A Super Bowl Sunday With Navistar Defense

While most people were waving their terrible towels and proudly wearing their cheese hats, Manning Productions was in the desert shooting new photos and videos for Navistar Defense.

This two-day adventure required long hours and dedication from crew and Navistar personnel. As video editor, I can only tell the story from the footage I’ve seen and feedback from the shoot, but without a doubt, it was the best shoot yet.

To set the scene, the objective was to record three military vehicles navigating an arid, hot and dusty environment.  Think of it as a Jeep commercial held to military standards.  Getting the vehicles and crew out to this location is no easy task, which makes it even more critical to acquiring the best, most useful shots.  With ground shots, hand held or tripod, being the norm, we are always working to elevate production quality and surpass expectations.  For this shoot, aerial photography was one way to accomplish this.

Big budget films and commercials routinely use aircraft with cameras mounted on stabilizing systems to capture breathtakingly smooth imagery, but at great expense.  For our shoot, we were using a radio control helicopter with a High Definition video camera.  Admittedly, I wish I were at the controls of the helicopter for just a short time, if only to have a little bit of fun and get some cool fly-by shots – maybe next time.