South America via Dakar

For this year's Dakar Rally I traveled to South America with the Monster Energy X-Raid team. Instead of just shooting still photography for them and their partners, I also directed a 2 minute film each day to be uploaded daily to the internet (A playlist of all the films here). All this while driving the same distance and pace as the rest of the rally participants. We would shoot ground footage and interviews combining them with helicopter footage purchased from the race organization to tell the days' story. This required many sleepless nights strung together with long days of driving and shooting. Most nights of editing would finish with us scrambling to find adequate internet access to send video before having to jump back in our car and do it all over again. Each evening we would promise ourselves that tonight would be different and we would get sleep, only to have some sort of hiccup (technical issues with European video formats, lost internet connections mid-upload, missing camping equipment etc.) keeping us awake yet another night. During the 15 days of the rally I could count on one hand, with fingers remaining, the number of nights I slept for more than a couple hours. In the end the project was successful and my clients were happy with the results. I owe more than can be expressed to the success of this project to cinematographer and editor Jimmy Lee Cook of Air Land+Sea Films. His relentless dedication, and ability to operate under the worst of conditions, made him an ideal victim... ah.. I mean travel partner.






















A review edit from the entire rally: