It didn't suck to film in Saxnäs

Greetings!

I've been working as a 1st Assistant Camera at Lapland Memories since the end of 2011 and the most interesting case so far has been filming new snowmobiles in Saxnäs, Sweden. The days we spent there filming were 13.-17.2.2012. The equipment I spent most of my time working with were RED Epic camera and Kessler Shuttle Pod and Revolution head.

                      There they are: Epic on Shuttle Pod and Revolution head (I'm the one on the left)

The weather there was very diverse and sometimes quite extreme. It wasn't very cold but I've seldom seen it snowing that heavy. Because of that I was a bit worried how our equipment would hold up. We had good weather protection kits for Epic so I new that if we just were careful enough it would be fine but I wasn't so sure about the Shuttle Pod. Or to be precise I was more worried about the Shuttle Pod's controllers. They don't feel exactly waterproof and they couldn't be covered all the time because I had to use them. But to my big surprise they had no trouble working. I love it when things work as they should.

But I didn't always appreciate that Shuttle Pod the way I do now. In the beginning I thought it was one of the most annoying pieces of equipment I had used during my career. I felt that way because there's one major flaw with it in my opinion. It is that you can't turn the Revolution head without electricity. And it has to be positioned precisely so it can be placed in it's carrying case. So every time when there was a wrap up and I forgot to position the revolution head correctly I had to pull the cables again to get it working so I could turn it the way it should be. But after our Director of Photography made me promise to buy everyone a beer if I forgot to turn the Revolution head, then my memory got better. Now I usually remember to do it so there's not much to complain about the Shuttle Pod / Revolution head anymore.

But back to filming in Saxnäs. So there we were filming Lynx's new snowmobiles in the mountains. After I had learned that I didn't need to worry about our equipment I also had to learn to be a bit more careful about my own health. Now I now that it's not very wise to be riding a snowmobile (not driving) when it's going up a steep slope and I'm holding a huge camera tripod on my lap. It was very close that I didn't fall of and probably broken a few bones while rolling down the mountainside with the tripod. Luckily the driver noticed that I was about to fall of and pulled over. After that I started to be a bit more careful.

                                                                         Safety first

But in the end it was one of the best productions I've been working in. Beautiful sceneries, usually good weather and I even got to drive those state-of-the-art snowmobiles myself.

                                                                       That's not me


-Timo Paulin / 1st Assistant Camera

Fast cars on the ice

We´ve been quite busy during last couple weeks. That´s why there hasn´t been any new blog updates. Earlier in Feb we were filming something nice that can´t be published yet, but we´ll make a blog post about that later on this month when the time is right.

Last couple years we´ve been specialized filming motorsports. When you do something year after year, you learn the tricks how to make things look fast, dynamic & powerful. And when you do something well for one customer then most probably one another from the same genre will get interested.

Last two weeks our theme was fast cars on ice. At start we filmed new Porsche 911 in Rovaniemi. Production was made with Red Epic & Canon 5dmkII. It included some rig shots and for those we used the Panther multimount. Multimount is something that I want to recommend to everybody rigging cars with lightweight cameras. It´s really fast to rig and it can hold easily 5DmkII or Epic. Even with a fluidhead. With 911 we rigged Red Epic inside the car, filming reactions of passengers when they were having a hot lap with a race driver. We also rigged 5dmkII outside the car when they were driving fast and drifting on ice. Multimount worked perfectly as it did last year.

After 911 we went to Ivalo to film Porsche Sales Exelence Awards. It was a fast production that we edited at the same time as we filmed. Video included Porsche driving, Snowmobiles, Husky ride, Reindeer ride, Snowshoes, Ice Fishing, Sampo Icebreaker and the Snowcastle. Everything was filmed and edited in 4 days.

Yesterday I came from another shoot where we filmed super cars on Ice for Finish TV. There was one guy who had won a competition and had a chance to drive Subaru Impreza, Audi R4 & Lamborghini Gallardo on Ice. There was also one Porsche on the set.. It´s a nice job to film these luxury cars because it feels easy to make them look good. Good drivers and beautiful cars in a fairytale scenery.

Maybe someday we´ll have one of these cars in our garage.. You never know ;)