Porsche ‘Drive2Extremes’
Along with world-renowned drone pilot Johnny FPV, Nick Schrunk has stitched together some of the most incredible drone work across two identical race tracks—one in Finland, and one in the United Arab Emirates.
“The director on this commercial was Nicholas Schrunk, who is a two-time Emmy award winner and one of Red Bull’s top inhouse directors as well. I have been working with Nick quite a bit over the years mainly on Red Bull projects. The last one I worked on with him was Red Bull’s ‘Chain Reaction’ which got over a million views!”
“‘Chain Reaction’ was also an action spot a lot like ‘Drive2Extremes’, but with ‘Chain Reaction’ there were five different base jumpers in wing-suits and a race car that was chasing them. Nick basically timed it to where they’d all get to the same maximum speed and hit the same spot at the same time! They literally got it down to like the millisecond, which is what I think Nick’s directing is famous for.”
“You can see a lot of similarities between this Porsche commercial and ‘Chain Reaction’ in terms of how everything is shot with such extreme precision. Nick’s use of camera angles and action shots is something you have to see to believe. He has an insane number of different shooting angles with his projects, so matching them altogether is a beast! But his footage is always amazing.”
“The real heroes on this project were the editors, Emad Hakim and Jacob Irish. They pulled rabbits out of the hat, particularly on the timing. The guys shot the footage on identical race tracks and tried to time it as close as they could. But what the editors managed to achieve was insane in being able to stitch it all together so seamlessly.”
“The other heroes on this shoot is the drone pilot and DP, Johnny Schaer and Marco Godles of Koptercam in Finland, who did amazing things with this project. With support from Choppershoot in the UAE the footage they managed to capture is phenomenal. It’s world class footage.”
“There is one shot in the snow with the car on the right hand side and it’s turning left into the drone. The drone actually flew through the back window at high speed and straight out the other back window before it crashed into the snow! I mean that is so cool taking those sorts of risks. Who does that sort of flying?”
“Now that stuff is totally insane. The drone rental guys said, that if they could use the footage for themselves, they would happily cover the repair costs for the drone after it crashed. At least, that’s what I heard was the story!”
“And so the whole backstory to this shoot was already super cool, before I came onto to do the color grade. Typically, the way I work with the Nick, is we get all of the footage into DaVinci Resolve, and then together, we just find where the film wants to be. We don’t really use an sort of references. It’s more the feel that Nick is going for. Then of course, it’s got to go to the agency for their approval + client, and all that kind of stuff, which means you have to give them options.”
“So usually, we set up like three or four different looks with three or four different shots. Typically I’d say we spend an hour or two doing that and then another hour finessing with the client. I find there a generally two types of clients I work with. There are the ones that trust my experience and allow me to grade and adjust colors, and then there is the other kind where you put up your hands up and say tell me what you want. Nick is the sort of client who wants to collaborate and get the look for his project.”
“Having been a colorist all my career, I discover a whole spectrum of colors that only come from years and years of experience. Client’s get to the know the colors they love and feel comfortable with. So as a colorist, it’s on me to always push clients towards more colors and looks than they have seen before, so that you can find the exact right colors that are perfect for every scene. Sometimes, you won’t know what that color should be until you see it. So it’s always about experimenting with new looks.”
“For this Porsche project, the clients really wanted a desaturated steely-grey look to everything. Which I gotta admit looked awesome on certain shots. But as the director and I were going through all the footage, we realized this look wouldn’t work well for every shot. With such a desaturated approach, the commercial lacked the ‘punch’ it deserved in terms of the colors.”
“Because they has shot in the middle of a desert and the tundra, I needed to get some separation in these shots using color. It was quite difficult to do, because some of the shots were long and had perfect lighting with beautiful blue skies. And then within the same shot, we had bright sunlight reflecting on the car with dirt flying off the car as it twisted and turned around the race track. So with this project, is was all about finding the right balance in every scene.”
“To create more punch in the shots, I would try and pick certain things within each shot. Mostly, I’d pick a part of the car that I wanted to emphasize by doing a basic Power Window over the back end of the car, or something like that. There was a lot of fading in windows and fading them out to different windows, and things like that. So the Power Window itself would kind of come in out of nowhere, start with nothing, and then highlight something on the car, and then I’d have it disappear again. By basically turning the window down until there’s nothing there! Crazy stuff like that. Nick and I just kept on experimenting until it worked.”
“With ‘Drive2Extremes’ the whole post process was always going to be very fluid. I would grade shots with ‘handles top and tail’ to give Emad Hashim and Jake Irish, the editors room to play. In fact, this edit was always changing right up until the very end. So there was a lot of overlap, doing certain parts of the grade, over and over again. But in the end, that was the process this commercial deserved. When you are breaking all of the rules, you have to keep perfecting your part of the process.”
“The other amazing thing about this project, was there is very little visual effects. Even the shot where rocks are flying into the camera - well, they are actually rocks in camera! The shooting on this project was seriously crazy. These guys are legends.”