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Lucent Productions is an freelance video production company focused in action sports but with additional experience in a wide range of video production from commercial to wedding videography.

Monday, August 29, 2011

2011 Windham World Cup - Better Late Than Never

As most people know, summer is typically the busiest time of year for anyone. Summer bbq's, parties, plenty of biking, and various activities that keep everyone pinned for 3 months of the year. By the time September rolls around you feel like you'd blinked in Spring and woke up Fall. My summer was no different, except I didn't get much biking in at all. Shooting for Highland Mountain Bike Park, filming weddings, and projects for other clients has kept me busy. Not to mention I have a full time 40hr/week job to squeeze in as well!

I hadn't been to a World Cup in over a year and a half, but when I checked my calendar and realized that the Windham World Cup fell on one of my free weekends, I knew I had to be there. I had no teams to shoot for, no clients on my list that needed rider footage, so I knew that it would be somewhat of a relaxed weekend. I packed the gear and hopped in my buddies car Friday after work. After a quick stop to pick up some supplies from e.13 to deliver to the guy's running support at the event, we were on our way!

This was my first time shooting a DH race with my Canon 7D. I'll be the first to tell anyone that filming races falls low on my list of favorites, mainly because the ENTIRE time you are shooting, it's run-and-gun and 'hope for the best'. Not much time to set up shots because you rarely know who is coming (unless you're lucky to have a second shooter up the course giving you radio calls).
*sidenote* I have a curse of setting up a shot, waiting for a few minutes but no one will ride down. I'll pick up my tripod and start walking down the hill and then the likes of Minaar, Gee, or Gwin would ride by. This was the case that weekend as well*
95% of the shots in the video were done handheld, with a few steadicam shots thrown in as well. The toughest part I found was trying to keep the rider in frame but also look where I was running. At one point I was jumping from rock to rock down the hill and almost ate sh!t pretty badly, thankfully the camera was not harmed in the filming of this video!
Slomo - I know most people will critique and say "OMG TOO MUCH SLOMO!" I felt that in order to really appreciate the amazing and uncanny bike handling of a World Cup downhiller, it would require it to be slowed down. I still wanted to toss in some high speed stuff for good measure as well though! I only shot for two days and prob have another 3-4 minutes of banger footage.

Enjoy!

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