My First Official GoPro Production. Fairbanks, Alaska.

Over the years, drinking beers, I get this question a lot…

“How did you get started with GoPro, what was your first GoPro production?”

I will answer that question publicly. It will give you a sense of how my career began. I have learned a lot in the details, so I will provide them even if it seems long-winded. This is my beginning.

The Backstory

Fresh out of UCLA art school (2010), I was working for a cool non-profit film company called Regenerate Films, at the Four Friends gallery in Thousand Oaks, California. I was the assistant to Larry Janss an analog photographer that had studied with Ansel Adams, performed liquid light-show and had a massive art collection. He was good at real-estate too 😉

I was having a great time working on films, live events, performances, technical computer stuff, and curating artworks. I was also playing as quantumpfiz with the Single Wing Turquoise Bird a vintage liquid light-show from the 60’s. Life was good.

Then, one day in April, my long-time friend Jordan Miller called me. He had gotten back from around the world shooting/editing the GoPro Hero 2 Launch video.

He said on the phone,

“Hey Pfau wanna go to Alaska and put weather balloons into space?”

JoJo

What do you think I said “Haha! Of Course, Dude!” I was a long-time skater, surfer and visual tech geek so I was pumped to try out a GoPro project with my close-friend, especially one involving science and space. This is the wave I dropped into.

Halfmoon Bay

At that time the GoPro HQ was fully packed into a normal looking office complex off the highway 1. It was in foggy Halfmoon Bay about 30 minuets south of San Francisco. You know where they hold Maverick’s, the gnarly big wave surf competition.

Little did I know it but as Jordan was touring me around, introducing me to people in the office, I was meeting some of my future masterminds, collaborators and friends.

Let me introduce some very important people.

Jordan lead me into an office with camera guts everywhere. Sitting next to the McCauley brothers was a quiet man, with a large auburn mustache, he was looking at a sensor protoboard with two sensors on it. This was Tim Macmillian. He was the godfather of 3D, Array, 360, or any nodal/synced camera system GoPro came out with. He was a master at solving the optical, electrical and temporal challenges with multi-camera systems.

Early in his art career he had exposed a strip of analog film on the inside of a wooden ring of pin hole cameras. This experiment led his genius to create a company in the UK with his brother called Timeslice. Timeslice specialized in Array Shots, or you might know it as “Bullet Time” from Oscar winning film, The Matrix.

I eventually became the the GoPro Media member responsible for the visual execution of this style.

Kevin was in the next “office”, basically a glorified closet with tons of mounting gear stacked floor to ceiling and literally hundreds of Hero 2 cameras organized on a table. He was a master at managing all that was needed to get the right cameras and gear into the most radical situation to get the shot. Although sometimes he would roll his eyes in exasperation and say,

“So you really need all that? I know it’s not coming back.”

Custer always had a passion for the next thing on the horizon, and was very into 360 media. He became one of my really good friends at the company. Later he directed the GoPro Advanced Media Team where I led Immersive R/D. More about Kevin in later posts, he shows up a lot 🙂

Always with the aura of a Stenson and cowboy boots he had a “smart matter of fact” sense of humor. Travis engineered so many ingenious mounts and angles. He could build anything and it would actually work. Backpack, surf, “spinny” mounts, most of the GoPro classic angles he was involved with. He shows up numerous times in the HD2 launch video, flying all the drones and gliders before people even did that. He was always way ahead, I mean he even did “vanlife” before it was a thing.

I owe him a lot and over the years I got to work closely with him. The first day I met him, he generously showed me how to use PT GUI to stitch 360 photo panoramas. This gave me the understanding on how 360 media actually worked. Years later on HD3+ Africa, I used PT-GUI to make GoPro’s first stitched 360 VIDEO from the Mikala Jones 360 Indo Barrel that Brad Schmidt shot. We will dig into that in a future post! Hats off to Travis!

For this Alaska production, Travis had made a 9 camera spherical plate on carbon fiber to try and launch on the balloons. Why not?!

and Media!

Abe Kislevitz, Yara Khakbaz, Brad Schmidt and Jordan Miller.

