Day 3 was our first day at Camp Pendleton, a sprawling base used exclusively by the Marine Corps outside of Carlsbad, CA. One of the Marines joked with me that Pendleton is basically a wildlife preserve with some barracks on it. He said that there’s certain places they can’t go during certain times of year because of the endangered specices that live in the area. He talked about a large endangered turtle that if you pick it up or otherwise try to move it, it will piss itself and then possibly die of dehydration. So they’re not allowed to move the turtles. If a turtle crawls under your Humvee to get out of the sun, you can’t move it until the turtle decides to leave on its own. He said he’s seen entire convoys stuck on the road all day because of the turtles.
Ok, on with the blog.
This was also the first day where we were using cameras other than the Cineflex. Specifically the SI2K, in both standalone and POV rigs, a RED One MX for interviews and standups, and an N5, which is a high speed camera about the same size as the SI2K.
We started the day shooting at the barracks, which I don’t have any pictures of because I was getting my media managing station set up and testing the N5 camera with Bobby and Scott from HD Rentals. (insert video).
Yeah, good thing I never tried to be a wide receiver. Bobby did a pretty good fake though. This is the full length of a shot from the N5, so you can see how little shooting time we have with it. We had to plan our shots with this camera carefully.
We ended the day with a “Track Day” at a small airstrip on the base. For the POV, we wanted a few shots from behind the helmet screen to make them look more realistic. So we came up with a rig that reminded me of Johnny Knoxville from Men in Black 2 – a POV helmet right next to Teach’s head.
Pictured at top is Sergeant Teep, one of the Marine “actors”. His line in this PSA was, “I’m ready to ride!” A few minutes after his stand ups, he crashed his bike. So his wife and the other Marines there had to give him shit: “Well, I guess you weren’t ready to ride!”
As the day was winding down, Marcello asked me to take some shots of his truck with the sunset in the background. I buzzed off quite a few, but I think this one turned out pretty well.
Teach started having a little fun doing endos and wheelies (or whatever the cool kids call them). It took me quite a few passes before I was able to get a decent shot. This type of photography is definitely new to me. But I think I got it.
And of course, I had to get a sunset shot at the end of the day. You can see the rest of my pictures from Day 3 on my Flickr page.