Saturday, November 5, 2011

Toyota Texas Bass Classic

Our last assignment was a shit-show.  We filmed a huge bass tournament on Lake Conroe, TX.  It was a three day tournament with 50 anglers.  All the cameramen would be paired up with an angler and their judge.  The boats only had two seats, so the cameramen were screwed.  Day one was raining and cold and these fishermen like to drive their boats 70mph.  I had the privilege on sitting on the cup holder between the two seats.  Going 70mph over whitecaps, in the rain, sitting on a cup holder with no backrest was comparable to my vision of hell.  I didn't have rain pants so I was soaking wet, cold, and had a bruised tailbone. I was warned ahead of time about this tournament, but no stories prepared me for what I had to go through.
Just about every minute I had to wipe the rain off of the lens.  I'd stand for hours on the back of the boat trying to keep a level horizon as the boat rocked back and forth.  The camera would roll straight for eight hours in hopes that the angler would hook up a bass.  After that we headed over to the awards where, for 3 more hours, every angler would walk across the stage and either show off their larges bass or just find out what position they were in.  The cool thing about it was seeing how large of a production it was.  There was a professional jib operator out of california who operated an 18ft, remote jib. Aerial shots from another MT company who flies a hexacopter with a panasonic GH2.  And about ten cameraman stationed around the crowd or on stage.  After the awards there was a live country show, but during the show we would break down the jib and head out for dinner (maybe 9/10pm).  Dinner was awesome! We would gorge ourselves with sushi all on the company card.  Then I'd go back to my hotel room, get camera gear ready for the next day, finally get in bed around midnight, and wake up at 5am to do it all over again.
We had three days of pretty much the same routine.  The weather got much better, so that really helped out, and my angler on day 2 was catching fish almost every cast, so I was always on my toes.  By the time this trip was over I was definitely ready to head back to MT.

1 comment:

  1. The dinner sounds good. I'd love to see some of the photos/videos you got. What an experience!

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