This is the team I eventually became a part of. I have a lot to say about these great people and they show up frequently in future post, so we will keep it brief here.

Needless to say this was an A+ list of die-hard creative souls that showed the world a new way to see and feel great about it. No where else have I gotten so much guidance, trust, and friendship.

Ok! Enough backstory! I congratulate your attention, now let’s get on to production.

After stopping at a muggy BBQ restaurant in a Houston suburb for a sloppy post-flight meal. Jordan and I headed towards the NASA complex, our destination the Ad Astra Rocket Company to meet our main character Dr. Benjamin Longmier, he was studying plasma propulsion and leading the Project Aether with two Texas A&M grad students. Project Aether is what we were going to Alaska to film.

Ben was very intelligent, but calm and down to earth. He laughed a lot and was positive dreamer.

The inside of the lab was awesome. Pictures of real astronauts on the wall and a huge warehouse, with “launch control” looking consoles connected to a massive cryochamber in the middle. It looked like a dry-docked submarine, and it was used to study plasma, in space-like vacuum and temperature conditions. Ben was a hacker, he was using a stripped down ( to the circuit board ) HD2 inside the chamber to document the test fires, because I guess the camera could handle it.

After a little tour, some b-roll and interview shots, Ben looks at us and says

“Want to see the plasma”?

He walks over to a control console, starts a sequence of buttons, warning light begin to flash near high-voltage signs and a hiss of nitrogen starts flowing. We walk over to a small, 6 inch thick, heavily bolted port-hole in the cryochamber and look inside.

Then all of the sudden, quietly… a brilliant blue arc forms in the middle, like actual science fiction, it was really beautiful. At that point I did not realize but we were about to see a lot more of that beautiful glow displayed by mother nature.

Our goal was to tell a story for Project Aether, and get a shot of the aurora from a weather balloon on a GoPro Hero 2.

A production is a series of little missions, and with GoPro you become very involved in the actual action. Here is the setting of our adventure.

For us it was early spring and the daylight was minimal, better for seeing the aurora, but enough daylight to shoot during the day.

We must have been there for 7-9 days, which is a short window for getting an actual aurora. Usually the aurora is more common at higher latitudes like 75˚N + but we were at 65˚N which meant we needed a larger solar event to put out more solar wind so the corona could be see further south.

Weather seemed good and mostly was the whole production. Pretty lucky.

The production team usually consists of three major focuses, Creative, Gear, and Data Managment. Everyone shoots then mangers the particular role assigned to them. The team on this production was

• Jordan Miller
• Abe Kiselvitz
• Scott Kuchi
• and myself.

I was somewhere between newbie and gear, after all I was just a bearded geeky painter/artist with an eye for color and composition.

No production is complete without getting involved in some local culture and getting local threads. After stopping by these glorious local drive through cafe huts, we got a coffee’s and warm egg and cheese bagels, then off to the thrift store.

We found a thrift store in downtown Fairbanks. I found a red wool Pendleton shirt and Rabbit skin hat. I used them the whole trip and still have them to this day to use on cold productions. It was something I learned that the right clothing for production is your absolute responsibility, you have to be prepared because you never know what you will get into.

Production Kick-off.

Riding the high of being on an adventure with with my buddy, I got a little over zealous and teased pulling the e-brake. Bam, Hey newbie I’m Murphy! We actually started to skid and our little sedan slowly slide off the road… 2 min from our first kickoff meeting :/

Fortunately in Alaska everyone has a well-built truck with a wench. Not more than 5 minutes later a helpful Alaskan in a white super-duty comes around the corner and pulls us out. On to the meeting.

Project Aether

Wind Maps, Launch Clearance with FAA, GPS, Radio Beacon and Projected landing zone. Lunch boxes with hand-warmers and extra battery packs, under max weight.

All the Nitrogen in Alaska

Challenge 1: Low-light.

We knew the aurora would be dim for the small camera sensors, so we had special firmware with a max ISO of 6400. In the hotel room we had been disassembling camera’s and removing the tiny IR filters on the bottom of the lens barrel with broken butter knife and then refocusing.

