Taking off! Jamie O’Brien Project: DAY ONE

December 26th, 2008 in Gadgets / Jamie O'Brien

Here is one of the shots from our first day of filming Jamie O’Brien on the North Shore of Hawaii. To view the 1080p High Res click here. (You DEFINITELY WANT TO DO THIS)

It’s been pretty fantastic to get a chance to know Jamie, his dad and crew – I really think that this project has wings and I think that it’s fitting to start off with this shot from our first day of shooting. It was shot with a Canon 5D MKII and a 24mm Tilt-Shift lens mounted to a radio controlled helicopter. Tabb Firchau is joining our motley crew with what is definitely one of the coolest toys that we have on hand – a radio controlled helicopter that can fly inches off the ground and through very, very small openings. Tabb specializes in video and still aerial footage and travels regularly across the globe. He just came back from a National Geographic assignment where he almost got eaten by a shark – but that’s a whole other story…

We’ve had an interesting few days here in Hawaii – the weather played havoc with a lot of our travel plans (it took more than 48 hours for our editor to make it out here from Toronto – he got to spend a night on the floor at O’Hare) and our crew’s lost baggage stories have been almost comical given their frequency… Meanwhile we’ve been tinkering with a lot of our new toys from a variety of companies – most of them prototypes. It’s been a steep learning curve at times and that’s to be expected when you’re the guinea pig trying to use multiple prototypes together for the first time – to give you an idea: soldering was involved! (I won’t say to who’s gear though…) But we’re finally up and running and in full swing. I’ll be posting the first behind the scenes video tomorrow some time (thought I’d give our editor Ryan Hughes a good night’s sleep before throwing him into the mix) and we’re planning on showing you every detail of how this and other shots are being produced.

The best part of this trip for me has been meeting Jamie. I was told not to expect the typical surfer in Jamie – and I came very open minded and eager to find out more about him. Jamie pretty much shatters any and every stereotype that anyone might have of a surfer. I won’t go into too much detail but I can tell you that I have quite a bit of interesting material to throw into this film. Jamie is pretty fascinating – smart, disciplined, passionate, and incredibly focused – he’s a pro. He’s also patient and a total pleasure to work with. I hope he can say half as much about us.

Time to get some rest – we’ll post the first behind the scenes video in 24 hours.