close footage of professional racecars zooming along.
 The bulky IMAX 3D cameras were placed on Shotmaker cranes and mounted on a truck chassis. |
“I was laying on my belly on the track at one point as the cars went past,” Neihouse says. “It wasn't a race, it was a test we did to get unique footage, but I was still awfully close to the cars. I was just being stupid that day. The test went well, but I later realized we could get the same footage of all 25 cars by mounting the camera on a 34-degree bank on the track and screwing it down, getting the hell out of the way, and begging the drivers not to hit it.”
The in-your-face style of the film, directed by Simon Wincer, posed major logistical problems for the camera crew as it struggled to manipulate two IMAX 3D cameras (using Kodak high-speed 5218 and Kodak 5246 65mm stock) that weigh close to 300lbs. each on various racetracks across the country.
“There were two big challenges,” says Neihouse. “First, the camera's size made it tough. To move something as big as a large bar refrigerator around a racetrack was complicated. Second, we had the problem of the speed of the cars. Often, when you shoot high-speed action, you overcrank and slow it down some. But Simon wanted us to capture the reality of the speed and transfer that to the viewer to visually show 200mph. Therefore, overcranking was not an option, and as a result, we had to deal with strobing issues along the way.”
A variety of methods were employed to move the cameras efficiently during production. Neihouse arranged to use a Shotmaker crane, mounted on a truck chassis, in order to stick the IMAX cameras into pits and over track walls. “That made us mobile, which was important because things were very fluid on the track during races,” he says.
 A special camera car was built out of an old racing vehicle to capture action footage. |
The production also captured shots from a helicopter by mounting one of the cameras on a gyro-stabilized, three-axis SpaceCam mount. So-called “on-track” footage showing what goes on near and inside cars during a race had to be re-created. This was required since NASCAR would not allow filmmakers to use cameras on cars during actual races for safety reasons. For this part of the job, filmmakers built a special camera car out of an old racecar donated by Roush Racing of Charlotte, N.C.
“We cut up the car and built the camera into the car in ways you could not place it on a real racecar,” Neihouse explains. “We just hard-mounted the camera into the car and let the vehicle's suspension take the bumps. That was the only expeditious way to do it, and besides, it's more realistic because the viewer gets some of the vibrations and bumps that the drivers really deal with.”
Mitigating the strobing was more an issue of trial and error.
“We found out that if you let the cars go zipping by in the frame, they go beyond strobing and turn into little blurry streaks,” he says. “Occasionally, we would use that material — lock the camera off and let the viewer see 43 colored streaks zip through the frame. The other thing we learned: For short distances, we could pan the cameras using the Shotmaker crane. That let us crank our operators around, so we could pan with the cars and, for a time, keep them in the same relative position within the frame. This made the background blurry or streaky, which added to the speed effect.
“The other thing we learned to do was to shoot cars at a diagonal angle. They would sort of come right at us and then rush past. Strobing is much worse when the object goes horizontally across the frame, but when it goes diagonal, the effect is a lot less.”
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.