This is how we captured some of our most epic shots

[MUSIC] Welcome back to car faction. You join me in my small studio in a room at home because obviously at the moment, we can't go out. Perhaps you're watching this further down the line when we are on some sort of move on the other side of Coronavirus but for now much as I would rather be out on some mountain road or standing in a forest, watching ironic cargo path. [SOUND] And I thought I was transport you to some of these places via some of my favorite shots. From the films that we shot in the past few years. So these are not whole films necessarily but just individual things that at the time, perhaps it was overseen in the edit, perhaps at the time we thought, whole plan this and try that out. Perhaps it was a happy accident. But yes, Let's get into it. [MUSIC] This is the very first shot that I ever did with Carfax and so it's about three years ago now. And it was a launch of the McLaren 570S Spider. I hadn't really met Charlie before he was doing the filming and we lost a load of equipment. On the way out there, so it was filmed the launch in Barcelona and we go to the airport. And sure enough the baggage claim terminal, I think it was tripods and clamps and things like that. But not completely crucial, but for doing things like statics it was a bit tricky. Not an ideal sight, it has to be said Anyway, we went to some roads which I had known from before. This place called Montserrat. So, it's just to the west of Barcelona inland a bit and if you're thinking Montserrat should have [UNKNOWN] The island got its name from this place and it's very mountainous with these curious sort of rounded rocks. And that is a monastery up there which I have stayed in the sort of the hotel part of the monastery I didn't know is attached to a monastery when I booked the rooms and being woken up for morning prayers, but about 5am by the time the bell was not a rude awakening But an unexpectable anyway, I digress this shot, it is right at the start of the film. So first shot we ever shot and at the start of the film. And as you can see see a track out behind, let's pause there for a second. Cuz you can see the track there. We had to drive down in a supercar, which is kinda not ideal, but that's what happens. Sometimes we have to take cars to inappropriate locations to get the shots. And you can see the mountains in the background. But what happens this shot it's all one continuous shot and we shot using a Ronin so Charlie's shooting with a camera on the gimbal walking around the car. And It's just an idea we came up with why I thought of it. But I must have seen something somewhere else taking inspiration for it. And it looks like it's just a car. We're circling around. There's nobody there. And then at this point now, bingo, I walk into a shop. So it was sort of my introduction to Carfax and I suppose, and then I had to open the door, get into this is the tricky bit, getting into a car, not making a complete Horlicks on it so you lean on so pull it down. And deliver the line camera. Bingo. So yeah, it's quite a long continuous shot for Charlie's have to do a run even ground with the gimbal in his hand, and obviously had to tie it up to the right we did it in about two or three takes, I think. But it was one of those shots that I just thought job. I'm really pleased with the way that turned out. Onto the next shot. Now, this was something that I had wanted to do for a very long time. This is from a film that we did with the Rolls Royce dawn. Now this was a film with a punch line, which is a bit risky, really, because most things on YouTube, I think you're meant to sort of pile it all towards the front. People in don't need their attention and this was all about the idea that. The Rolls Royce dorm was the only one of the Rolls Royces you couldn't have with the starlet, headlining with the little filaments and the filaments in it to make it look like you were looking at a starlit night sky. So we took it somewhere that you could see a proper night sky and take the roof down. You see what I mean? But we had to go through the rest of the film to get there. So, if you didn't really like the roles or stories at all, this is just a normal sort of review. Then you might not have got to the end of the film and seen the shots that it was all about. And it was quite a tricky shoot because originally we're gonna go up to Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland because that's, I think the the best dark Skye site in the UK, but at the time we wanted to film typically the time we had the car in, that was cloudy or rainy or something else. So we ended up going down to Cornwall and Bodmin Moore. And again if you look at this, so guess who's here? You can see, [LAUGH] it not nearly the sort of place you want to be driving. Rolls Royce just slightly off track, and I had to reverse down there in the dark. But we spent two nights out there. So all shorts to see there are the presence of a couple of nights. So it took a long time to get this relatively short segment in the film, but it's kind of what makes the film and I particularly love The shots at way you sort of, the first one you really, where you are inside the car and you can see the star trails going over the top. They took about I think three or four hours to get each time and so he set several up at once but we only did it two nights in a row. And George and I were in the Andrew Hall and he was taking some lovely photographs at the same time. We all just went and sat in the Discovery Sport and try to fall asleep with all kit and just left the car that Google handles. So very Yeah, love those shots. Please do go have a look at those if you haven't seen before. Next. This is a sideways shot on a track. This is the Lotus three sport 300 which was shot in the depths of winter on a very wet day. Lotus on their Hethel test track, which is perhaps not the most glamorous Sort of location, but it's very useful and it's got some really, really good cons on it. This one is sort of second or third gear, depending what Cairon whether it's wet, whether it's dry, all those sorts of things. This was second gear in the Osprey, and I like seeing cars and slammer particularly they're they're moving, you can just see how they're reacting. You get some sort of appreciated bit more. It's very nice at full speed as well. But I like this sort of a shot because it's an old car. The angles right because it's just so wedgie and it's sort of you see how aggressive it is and low it is. And the slide well, he doesn't like a sideways shot and it's nice because it's not super larry. But there's enough lock on there