Welcome to the final post on the 403 Media Christmas video!
My two videos were shared at the end of December and the previous post contained the photos from the prep day, so to conclude this we now have some pictures from the actual shoot!
The plan for the day was fairly straight-forward since the video would focus largely on the cars being parked and people walking by noticing them. The day of, prior to my meeting up with them, the Christmas tree was picked up and thrown on the roof of Brent’s Legacy not only as a finishing touch but also so that it could be filmed to serve as the video’s intro. From there they all cruised downtown (while filming a few more clips) and that’s where I joined them.
We gathered at a spot not too far from the first downtown shoot location – which was Stephen Avenue – and then fired up the cars to start heading over. En route I found a place to park the Focus so I quickly tossed it in a spot, grabbed my stuff, and hopped in Dustin’s S15 so that we could carry on. The plan was that we’d only have the giftwrapped cars together to keep the focus on them, and it allowed for me to capture additional photos and video clips as we moved them since I wouldn’t be driving. Riding in an S15 was also a nice bonus!
We squeezed the cars through the gates at Stephen Ave and found a spot to park them for the first shots partway down the block. Dustin had a pair of GoPros on his S15 and Brent had his Action Cam stuck on the outside of the Legacy, all to record additional reactions from people passing by.
It hadn’t been seen in the photos or video of Dustin, Brent, and myself wrapping the cars because we didn’t work on it, but this Mini had also been prepared for the shoot. It was covered in a Santa-themed paper and even had a pair of bows on the fenders as a final touch!
Dustin posing for a photo.
We were prepared/somewhat expecting to be told to leave at some point because we weren’t actually supposed to have cars here at this time of day, but of the few guards and officers that we encountered during the shoot none ever asked us to. It was clear that this was all being done just for fun and it wasn’t like we were causing any trouble…the hooligans that we are.
After the many hours spent working the day before, it was nice to be able to take a step back and really take in what we had done. However, this led me to randomly start laughing now and then because the sight of the cars wrapped like this was so ridiculous! We had seen this online before, but seeing it in person was something else.
For the most part we all stayed back from the cars so that people hopefully wouldn’t notice us or our cameras (aside from the tiny ones on the cars of course) and therefore would react naturally. Occasionally we’d run in for closer photos or clips but otherwise would keep our distance and try not to draw attention to ourselves – for that reason you won’t see large crowds around the cars in these photos because when they appeared we didn’t want to raise all of our cameras for fear of being seen. Brent was filming of course but if we all had our cameras pointed it would be a bit obvious.
After a while it was decided that it was time to move on to another location so we hopped back in the cars and headed on down the road. It was a short drive but it gave more than enough time to see not only a lot more heads turning but also more laughing, smiling, and photos being taken. There were also a few more confused looks as well – it’s safe to say that not quite everyone ‘got’ it.
Our second downtown location was Eau Claire but unfortunately it was nearly deserted so we didn’t stay for long. We discussed where to go instead and figured that given the time of day Stephen Ave would soon be getting busier, so it was decided we’d keep it simple and just head back there for more shots once we were done here.
After another short cruise and receiving many more great reactions from pedestrians and other drivers, we squeezed the cars through the Stephen Ave gates once again and parked them up. As before, we made sure to keep our distance; Dustin meanwhile was more focused on the nearby McDonald’s and immediately ran over to get some food.
Can you guess what colour the Mini actually is? Bright yellow is the answer! You can just make out one bare spot on the wing here if you look closely – the car was very nearly fully covered up in paper whereas the S15 and Legacy had a couple of spots purposely left bare for the tree, cameras, or to avoid hot exhausts.
Amusingly, as we kept watching I noticed that occasionally someone would come up to the cars and seem to be just as confused by Dustin’s giant Voltex wing as they were by the wraps (because race car folks!). And speaking of the wing and wrap, I rather like the reflection that’s visible on the underside in this shot!
As I was mainly filming this day I didn’t take a ton of pictures, so this is where we’ll wrap up this post. I do think that between the videos from all of us and these sets of photos though, we’ve definitely delivered on giving you all a good look at the behind-the-scenes of the 403 Media video! I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again – this was a huge amount of fun and I’m very glad that I could be involved in it. It was great to not only see all of the reactions while filming, but also to hear all of the positive feedback afterwards, and with it sometimes being hard to find car-related activities to do in the winter I very much enjoyed the opportunity to hang out with some friends and have fun “working on” the cars.
On top of all that, it certainly made for great giftwrapping practice! Just in time for Christmas too.
-Bill