Recent SAE Brisbane film graduate Ben McNulty has spent the last 6 months producing a motorsport documentary for the Active8 Yamaha Yamalube Race Team, as they travel around the country.
Ben was approached by the team manager during his studies to film the team throughout their 2014 desert campaign. The documentary has since been picked up by Trailrider Magazine Australia, and was distributed as a front cover DVD to over 18,000 readers in May 2014.
“We did a short pilot episode back in November 2013 while I was still studying the Diploma of Screen and Media (Digital Video Production) at SAE Brisbane, which was picked up by Trailrider's parent company Dirt Action, and distributed on all their social media platforms. After a positive response we moved forward on the second episode which was to be filmed over the space of a week in Alice Springs, NT in January 2014.”
Ben says it was an extremely tough shoot, with 40-45 degree heat, struggling equipment, and the loss of some important footage when a memory card overheated.
“I was responsible for no less than four cameras at any one time, with up to eight running at once, because we only had limited opportunities to get the coverage I needed.”
Ben says the editing process was huge, and extremely demanding – he spent his nights editing together over 120 hours of footage. “Because we shot so much footage I decided to include a lot of extras and deleted scenes on the DVD, so there ended up being around two and a half hours of content on the final DVD.
“The skills I picked up from Alex's editing lectures definitely helped in this department, prior to my time at SAE my editing workflow was terrible, but now thankfully that's all changed for the better, and has certainly made things a lot quicker. Big thanks to my lecturers from DVP 2013, particularly Alex and Heidi, who have taught me a lot of beneficial skills.”
Ben recently returned from Alice Springs, after filming the Finke Desert Race earlier this month, and he is currently deep in post-production phase on Episode Three of the series.
