The latest Road Trip USA brings the world of F1 racing to the streets of New York, the Florida everglades, and the ocean vistas of Miami. The trip ends at the Hard Rock Stadium in Florida.
This is the third in a series from Red Bull Media house. Both previous films were shot on RED, a perfect marriage of high-tech camera engineering and the adrenaline-fuelled fastest motorsport on the planet.
Emmy®-Award winning Director Nicholas Schrunk, DP Will Roegge, and drone specialist Johnny Schaer (aka Johnny FPV) were called on a mission to shoot this short that is based on high-octane sequences showing the power and extreme energy of the F1.
The team shot the F1 car by utilizing a combination of RED V-Raptor (as the main cam), Gemini (as a complementary cam), and Komodo (as an action cam).
In an interview with RED Digital Cinema, Schrunk takes us behind the scenes, talking about the challenges faced while shooting all the action, and how the RED cameras were able to deliver.
“We’re privileged to be partners with RED and for the chance to be among the first to get hold of its latest camera the V-RAPTOR for our hero film,” Schrunk says. “When we conceived this film, we knew we wanted to shoot large format to capture the grandeur of New York City, and it was the V-RAPTOR which really made this story fly.”
With the Florida city hosting the first race in America this weekend, Race to Miami features F1 driver Sergio ‘Checo’ Perez as he hot-foots his way to Miami for a first taste of the new circuit. The start sees a miscommunication between Pérez and Team Principal and CEO Christian Horner, sending Checo on this fast-paced 1,284km mission within 11 hours.
Shooting a high-performance F1 car racing around the city comes with some major challenges, because it’s not a conventional vehicle. As soon as the ignition is fired the car has just 60 seconds to get up to speed or the engine will overheat. The engine operates most effectively when traveling at race speed. Moreover, there’s no putting the car in neutral while waiting at a junction. So, shooting in New York city came with a host of logistical difficulties and required cameras that were consistent, high quality, and could keep pace.
“Once you turn it off, you’re going to be pushing it like a Flintstone car on the street, which is not great for the vehicle nor the look we were after,” Schrunk says. “These cars are designed to perform at speed and not to be idle. That meant there was simply no time for multiple takes. If something with the equipment doesn’t operate how you want or a mark is off, then boy, that’s a really expensive mistake! We relied on RED to capture everything as high quality as possible.”
Schrunk and Roegge armed themselves with a combination of RED GEMINIs positioned throughout New York City. A RED KOMODO was mounted onboard the F1 car for action-cam shots, and a V-RAPTOR was the prime storytelling camera used for the main car-arm shots following the F1.
“We picked RED V-RAPTOR because it combines a large-format sensor with incredible dynamic range during both day and night, and that gave us infinite flexibility to shoot around very tight permit windows.”
They shot full resolution (6K-8K) on all cameras allowing for scope during post without losing sharpness.
“We really like KOMODO because of the global shutter,” Schrunk relates. “Obviously, the resolution and the integrity of the film is there, but for high-action shooting there is really nothing on the market close to it. When you make whip pans and fast motion, the KOMODO snaps right into focus and it doesn’t have that frame or two delay that you get with other cameras. As a viewer you can really feel that. That’s why we like the KOMODO so much.”
“Mixing V-RAPTOR footage with GEMINI and KOMODO is a dream. All the shots just worked together, which meant we were able to spend time perfecting the creative grading as opposed to matching shots. It was such a treat on this project to have all the media from the REDs coming into conform with just a few nuanced tweaks mostly to do with lighting and lensing as opposed to format. It means you are ready to invest time in the creative grading rather than just getting media to match.”
The glass used was Masterbuilt Soft Flare Primes that are characterised by their softer-edged, smoother-contrast flares. The team was therefore able to capture the visceral reality of the experience while adding a smooth quality to the image.: “The combination of Masterbuilt lenses and the large format sensor just made a big city feel even bigger. Everything looked sharp and in deep focus with just enough of a tweak so the fall off at the edge is smooth and the bokeh is beautiful and creamy” affirmed Schrunk.
After leaving NYC, Checo’s journey takes him via the Florida Everglades, where his journey is interrupted by a large alligator lying in the car’s path. This results in a stand-off between it and a local passer-by.
“This was up there for memorable days” says Schrunk. “It’s beauty and the beast. We have a peerless engineered piece of motorsport and a 11-foot alligator, who we brought to the shoot. The gator just didn’t want to move – he was having way too much fun basking in the sun. Luckily, we had put a KOMODO underneath the nose of the F1, without it we wouldn’t have captured the reactions we did. This was a real high-risk angle right up in the gator’s face.”
The alligator is finally encouraged to move by a local who also offers to help point Checo in the right direction. With no room in the car cockpit, he water skis barefoot towed by the car at high speed along the bayou.
“An F1 car is obviously not made to tow anything, let alone a barefoot skier. The sheer terror of the engineers was something to behold, and since we wanted to capture this all in-camera, not VFX, we had to nail it then and there. We did.”
When Checo finally gets to Miami, he is able to unleash the full power of the F1 car. capturing its speed on film however presented a problem. Even at 120 km/h, which is sluggish for a F1 car, conventional filming equipment struggles to keep pace. The obvious answer was to use a drone.
“One of the main goals for our film was to capture these big moving wides and show how fast the car is going in a way that’s not possible from an onboard camera,” Schrunk says. “The problem is how to stay with a Formula 1 car traveling at 150 mph. If we shot from a helicopter with a gimbal-mounted camera you wouldn’t get close enough or low enough to the car because it rides so low to the ground. The car would appear flattened on-screen. Even a Russian Arm, which might top out at 110 mph is not an interesting shot. It would be like shooting from a car on a highway while a motorbike breezes by.”
The team wanted to capture this all-in-camera, so they enlisted the help of Johnny Schaer (aka Johnny FPV), the drone pilot who is world renowned for his experience flying racing drones – and racing drones alongside high-speed cars in order to get these crazy super-fast shots.
Schaer custom-built his own drone to carry a KOMODO at speeds up to 200 km/h around the Hard Rock Stadium, all while skilfully composing shots.
“He’s able to fly inches off the ground, orbit the car and then go back and high to follow the F1 car at speed. It meant we could tell the driver, ‘Go as fast you can, and we will shoot around you.’ This was an essential part of the creative to which Johnny was key.”
Johnny notes, “RED KOMODO is great for FPV flying. Weight is a huge consideration, so having a 2lb (900g) camera is fantastic. The global shutter is another tremendous bonus particularly because FPV drones don’t have a gimbal. With KOMODO there’s no jello on the image. Plus, you’re recording 6K. Most jobs I do are tailored to the KOMODO…The car is quite small, very low to the ground and of course it’s very fast. These all contribute to the coolness factor of the car, but also made it a challenging shoot. It was hard to keep up with the car without pushing the battery to its limit.”
At the time of shooting, in mid-2021, the track was still under construction. Schrunk chose to make it part of the story, with Checo realising the track is still being built but deciding to race on it anyway –christening the circuit months before its official race debut.
“This was a genuine, live construction zone which we didn’t want to shy away from, but we still needed to sell the idea that we are racing the circuit – which we actually did. There wasn’t even tarmac on some parts, we were just running on dirt track. It took a lot of planning but that was all part of the adventure.”
‘Race to Miami’ was a very challenging project which demanded camera versatility and various camera movement techniques. The combination of DSMC2, DSMC3, FPV Drone, and U-CRANE
All played their roles in getting the super-fast sequences of the F1.