For those who don't know, the Nut Tree is sort of Northern California's Knott's Berry Farm (before Knott's got big and the Nut Tree went away)
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The Nut Tree is back and bigger than ever and I had a great time doing a 2-day commercial shoot for them. This was about as great a shoot as one can hope for. Great client, great actors, great crew and a great location. Easy and fun. Most fun for the kids. Imagine spending two days at a theme park, riding rides and eating ice cream...
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The first shot (and most challenging) we did was to mount a camera on the roller coaster. For this shot I used an Aiptek HD video camera. Key Grip Justin Coupe helped me mafer clamp the camera to the stem of a bogen tripod which was ratchet-strapped down in the front care and pointing back.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYNAv81sWzDT19AQQukVluFBqbS_ZSJMY92kVmeLAlD2JuOOU2nup8n9f-SeSog0nmTUKkE__YxWwSuog41TTftOXorEoCgwmutB_6gdDygzpCFs8RphX5FTbtXtiMy0Wc24Mz4Q/s400/Coaster2.jpg)
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![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiTSwkUecM0YTHTr538lR_EauRaeGeFUQW_t0EXIVzW3Fnh6TmG-aVHB6o_c8JX5wR2n6i_f_J4rPCNssyxT5pDD8wTsjYz9IAW15eR4qlhgmqafOVKdYj4LXJsru6ZL_Vxf0DqQ/s400/CoasterRig3.jpg)
The AHD is a consumer camera and has no Iris control, it is a fixed iris at f3.5 and uses shutter speed to control the light levels. I had to tape on 2 37mm ND9 Filters in order to knock the shutter down to something that would intercut with our main camera.
Here is the final spot:
http://emrl.com/j/downloads/NT.mov
Here is a beta run on the coaster to make sure everything is secure (notice the monkeys in the front):
http://emrl.com/j/downloads/JCoaster.mov