Behind-the-scenes: Cutting Edge’s Jeff Gaunt on Hyundai’s i30 ‘Amazing, day after day’ TVC

BEHIND-THE-SCENES: Jeff Gaunt, VFX Supervisor, Cutting Edge has just returnedfrom climbing tall mountains and fording rivers in the jungles of Asia to shootHyundai’s i30 ‘Amazing, day after day’ TVC via Innocean Worldwide Sydney. He takes us behind-the-scenes on whathe describes as a dream shoot.

Here was a great opportunity to get back to basics – shooting greatcinematography in great locations around the world. This was an incredible project to work on with Brendan Williams (ACS) as director.

I became Brendan’s roving VFX supervisor and second unit DOP on ‘Amazing, day after day’. I had to pack light on this shoot. All I could take were my two trusty Canon 7D cameras and a brand new dolly-rig from Dynamic Perceptions LLC; as hiking up the sides of the Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines and chasing Bullet Trains in Tokyo was all part of the brief. 

Lucky for me, so too was capturing the splendours of Dubai! It’s not often that you get to do all this, on your own. We were all in different parts of the world on this commercial. Brendan was in the North Pole trying to keep his equipment warm in -40° below, while I was keeping out of the way of snakes and wild monkeys in the forests of the Philippines.

As I said, these were dream locations.This shoot was really a tribute to what can be done on a consumer SLR. Shooting 30sec time-lapse photography gave me the razor sharp 4K images necessary to build-in all those subtle camera moves at post.

Essentially, every single frame I shot was print quality. It really was getting back to basics in terms of locations and the gear we were using, and of course, trying to find that right shot.I think the commercial says it all. This was an incredible shoot full of amazing images, day after day.