Orange County, California’s Jeremy Merrell is an off-road UTV racer for Rockstar Vitality Drinks and Polaris RZR, in addition to an expert photographer and videographer. For over 15 years, he has captured footage for the world’s high skilled athletes from many motion sport disciplines, together with freestyle motocross and off-road racing. Alongside the way in which, he is additionally produced content material for a few of the largest motion sports activities manufacturers and sponsors, together with Monster and Rockstar Vitality Drinks.
Jeremy just lately turned an envoy for Wood Digital camera, and with this relationship has had the chance to check and consider gear from our line of SONY merchandise, together with the A7 and FS5 Professional Accent Kits. We requested him about his travels, important manufacturing gear, and the way he used Wood Digital camera equipment throughout 18 months and hundreds of miles by means of the world’s most rigorous situations.
Wood Digital camera (WC): Inform us about your self and your capturing model.
Jeremy Merrell: We’re an expert off-road race group, off-roading elements firm, Polaris RZR Manufacturing unit racers, Rockstar Vitality Athletes, and content material creators. Previous to beginning up UTV Wolfpack Racing and Components, I owned a manufacturing firm for 15 years. We created content material for a number of outstanding motion sports activities manufacturers together with two of the biggest vitality drink firms. We additionally produced commercials, music movies, and world-wide giveaways and activation for a number of manufacturers like Rockstar Vitality Drinks, Warner Brothers, Ps, Indian Bikes, Polaris RZR, Miller Welders, and Makita instruments. All of the content material that we create now revolves across the off-road life-style of our racing, travels, and adventures.
Whereas working for Monster Vitality in 2009, I traveled with Robby Gordon and his group to the Dakar Rally, one of many hardest races on this planet. This 5,600 mile, off-road race from Argentina to Chile lasts a staggering 18 days. The journey turned out to be considered one of my most grueling experiences, but additionally one of many biggest of my skilled profession. This task required me to seize, interview, and edit the day’s content material each night for it to then be uploaded to the “Group Gordon” net channels. This manner, the content material was accessible for each the fan base and sponsors to look at because the occasion happened.
My adventures although South America proved that I not solely loved the fast tempo of the work, but additionally excelled within the guerrilla, “run-and-gun” model of filmmaking. Most significantly, I gained an amazing quantity of information about working underneath extraordinarily tight deadlines and understanding which gear is completely essential to get the job carried out as effectively as potential. The character of those assignments compelled me to reevaluate the gear required to provide nice content material, and finally journey gentle.
WC: What cameras do you shoot with? How do you rig them?
Jeremy: We’re presently utilizing a Sony A7rii, Sony FS5, Sony AX100, Sony RX0, GoPros, and a DJI Mavic Professional. The FS5 is our predominant digicam. We use it to shoot interviews, and something in gradual movement from 120-250 fps. Then, the A7rii serves as a second digicam to seize b-roll, time-lapse, gimbal and slider photographs. Up to now, we have used RED, Panasonic, Canon, and shot on movie. However in an effort to journey gentle and produce solely the requirements, we have needed to downsize a few of our gear alongside the way in which.
Our Sony A7rii and FS5 cameras are every rigged with the Wood Digital camera Professional Accent Equipment, Zip Field, and V-mount battery mount. I really feel just like the Professional Equipment offers me all the flexibility we have to construct out our cameras for any scenario.
With this bundle, we add rails to the Unified Baseplate to help our Sony and Canon cinema lenses, and use the Battery Slide to mount our CORE V-Mount batteries, since we want further battery life to shoot all day. To seize the interviews, we’ve got our FS5 arrange with the Wood Digital camera A-Field, an audio adapter with XLR inputs that attaches to rods. The 2 XLR inputs enable us to seize audio with our shotgun and lavalier microphones, particularly our Sennheiser EW 112P G4 wi-fi mics. Lastly, utilizing an Extremely Arm, we will rapidly reposition the monitor for various capturing conditions.
Anybody presently capturing on digital cameras, particularly mirrorless, will run into a number of handicaps if they are not rigged with any equipment.
WC: How did the Wood Digital camera gear contribute to your setup? What have been you capable of obtain with Wood Digital camera gear that you could be not have in any other case been capable of?
Jeremy: Though our objective is to journey gentle, we don’t wish to compromise the standard of our productions. With the Wood Digital camera Professional Accent Equipment, we will construct an expert rig inside minutes. We will in a short time transition from a shoulder rig for run-and-gun capturing proper again to a tripod or slider with ease. We have now no hassle outfitting our cameras with bigger lenses, exterior microphones, and subject displays on the fly.
The Professional Equipment we’ve got on our B-Digital camera, the A7rii, lets us remodel a images digicam right into a full cinema rig. Provided that that is such a small digicam, you might be restricted to what you possibly can obtain with out the help of the Wood Digital camera equipment. The digicam’s LCD display screen and battery life, for instance, is usually a bit limiting, so we constructed out the digicam with the Professional Equipment to be able to use an exterior monitor, XLR inputs for our audio gadgets, and a V-Mount CORE SWX battery extra comfortably. The highest deal with of the Unified DSLR Cage can be tremendously helpful and versatile when capturing any type of handheld photographs.
Total the Wood Digital camera equipment have not solely improved our capturing expertise, but additionally the kind of photographs we will get at a second’s discover in all conditions, particularly given our run-and-gun model of capturing motion sports activities. Having a system like this that lets us shoot video after which rapidly detach from the dovetail to take images is one of the best bang to your buck on a funds. For anybody who has by no means used a Wood Digital camera rig with a mirrorless digicam, all I can say is that it’s like having peanut butter with no jelly.
Comply with Jeremy and UTV Wolfpack on these channels!
Instagram: @utvwolfpack, @jeremy.merrell, @polarisrzr
YouTube: UTV Wolfpack
Take a look at a few of Jeremy’s newest off-roading adventures:
This skilled digicam help bundle for the Sony FS5 contains the quick-release Unified Baseplate system, Prime Plate, NATO Lock Extremely Arm (3)”, two 15mm rods, Rod Clamp (15mm LW), Battery Slide, and Security Dovetail (12″).
$1,637
SKU: 226800
This digicam help bundle is designed for the Sony Alpha collection cameras. It comes with our Unified DSLR Cage (Small), Unified DSLR 15mm Baseplate, two 15mm rods, A-Field (DSLR), Extremely Arm Monitor Mount (1/4-20 to 1/4-20, 3″), Rod Clamp (15mm LW), Battery Slide, and Security Dovetail (12″).
$1,540
SKU: 246300
This product holds two 4x.5.64″ filters and clamps on the the entrance of the lens. Out there in 4 sizes, 80-85mm, 90-95mm, 100-105mm, and 110-115mm. Chrome steel elements and light-weight, unibody rubber design are very sturdy and stand as much as the hardest situations.
$125
SKU: 241600
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