On location: Strongco

“When we’re not dodging flying trees while trying to light and shoot, we’re punching through waist deep snow.”

Aaron Hoskins sporting snowshoes while traipsing through the forest with our battery lighting kit.

It's 5 am and we're speeding down a dark snowy road, deep in the backwoods of Maine. Another sip of sludge hotel coffee, and somehow my sleep deprived body doesn't have enough energy to recoil from the revolting taste. I'm lucky enough to be riding shotgun for this leg of the trip, which gives me a few sparing chances to catch some shut eye on the way to our location. Unfortunately the festering pre-shoot adrenaline has another agenda. Then it occurs to me: we are blindly following two people we just met into remote New England forest to shoot a massive, tree-eating logging machine, with no clue how to get back. Fargo meets Deliverence. Oh, and did I mention we're in Steven King's hometown? We're on day nine of a 16 day production that takes us to 11 locations, three provinces, two states, and far too many complimentary continental breakfasts. Our assignment is to shoot massive machines and the technicians that work on them. We just finished our leg through Montreal, which had to be some of the coldest conditions I've ever shot in. A plate of poutine and a pint later, and the cold was a distant memory. We managed to squeeze in a whopping two hours of sleep before being stung with a 3am wakeup call for our flight down to Bangor, Maine.

After braving the cold in Montreal, a little snow in the backwoods of Maine seems like child's play. Then we decide to do a follow shot of the monstrous logging machine. We'll be moving on foot through a tangled mess of downed trees and four feet of snow. When we're not dodging flying trees while trying to light and shoot the machine, we're punching through waist deep snow. It's slow going. Before long, the ever resourceful photo assistant, Aaron Hoskins, manages to track down a pair of snowshoes to keep him afloat.

This behemoth and futuristic logging machine makes quick work of the forest, and can drive over the most unruly terrain.

“The abnormally high static electricity was threatening to fry the camera...”

Wrapping up our shoot days in Maine, we head off for the obligatory east coast lobster feast. Word on the street is that the best lobster in town is on the permanently moored boat-restaurant down in the port. Yes, a suspicious old boat that's been converted into a restaurant. Against our better judgment, we trust local advice and climb aboard. In true American fashion, we each got a plate with two lobsters for cheaper than the price of one. Makes perfect sense. So, with full bellies and our New England shoot days under our belt, it's off to Portland's aptly named Jetport to head home and regroup in Toronto.

Two weeks later, we're back on the move, this time to Edmonton. One of the challenges with shooting large machines on location is often the environment they work in. Over the course of this shoot, we've had to brave different obstacles at every location. If it's not the flying debris and strong winds we had in Massachusetts, it's the abnormally high static electricity threatening to fry the camera we were trying to rig to a crane in Oakville. In Edmonton, it is the seemingly innocuous clay soil. While setting up and shooting one of the first shots, I'm standing behind the camera for a few minutes getting things sorted. As soon as I try to move, lo and behold my feet are completely locked in the mud. I don't know whether to laugh or panic. After a few deep breaths, some calm and collected jiggling of my feet, minutes later I break free. But not without six inches of mud stuck to the bottom of my boots. Welcome to Edmonton. It's not long before all our gear is also covered in thick, greasy clay. Fantastic.

With a filthy truck towering over Aaron and I, you can get a sense of the scale of these massive machines.

Don’t be fooled by the pretty mud. This sticky clay will stop you in your tracks.

Our final shoot day of the whole project takes us to a worksite full of nothing but massive pipes. I'm not sure whether I should be more afraid of the deadly piles of pipes we have to set up beside while shooting, or the salty workers who have no patience for us taking over their work area. With the efficiency of a team on our tenth shoot day, we blast off our three shots and officially wrap what is one of the longest shoots I've ever done. 

