Category: Automotive

 

Sandra Horne is a 60s pin-up and promo model, host of her own YouTube car show,  loves nothing more than getting out on the open road and traveling incredible distances across Australia in her 60’s inspired 1932 Ford 5 Window Coupe, yet she’s equally at home racing the Hot Rod down the tarmac drag strip.

This episode was kind of challenging for sound recording, I was not allowed to put any recording device in the front of the engine for two reasons, first, the front of the car had no bonnet, the engine was fully exposed to wind, second, Sandra, was not comfortable with me fixing anything in the front section of the car, which I can totally understand and respect…

I had to be quick in my thinking and come up with alternatives to get the needed sounds to match the chasing shots of the front of the car, the good thing is we started the day by recording passing by’s at high and medium speed, which gave me more time to figure out alternatives.

Things got really exciting when we headed to the Heatcote Park Drag Strip, we spent a few hours there doing beautiful gimble shots by the very talented David Franjic, the thrilling part was the burn out shots!!! Once again, I got to hide in the foot well of the passenger seat while Sandra was going completely mental in doing her burn outs, she was incredibly good at it!!! Between two takes, she casually mentioned that she drove from Melbourne all the way to Ayers Rock and back with her hotrod!!! That’s about 2.500 kms one way, on her own!!! I found that completely amazing!! I did the drive myself in my comfortable Toyota Kluger and found it very hard!! Anyway, I managed to capture really nice sounding burn outs from the inside as well as from the outside with my Mid Side kit!! Sounds sick!

I also requested to Sandra if we could get away in a quiet spot, away from all the talking on set to record additional material and she was very keen, so we went off at a couple of km’s from the track and did a few take off, arrive to a stop, fast, medium and slow speed as well as gear shifting, doors opening, closing with 360 degrees idle pans that can be heard on the drone shot passing slowly over the car on the track…

Recording the back of the car was a lot easier, there was a perfect spot where I had fixed the zoom recorder, really close to the exhaust and away from any wind, sounded really good…

We finished the day near a beautiful little lake which gave us really nice dawn light for some beauty shots! It was gorgeous… I love my job!!

Written by Hassan Lahrech

Click thumbnails to start the slide show

Click HERE to view the film.

 

 

 

Technically, same crew, same gear has been used as in Ep1. Recording techniques were a lot easier given the very spacious cars we worked with.

We shot 2 different vintage V8 muscle cars, the first one was a Plymouth Road Runner, yes, the legendary ‘Meep Meep’! For someone like me, that honestly doesn’t know much about muscle cars, at first glance it looks like a very well maintained old car, that you would take for a cruising road trip and sight seeing, but Brian Dale (the owner) said at one point of time “All right, let’s give it a little squirt”, he then slammed the pedal on the floor, my breath was completely taken away, my eyes opened really wide when I felt the power that car had, absolutely unbelievable! To top it all, I was lucky to be under the headphones and fully experienced an augmented reality moment!! Totally unreal!  I also had, once again, the opportunity to spend most of the time in the foot well of the passenger seat, which was a lot more spacious and ‘comfortable’ compare to the tiny little Porsche!! We spent a few hours doing passing by, beautiful drone shots in a light fog and we moved on to Dodge Charger.

That was an equally impressive piece of car, the sound it makes is absolutely incredible, with lots more power in it I felt. We pretty much covered a few different scenes and sequences for a few hours, we then moved on to interview Brian in his garage, Road Runner Exhaust in Heidelberg West, where he builds and fixes his antique cars and looks after his customers too. We had the chance to see the back yard of his garage where he had a quite a few more gems and beasts in the making.

We had to come back another day to film the last car for this episode, which was another 1970 Plymouth  Super Bird built for Nascar, the funny thing is that car actually has the original horn that is used in the Road Runner cartoons!! It performed incredibly well in the Calder Park Thunder dome Nascar race track. The track is now closed down but we managed to get access to it for a day, I had never been on a Nascar race track before, that was very entertaining! Just before wrapping up, I did ask Brian if I could record the horn, he was only too happy to ‘Meep Meep’ a few times!! I was in the cartoon instantly, looking out for the Coyote!!

Click HERE to view the full episode

Coming soon Driven Episode 3 – High Maintenance

The Crew

This episode is the first of six. The micro crew walked in on set without having met before (besides me knowing Brad Wilson) , within the first half hour, camera was rolling… sound was rolling… and… ACTION! We kicked off the day at sunrise shooting after a nice little breakfast brought by our Director!

Technically, the series is being shot on David Franjic’s  Red Camera (Scarlet), sound is recorded on my kit, a Sound Devices 744t, Mid-Side Kit with Sennheiser MKH50 + MKH30 + Rycote Windshield, an MKH60 shot gun mic for interviews, a Sennheiser EW100 G2 HF Transmitter/Receiver with a Sanken COS11 Lapel mic and a good old Zoom H4n that I am placing as close as possible to the exhaust for the back chasing scenes and under the hood for the front chasing scenes.

Click to enlarge

Yes, I said a Zoom H4n, I can hear some giggles in the echoes of Cyber Space but it’s doing really well for such high Sound Pressure Levels caption, it’s mainly for convenience, set up speed and safety. I didn’t want to have any cables hooked on a high quality mics under a hood connected back on the 744T inside the cabin, especially on the bumpy and winding roads we shot in. The risk of having a $2K mic dropping or a cable loosening up and getting entangled in the engine was far to high!! Besides, the time to set up for the next shot was extremely short…

Just fixing and securing the Zoom H4n itself was quite a mission!!

We went off to a bicycle racing track for some family and drone shots. We came back for a quick lunch, set up for the insightful interview Hugh gave us and we finally got on the road. That’s where I had to spend half a day in the foot well of the passenger seat, it’s really really tiny for a 6 foot tall guy, lucky I’m skinny. I learned to be a contortionist on the spot as I couldn’t be seen in the chasing sequences, I really wanted to capture  the inside of the car properly… A pretty unusual position to experience this amazing little Porsche!! It really felt like I was in a roller coaster ride in Warner Brothers Movie World, only a lot more uncomfortable!!

We finished the day shooting at dawn in the beautiful and scenic views that Mount Martha has to offer! The shoot went really well for a first! It felt like we had done this many times before! Was great!!

The post production process was pretty straight forward, after receiving a locked offline pictures, I spent a few days putting all the sounds together and we realized with the Director that some of the shots were not sounding accurate or satisfying enough… I asked Brad to organize an extra hour with Hugh, the car owner, to re-record the engine with the zoom placed at a different spot. The positive part is that I had a second chance to truly appreciate that incredible little sports car, in the passenger seat, with a seat belt on! Thank you Hugh for being so accommodating, flexible with your time and for giving a solid shake up in those tights round about!! Mind blowing!!

Click HERE to view Episode 1 – The Architect

 

 

COMING UP NEXT

Driven Episode 2 – The Sickness…