I really enjoy shooting video of rad trucks doing gnarly Jeep trails! Last February, I was asked to accompany Jeff Ismail, owner of International Harvester Parts America, to create a custom automotive feature video at the King of The Hammers Ultra-4 Race in Johnson Valley, California.
King of the Hammers is an off-road race that combines desert racing and rock crawling. It is held annually in February on Means Dry Lake at Johnson Valley, California, United States. The race is broadcast live on Ultra4 Racing’s website. Ultra4 Racing is a sanctioning body that organizes off-road racing events, including the King of the Hammers. The race is considered one of the toughest off-road race events in the world, combining high-speed racing with low-speed rock crawling 3. The King of the Hammers serves as the final event for the ULTRA4 Racing Series races.
International Harvester Parts America is a retail store and restoration shop that specializes in International Harvester Scout and Light Truck products. They offer new, used, and NOS (New Old Stock) International Harvester Scout, Pickup & Travelall Light Line Parts. They also provide aftermarket suspension and drivetrain parts, 4-wheel disc brake, reverse shackle, and spring over axle conversions for Scout, Pickup & Travelall. They have a repair and fabrication shop that can handle almost any job. They are an authorized Scout Light Line parts dealer with the West Coast’s Largest in-stock Inventory. They also offer fuel injection and overdrive transmission conversion kits for Scout, Pickup & Travelall. They have a huge online store, tech bulletin board with free information, photo gallery & more. They offer many high-performance parts for your IH Scout, Pickup, or Travelall engine in stock. They offer complete drivetrain service, repair, or upgrade.
Jeff has a unique truck with his 1952 International L-110 “Trout,” a truck that is some kind of weird combination of a truck and a Scout. The vehicle is amazing and went everywhere that Jeff pointed it. It has a lot of original body panels, is heavily customized, and almost all of it has some original paint and patina, which looks amazing on video.
I shot and edited a 3-part video series of his time there at the event, running extreme 4×4 trails and cruising around the festival.
I shot these on my Sony a7siii and FX3 in 4k, 10-bit, 4:2:2 using the Sony S-Cinetone picture profile. This gives me an amazingly sharp video image with almost perfect color right out of the camera. The high bit rate and color depth lets me fine-tune the color grade as necessary. But for the most part, if I get the exposure right, it doesn’t take much, if any, work in post-production.
In a production like this, where I am single-handling the entire shoot, I use the Sony cameras in tandem. I have one set up handheld, usually with a long zoom lens like a 70-200. When the vehicle is tackling a trail and obstacles, I have one camera rigged on sticks, and I position it so that the 4×4 will drive into and out of frame. The focus on that camera is always fixed.
For the handheld angle, I have the camera in Steadyshot, active with a steady shot active on the lens as well. Then, I am able to get a fairly complete view of the action through both angles. In this case, I got close-ups and unique angles with the hand-held camera rig, with more overview shots with the camera on a tripod.
I augment these two angles with footage from a GoPro camera either on its own little tripod, on a suction mount on the vehicle somewhere, or just set on the ground for the vehicle to drive over. The GoPro image quality is subpar at best, but often, the angles you can get with it are so unique and compelling that it is worth the sacrifice in quality.
I also flew the drone on this shoot for the mandatory aerial view of the action.
I’m pretty happy with how this three-part video series turned out!
-M