Shooting on location is always an adventure, and this project did not disappoint. Thanks to Art, Michael and the team at Atlanta Visual Communications for the inspiring creative collaboration. Thanks also to Steve Wallace at Barnes Communications, and of course to Bob Dryburgh, Charlene Kelly and the entire team over at Strongco.

With high voltage power lines flanking this worksite, extreme static electricity prevents us from rigging the camera to the top of the crane.

Working around these giant pipe stacks makes for a tense shot. If even one pipe shifts and lands on you, it’s certain death.

BTS: Nissan SickKids

What do you do when you have three days notice to pull off a location car shoot? Well, after sheer panic and some frantic scheduling, the adrenalin kicks in and there's no more time to waste. The call came in from the folks at TBWA and the self proclaimed, ultra laid back team of Dan Bache and Matt Williamson. Seemed like a bit of a misnomer considering the lightning pace of this project. This particular shot was highlighting Nissan's sponsorship of SickKids hospital in Toronto. The concept involved a young patient holding her hand out the window of a moving car, playing with the wind on her way home from the hospital. A simple visual that pretty much anyone who's been in a car can identify with.

First and foremost, we made the decision to shoot on location. Sounds like a no brainer, but often times cars will be shot in studio, then dropped into a location background in post. By shooting everything on location, right away we have a more realistic feel to the shot, showing subtle environmental reflections throughout the body panels of the car.

I had pitched the agency on shooting into the sun, to create a warm and positive feeling. As luck would have it, with our shoot only days away, the forecast was looking terrible. With two of our three pre-production days spent location scouting, lo and behold on the day before the shoot there were blue skies. We jumped at the opportunity to head out and shoot a few sunny backgrounds. Consider it an insurance policy in case the weather didn't cooperate on the shoot day.

An outtake from our background shots the day before the shoot. I always think these blurred road shots have an interesting artistic sensibility just on their own.

In order to make the car appear moving, we needed to have a background that shows motion blur. While it's possible to blur a shot in post, there's no substitute for the real thing. So we hop in the car with yours truly hanging out the trunk shooting long, blurred shots of an empty road. Nothing like an exhilarating shot out the back of a car to add some excitement to the madness of our three day pre-production.

“There we were, in the pouring rain, trying to make it look like a beautiful sunny day.”

Sure enough, when we show up on our shoot day, the rain is pouring down. Given we were on a very tight budget, we had a small crew, and very little provisions to deal with rain. While it was great to have the sunny backgrounds to fall back on, we had one major hurdle to deal with: rain drops on the car. A tarp over the car was out of the question due to reflections and colour casts. We decided to fly a large sheet of clear plastic to protect the vehicle from the rain, while still giving us a realistic sky reflection in the car. Well, not only is a large sheet of plastic good for blocking rain, it's even better at picking up wind and almost blowing over our entire set. It was all hands on deck from that point forward.

There we were, in the pouring rain, with a battery light acting as our sun, trying to make it look like a beautiful sunny day. It was an endless task wiping down stray raindrops from the car. Dan sent a snapshot of our soggy production to Creative Director Allen Oke. It's all part of the act, I reassured Dan.

Coffee toting Art Director Dan Bache snapped this picture of our drenched hero car.

After getting our shot with the talent, there appeared to be a break in the clouds. Could it be? If we removed the plastic rain cover, there was no time to reset it, not to mention we had no more dry towels left to wipe up any more rain. A few moments of quick contemplation, and we decided to strike the plastic. With the crew moving in hyper speed, we banged off all the frames we needed, giving us some clean body shots to build our final image. The gamble paid off.

With just one day to work on post, we needed to move fast. After some serious screen time, a session of revisions with Dan at the pub, and one very late night, we had our final image. All in all, not too shabby for having shot in the pouring rain.

Thanks to Dan Bache and Matt Williamson for another great project. And to the hardworking, soaking wet crew of Aaron Hoskins, Nick Wong and Daniel Garcia, we couldn't have pulled it off without you guys.

The final ad for Nissan’s sponsorship of SickKids.