Shooting For Nascar In Daytona Beach, Florida
The Inquiry
For anyone that enjoys crazy production stories, you’ll love this one. I received a call for a good client of mine and they need to conduct a few interviews and capture some b-roll over in Daytona, Florida. I was all over it. I’ve never been there and it seems like a pretty straight-forward, relatively simply shoot. It had already been two weeks since I received the inquiry and I have not received a 100% confirmation on the shoot and it was to take place in two days time. So I reached out to see if this was confirmed. My client responded that the client wanted to see a full estimate before they pull the trigger on this shoot. I immediately put together a full, itemized, production estimate according to the information that I received from the client. You know the deal, how many cameras, audio (separate or internal), lighting style, etc. The answers would help to to put together a more accurate production estimate for their project. With my estimate ready and submitted, they still did not get back to me. My POC (point of contact) was slightly embarrassed that the client had not made a decision yet and it was now the day BEFORE I needed to be in Daytona, a four hour drive from Miami. It was now 8pm the night before and still no confirmation on the shoot. Now usually I would tell the client I am sorry but I cannot take a job under these circumstances and simply walk away from this project. However, this was quite a big estimate for a good client and they also had assured me that if they decided not to take it, they would still give me $500 for the kill fee on this one. So I continued to wait. It is now 12:30am and I still don’t know if I was going to Daytona, Florida for this shoot. By the way, at this point, they’ve already told me that the call time would be at 11am. Normally I would’ve gone the night before, but without confirmation, I didn’t want to take that chance. If I wanted to make it comfortably in time for the shoot, I needed to wake up at 4am, get ready, drive to my studio to pick up all the equipment that was already prepped, then start driving out to Daytona. Naturally, like any human would do, I fell asleep waiting on that confirmation email. I woke up at 6am and saw that they had confirmed the shoot at 2am. All I could do was laugh at the situation. I told the client the time I am seeing this but I am on my way and will do my best to get there on time. I rushed to my studio, then raced over to Daytona to try to catch the 11am call time. I ended arriving at 10:30am in Dayton in perfect time to meet with our first talent for the interview. This was quite the adventure.
The Job
While in Daytona, Florida shooting for NASCAR and the story behind the France family, I was able to experience the NASCAR atmosphere that was quick incredible there. First interview was in the Gallery500 where they keep some nice art. But then I went to conduct a couple more interviews right in the NASCAR National Archives. That was so incredible to see. NASCAR throughout the years. I needed to get b-roll of the entire space and it was overwhelming. Trophies and pictures from wall to wall inside multiple rooms.
Production
As for my setup, I was shooting on two Sony FX3 cameras. This was decided for convenience. This was a one-man-band shoot so I needed to be simple and quick without compromising quality. I love that I am able to simply setup one camera the way I like it and simply copy and paste the settings unto the B-cam seamlessly. For audio I was only using the Audix SC ONE hypercardiod microphone on a boom stand. No lavs on this shoot since I needed to move really fast. For lighting, I was using the Nanlite Forza 500B with the amazing Nanlite Parabolic 120 soft box dome. Backlighting and accent lighting with the 1 foot Nanlite Pavotubes mark two. They’re amazingly convenient to operate and light to travel with. This was a very easy and fast setup and as you can see, I was still able to achieve my deserved interview look without too much equipment. I’ll be honest, I did get a little lucky with the locations as they were already pretty nice to shoot. More experience will help you utilized less gear to achieve top-notch results.
RESULTS
