Umbrella Girls

Infineon Raceway Timelapse

Testing a WordPress video player. This is a timelapse I recorded at Infineon Raceway when NASCAR was in town last June. The team haulers are lined up on the drag strip, waiting to park in the garage area. This took ~45 minutes in realtime.

NASCAR at Infineon Raceway

Of course we went to the Toyota/Savemart 350 at Infineon Raceway last weekend. I’ve just been too busy with the structure of the page to post anything about it. I had backstage access to the event, which was a lot of fun. And I have 5 hours of video footage that I want to edit into another video as soon as I find the time. But in the meantime, here’s a few pictures from the weekend:

jeff gordon kyle busch samantha sarcinella

AMA Superbike 2008 Video

I have posted my music video from the AMA Superbike event at Infineon Raceway this May. Enjoy your daily dose of Tainted Love!  

Toyota/Savemart 350 Promo

This is a promo video I created for the official Infineon Raceway website. This was fun because I’d never made a fast-paced, high-energy commercial video before. And even though the final result is pretty damn crude and basic I learned a ton.

Umpires who are hurting the game

“Time! No, that’s a balk!” You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

40 Years on the Red Line

My latest video is now online! This year Infineon Raceway is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and I made a “short history” of the racetrack for the official webpage. I’m really happy with the final result, and have grown a lot as a “filmmaker” (I don’t know if this term applies yet). Filtering through several hours of material encompassing 40 years, wriggling that material down to 8 minutes, and then have everything line up with the interview portions that I shot for the documentary was a nice challenge.

Watch the video on Youtube or go to the Infineon Raceway webpage!

$126 Million!

Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure that nobody is more pissed off and depressed about Barry Zito’s performance with the Giants than Barry Zito. He’s a competitor, he’s a nice guy – he did not join the club to collect an oversized paycheck and lean back. But that doesn’t change the fact that the $500k/game pitcher that the Giants signed in an irrational “OMG Schmidt is leaving!” frenzy has gone 0-5 this season (after a less than stellar 2007 season), while the young pitching that San Francisco has been known for for several years is kicking ass while making a fraction of that salary. And that sucks.

In 4 years, Giants management has:

• Kept signing Barry Bonds mostly for the money that his homerun pursuit was generating, never getting close to winning a championship
• Traded away promising pitching for hitters that everybody had doubts about (and who left after 1/2 season)
• Spent ridiculous amounts of money on unnecessary pitching while not signing a single big hitter

And that sucks, no matter how well this young team will do this season. I actually believe in the team and think that they can pull off some amazing upsets! But that doesn’t excuse obvious piss-poor management.

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AMA Superbike Riders

I’m doing some housekeeping on my raceway footage, and I realized that I never uploaded the AMA Superbike panel that I recorded at the raceway earlier this month. Miguel Duhamel, Neil Hogson, Matt Lynn, Jake Holden and, in a separate video, Mat Mladin. Some fun stuff, Miguel Duhamel is funny as always.

Danica Patrick Wins

IndyCar is picking up some steam these days! Some early momentum was built last season, with a closely contested 2007 championship, Dario’s flips, and tempers flaring at Watkins Glen, but then the whole thing seemed to fizzle a bit with two former champions (Hornish and Franchitti) leaving for NASCAR. Well, look at where we are after just three races in 2008: Champ Car and the IRL have reunited to form one league, drivers from both sides of the old fence have already won races (19 year old Graham Rahal became the youngest driver ever to score a victory in St Petersburg), and now – finally – Danica Patrick has become the first woman to win a major automotive competition in the United States! I don’t really have a strong preference when it comes to racing – Victoria and I pay attention to both NASCAR and the IRL equally these days. But it’s great to see OWR slowly return to its former glory. Congrats Scott Dixon, congrats Graham Rahal, congrats Danica Patrick! Looking forward to the rest of the season, especially the stop at Infineon Raceway this August. And of course I’ll be there to document it all, up close and personal