First Jaret, thanks for watching and thank you for your questions.
I gotta ask, why work in direct sunlight? Autogeek has a ton of pop up tents; couldn't one of those have been used to at least shade the car?
And seriously, Doc couldnt have cleared out 2 or 3 bays of him amazing garages for you all to work in?? cmon!!!
You know I've been waiting for someone to ask these questions and there's perfectly GREAT answers for your questions. The thing is, most people wouldn't understand why unless they've worked on TV. So I'm so happy to answer your questions.
In order,
I gotta ask, why work in direct sunlight?
We had to work in direct sunlight because most of Doc's garages have car lifts in order to hold two cars in one space. There's no safe or effective way for a team of detailers and a team of camera guys and the sound guy and the director and the producer to all work in such a tight and restricted area.
Autogeek has a ton of pop up tents; couldn't one of those have been used to at least shade the car?
Another great question but you CANNOT film an episode for TV under a
pop-up tent. The reason why is because of the way the tent causes to lighting effects. One effect is called,
Diffused Light
That's when the light is weakened and even the color of the light changed by the color or type of material the light is passing through. Diffused light is not optimum for TV filming.
The other type of lighting effect is called,
Dappled Light
In the example of trying to use a SMALL pop-up tent, with the sun continually moving across the sky the structure of the pop-up tent creates dappled light. This means sometimes a fender is lit up with sunlight but sometimes it's shaded and sometimes it half and half. And this happens all over the car and is continually changing. It doesn't work because there's never a uniform appearance due to the shading effect the canopy has along with the movement of how the sunlight falls as the sun moves across the sky.
From Collins Dictionary
You use dappled light to describe something that has dark or light patches on it, or that is made up of patches of light and shade.
Neither diffused nor dappled light creates a visual effect that meets the standards of our TV production company nor for us.
Now I also want to point out that for episode 8 we buff out 6 cars under a
HUGE tent. This was also not the perfect lighting condition but with the enormity of the tent and having all the cars completely under it and surrounded by it there was ZERO dappled light but the light was fully diffused since it had to pass through the white tent material. The downside of diffused light was the cameras could not pick up any of the defects in the paint so for pessimist, all the paint looked good to start with but luckily for me I have 32 team members that know differently.
If we only had one or two cars to detail for the competition we could have used the Show Car Garage. We had 6 cars to detail, (worth about 3 million dollars by the way), and this forced us to come up with a way to hold all 6 cars in one area that also had good enough light so that we could see what we were doing and also for the cameras to capture the action. Thus the huge tent.
By the way, the HUGE tent we used for episode 8 was erected by a professional team of guys that put up and take down tents for a profession. We use a company called Event Makers and since you were here you know we had at least a half doze of these HUGE tents set up for Detail Fest and not only does it take a team of guys to put them up but it takes two days to both put them up and take them down and huge trucks to transport all the steel pipe used to support the tents.
Tents are up! - Setting up for Detail Fest is underway!
These types of tents are completely different than the pop-up tent that you're suggesting we use. Since you attend our Saturday Cars & Coffee car shows you're thinking of these tents,
Pictures from April 9th, 2016 Cars & Coffee
2 people can set one of these pop-up tents up and although the huge 1933 Rolls Royce would fit under it I know from years of detailing cars under pop-up tents it simply would NOT work for filming a TV show.
And seriously, Doc couldnt have cleared out 2 or 3 bays of him amazing garages for you all to work in?? cmon!!!
The garages would still be too small to work around the car and FILM around the car. Once you move the car into one of the garages there would be no room to walk around the front or the back of the car with the garage door down. If you leave the garage door open you're back to the dappled light effect at least at some point of the day depending upon the position of the sun.
Besides being cramped to work on the car at the front and the back of the car (and we did a LOT of work on the front and back of the car), there would be no room for 3 camera guys, one of them operating a BOOM CAMERA. The boom camera would be useless in one of the garages due to the limited height of the ceiling. There's also the sound engineer and the producer and the director on the set at all times.
It's easy for you to paint an idea into other people's heads with mental images of how easy it would be to work inside a garage or under a tent with your questions but I'm here to tell you it simply doesn't work that way and our only option for this episode was to do the work outside. And this made it real-world. At least in our instance. One person by themselves with no camera crew or nary a concern in the world for quality video capture could buff out the Rolls Royce in one of the garages without hydraulic lifts but that would be you or some other SINGLE detailer, not us.
Secondly, why are they no before and after shots at the end of the episode to show the difference. Yes, sometimes before shots are shown, but never a comparo at the end of the episode for all to see the real outcome! Every car show does this except this one and since the differences might not be caught by the camera from regular shots, this is almost imperative.
Great question and point and I hope you'll agree that out of everyone you can think of in the online car detailing world, I think it's fair to say that not only do I post more pictures of before and after to fully document the project PLUS the action shots of the work being done but I also write more articles on HOW TO document both before pictures and after pictures using the sun to highlight and showcase the defects before and the lack of defects after.
Here's four examples,
How to photograph and capture swirls in the sun
1987 Chevy 4x4 Monster Truck "Before & After" Pictures
How-To capture swirls, scratches, etchings and other surface defects with your camera
This extreme makeover also includes full photo documentation showing before and after
NEW! Meguiar’s Foam Buffing Discs
So yeah, I think it's fair to say I know a little bit about both how to do and the importance of doing it. In fact, I explain why it's important in this article written 7 years ago...
The power in the after shots is created in the before shots
As for why there's no after shots using the sun in this episode it's because we started at 7:00am and finished at 7:00pm and the sun was going down. In fact, I pointed this out IN THIS THREAD in
post #10
Mike Phillips said:
Here's the last of the screenshots I captured.
Look at my
skin color in this picture from the morning....
Now look at my skin color. This picture shows that working out in full sun without a hat leads to a
good tan...
Simply put, the sun had gone down over the horizon. You can even tell this by the shade on the Rolls Royce in the picture below. Look how Rodney is in the sun but look how AJ and I are in the shade.
This is dappled light effect simply caused by the roof of one of the garages, look how Antonio is in the sun but look how Jim is shaded. This is one form of dappled light.
Besides that, I will say that for every TV production company that I've worked with there has always been a learning curve to work with the cameramen and show them the swirls that we need to capture on camera to make the very important point of the before condition of the paint. The thing about capturing after is you either need full sunshine normally around NOON so that it's overhead or swirl finder lights and on other episodes we did use swirl finder lights to show both before and after results.
And Ive said it before, I'll say it again, the opening scene with Bob on the phone, and the meeting in the RV (inside no less) adds nothing at all to the show and takes away valuable time from the actual detailing (where products and processes could be shown).
As for meeting in the RV - Newmar Motor Coaches is a sponsor of the show. As for Bob's part this is portion of the show is decided by the TV production company. Actually, the TV production company determines the entire flow and content of each episode including AJ introducing each episode and then giving the behind the scenes story about the car, the person, the event, or whatever the story is behind each episode.
Otherwise, Mike seemed most relaxed on this episode and so much himself.
Thank you. There is a term used to describe the evolution of interaction between the crew that makes of the TV production company and the talent, the people on the show. The word is,
gel
As you work more and more together you all start to
gel.
Looking forward to next weeks finale!
And I'll be sharing some screenshots taken from this episode and I'll try to find one with you working your magic!
Thank you for your questions and comments as it allowed me to answer similar questions and comments others may have but for whatever their reason, didn't ask.
I give you 6 thumbs up!
:dblthumb2: :dblthumb2: :dblthumb2:
