Midnight Drag Race - Wolfpack Hustle

[Warren Kommers]

One of the first things I directed/shot on the Epic, finally released almost a year later.

https://vimeo.com/45284372

Co DP - Steve Smith

VFX - Paul Santagada

[Stefano Ceccon]

Whow!!!

[Jeff J Daniels]

That's awesome. Love the grade and compositing.

[Miles Heckendorn]

I loved that!

Any chance you could elaborate on the production?

[Warren Kommers]

Thanks Miles.

It was mostly shot on greenscreen at Smashbox studios, with some location work in the opening and background plates shot in DTLA. The smoke was shot against black screen as it keys better with a luma key instead of chroma key. The bikes were on rollers and the front wheel was stationary. Only the apt was shot on MX at the beginning. Used twixtor in conjunction with 5k 96-ish fps and high shutter angle to reduce motion blur for the frame estimations. Twixtor obviously excels in this situation as there is no foreground or detailed background(greenscreen) for it to struggle with in it's estimations of new frames. The glowing mask, rag, and arm bands were blue screen to key separately from the green background.

[Steve Smith]

Shot on Zeiss Super Speeds and the longer Standard speeds. Some of the nice flairs is from the old gate flair the first Epics had.

[Prince Bagdasarian]

Great stuff!

[Mike P.]

How much were you guys paid for this gig (because you should have gotten more). Piston Calves, as a character, is awesome. The other dude's reaction is great too -- "OH god no, I'm racing Piston Calves!" And BigBlackDelta is now on my radar (bonus!)

[Warren Kommers]

How much were you guys paid for this gig (because you should have gotten more). Piston Calves, as a character, is awesome. The other dude's reaction is great too -- "OH god no, I'm racing Piston Calves!" And BigBlackDelta is now on my radar (bonus!)

This was an initial Epic test awhile back and "passion" project as I ride with these guys. Two of my favorite things got together and had this baby.

[Warren Kommers]

It should be mentioned that since some of those gate flares were present, we decided to play them up and added more in the vfx. Worked out for the better.