to see that it's clearly sideways. And from a personal perspective as well, I've managed to hook up just on the edge of the curb and then just follow it round that line of the curb. So aesthetically, to me. I like it. There we go. So it's a bit of slow mo sideways in there, as well. The other shot actually in there, which I'll come back to in a second because we're going to move on to Another film that was full of loads of sideways and this is actually an interior driving shot. But it was something that wasn't planned at the time. As opposed to the start of this briefing I just mentioned which was so if we go back to this pre film started that were in modern Evora, in fact, and I went out and he had to lapse bunder camera on the driver's side window there because I thought we could match it up. With the old car then so it was a nice transition. So you're going back in time. And Benjamin Cornish who is filming that did a really really nice job of just matching the two together. And it was quite funny actually just going out literally go right end of the day. What are we going to do. Well turn everything off on this Evora. We'll go sideways. It'll make a cool intro, and thankfully it did. And it was Basically on the knob stops, lock stops from the first lap. So that that then is different than McCray film from I love doing so much fun today. And we wanted a lot of historic footage start just to sort of build it up really sort of emphasizing McCrea element. Of the car and George did a lovely job in the editing of this whereby he obviously found basically the same angle and it was complete fluke because it wasn't something that we had planned. We hadn't seen the shot before and thought, we'll recreate that. It just happened that way. And the way it goes from the original car with original footage into modern versus new shot, so it's like it really is me playing at being McCrea. And that's just pretty cool. I think so I was that was a lovely thing that I didn't know was going to happen. So when I first saw the Edit, come through your center across I thought, Wow, that's really cool. So enjoy that. Next we have db 11 in Andorra. This was one of the first adventure Trips we did call affection so Charlie came along and in fact, Sam Riley was there as well. And Dean Smith came along decent photos and we took the car off. It wasn't without its troubles. I think again, Charlie had actually lost a load of equipment. It just hadn't got delivered on the flight. So we went out there. The weather was atrocious most of the time it was all over the place. And the towards the end of it we got a puncture and it was up towards Padilla causa and we went and sat in a restaurant for a while and had some hot chocolate and things like that and remember it was toward the end of the year so it's been September time ish but we were waiting for this stairwell and tar to turn up in Andorra and Dean took out his drone so flying around Shorts with just amazing something to do with just a little bit of snow. The first note of the year being up on these mountains and the wispy clouds and what a cool shot of the mountains no car in it at all but just one of those shots you think, wow, that is amazing and it's followed up with another drone shot. In fact, on a different road that we went to get a little bit of sunflower cargo around the corner. And yeah, drone shots like that, just so cool. And that leads me into the next shot which is on the BMW Z4M48. Now you have to go again bit like the Rolls Royce don't it's all the way at the end of the film. Short final credits are coming up at this point and there's some cool sort of bond music and stuff. And it was on a road called Alto. alto delfy, southern Spain. Let's go with that. And it was a big reveal all the hair pins, a bit of music sort of say a bit James Bond esque, which Charlie found for this and then the After that, which circles round a big haven. And this was with a new Maverick to zoom. And it was one of those things that we just thought champ. Finally we can get shots that look, it looks like a helicopter shot to me. It really does. The quality is amazing. And it's just, helicopters are something that television could always do. That we can afford to do with a YouTube video basically. And now the drones are good enough and the cameras are good enough on that that we can do shots like that which is pretty amazing. I think one final drone shot because it's cool is in fact at Castle qu and it was a short plus film that we did on drifting and e 63 s Wagon and the drift mode in that and I hate the term drift mode it just all it does is it makes it real driving turns all the controls off. So it's not like the Focus RS drift mode, which is all a bit weird. This is just proper, no ades rear wheel drive, and it was a shot. I didn't know the drone was up there at the time. I think it would just happen to be in that this is a circuit pointing the right way. I came around this long corner with the rear tires bond firing at the time and it looks really cool. So there we are. There's another another drone shot that I happen to really like. So this final shot is something completely different. So we're going away from drones to a static shot. And this was on the Bentley Continental GT film that we shot in Scotland. In fact, we shot most of it a couple of days beforehand. And then we did something with a BBC monitor as well, which was up there and drew was driving that. And then we knew we needed this end shot to make the whole sort of conceit that I come up with about it being a tenuous link to it being in Scotland and I bought a whiskey boss with me And so we thought, well, we'll end it outside a distillery and we happen to find the perfect shot. And it's really difficult doing nighttime stuff because you need light from outside the car generally. Or you do have to rely on exposure stuff like we did with the Rolls Royce door. And this just happened to be absolutely tough. It was exactly what we needed. And I love the look of it. It looks really beautiful. Because you can see inside the tiller and see the big copper stills inside us in a copper. And it's just something that really appeals to me from an aesthetic point of view and we were lucky with the lighting. So there we are. Those are a few of my favorite shots. I hope you enjoyed that you didn't let me know and did give it a thumbs up And there are other shorts you'd like to see perhaps understand how we did them, then I'm sure we'll get Charlie on at some point because it'll pick different things. We'll pick things that are technically much, much better, I'm sure. But yeah, for now. Thank you very much and Cheerio.