I’ve had the honor of shooting two episodes of Vizcom’s web series, Design Decoded, where Writer/Director/Editor Reza Bird interviews world-class creatives as they demonstrate how the AI-powered design platform integrates into their process. Since last May, we’ve crafted numerous videos for Vizcom. Scott Robertson’s episode wouldn’t be complete without highlighting his spectacular automobile creation, FORDTRUSS.
Andrew Baxter and I have recently done three car gigs together in collaboration with his company Baxter Cameraworks. We all preferred a pursuit vehicle solution that wouldn’t require police escorts so we could freely explore Los Angeles. Andrew believed we could get really great footage without a crane like we used for the Tesla gig in July of 2023. Rigging the Flowcine Black Arm/DJI Ronin 2 to speedrail on Andrew’s 450HP Porsche Cayenne allowed us to quickly adjust the camera height. While we had to pull over to make that quick adjustment, I agree with Andrew’s instinct that we could achieve great shots with the smaller crew and footprint.
We began our day with the camera attached to the rear of the Porsche close to the ground to best feature the FORDTRUSS’s design. Once satisfied with our coverage, we raised the height to see Scott better. We eventually moved to the front and got a variety of heights before calling it quits around 8:15 as traffic increased and the light lost its magic. I operated the remote head on NODO Inertia Wheels, Andrew expertly drove his car, and Nicolas Danoviz kept the image in focus.
We employed Andrew’s DZOFilm Catta Ace FF 35-80 T2.9 cine zoom with my Sony FX9. We shot sunrise around the Culver City area to avoid people and cars on a brisk December Sunday morning. Aside from beautiful light, I love how peaceful the roads are at dawn. The craziest moment occurred when a fleet of driverless Waymo cars filled the road and overtook us. The first moment occurred at 1:14 and I made the split second decision to follow the bogie and I’m glad I did. Reza returned to the scene at the 4:02 mark as well.
Reza and I shot with Scott two months earlier on a white cyc at McNulty Nielson Studios as part of the Vizcom tutorial series. After watching Scott interact with Vizcom, we knew we needed a deeper dive into his creative process. For this second interview and those tutorials, I used my Schneider Xenon FF primes wide open at a T2.1 for maximum fall off. I really love how the different footage blends together.
For the first 3 episodes of the Decoded series, Reza flipped convention and framed the wide shot in profile and moved the close up shot nearer to their eye line. Initially we set up Scott’s shot at Electric Pony Studios similarly, but we didn’t like how it meshed with our background and pivoted. To see the other framing style, check out episode 2 that we shot in San Diego in late July of 2024.
If you’re curious how AI and Vizcom can alter your iteration process, then I highly recommend you watch this tutorial we shot with Scott. It’s quite remarkable what you can do with Vizcom. It’s thrilling to see how it has evolved.
If you’d prefer to just watch our running footage, then you’ll enjoy this montage that Melissa Kent assembled with a Moby soundtrack!
How do you feel about the future of creativity and AI? I’m hopeful that there will always be a need for 100% human aka “organic” filmmaking, but I’m aware that AI and AI slop will indefinitely flood our social media feeds. I highly recommend this episode of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight on the subject if you haven’t seen it!
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