We were hoping to get as much radiation to hit the sensor as possible so we could pick up decent images. We also had to deal with motion blur on a moving ballon because of the longer shutters, so camera placement, and balance on the payload arms became crucial. We needed a test but would have to wait for the aurora for that.

Challenge 2: Temperature and Battery Life

We needed a very lite yet insulated rig to attach to the balloon payloads carbon fiber cross. One side held the transmitters for recovery and the other the camera equipment. To solve the low-temperature issue the Project Aether team designed a modified lunch box with hand-warmers.

That was that, they cut two holes into a fabric and foil lunch box, use some Styrofoam for camera bracing and filled the middle with a battery brick and hand-warmers. We ended up shooting full cards of the flights in video and time-lapse, so it seemed to work well. They actually were rocket scientist after all. Check.

Challenge 3: Lens Fogging ( Liquid or Frozen Condensation )

Ben knew that the trapped moisture in the air would condense inside the dive housing due to temperature differences from a running hot digital camera against the sub zero temperatures at altitude. Kinda like when you look out an airplane window around that little vent hole. It happens in filming surfing and dive too.

He knew the insulating properties of argon were best for an inert gas. So he had a bottle of dry argon gas, put a GoPro + dive housing in a plastic bag, filled the bag with gas, then sealed the bag and open and closed the dive housing. This filled the housing with inert argon gas that could insulate and fight the condensation on the casing’s inner lens port element. Check.

Launch 1: Fairbanks

Everything was going fine until we ran into one little issue the lightweight helium gas that the balloons needed for positive buoyancy had all been sourced in the greater Alaska area, we just couldn’t find enough gas for more than 3 flights.

Everyone was eager to get a balloon in the air and test the whole system. So Ben checked the wind charts, aurora was only 50% likely and made the call to the FAA that we were launching a ballon. A about an hour before sunset Project Aether launched their first balloon.

Dog Sled Day

I forget why we actually filmed the dog sleds..? I think it was because we had the opportunity… or maybe we thought of using them for payload retrieval. Whatever it was I ended up meeting colleagues that I worked closely with the rest of my career.

This was my first time on a dog-sled, it was actually amazing. I couldn’t believe how connected all the dogs are, they flock kinda like birds. This is where I got a chance to meet underwater cinematography legend and all-time earth steward Andy Brandy Casagrande. A long time friend of the GoPro brand, we later became better personal friends filming together in Africa, and trying out various underwater 360 rigs, more on that in the future.

I also got to meet two more original GoPro legends. While trying to figure out how to get a chesty on the lead dog, Jordan introduced me to his friends, the core of the GoPro Social and PR teams. Both Pillar Woodman (P-Star) and Rick Loughery were in Fairbanks following the story on how the camera was doing being put 90,000+ feet into near space. They are both wonderful humans, always funny with warm personalities. We had a great time in Fairbanks and Chena Hot Springs, honestly I think we were all blown away by how awesome the aurora is in person.

The Project Aether Team said the beacons from the first launches payload was 17 miles outside east of Nenana, which was south west of Fairbanks by an hour. Time to head out for a snow-mobile mission.

We arrived at Nenana Municipal Airport which looked like an abandoned air-field covered in snow. Someone was saying that steel splitters in an impact around -60˚F, as we crawled into a hole in the fuselage of mangled aircraft without wings. We get to a car park and meet up with our snow-mobile team.

We needed to head 17 miles east through the forest to where the payload had dropped. So we started off, filming of course. Funny thing is good plans generally take longer than you expect.

It was spring and that meant short days, sun was going down as we kept sinking in the snow. Progress was slow but eventually we made it. Unlike the journey the payload was easy to find but the sun was very low and we needed to head back 17 miles. We turned around but the snow-mobile kept sinking and slamming the sled hitch into ice-chunks. Then finally this one time sled trailer, hit some ice and the pin broke off completely and was lost in the snow.

It was a cold dusk and we had about 10 miles to go with a detached sled. Being a punky skater, shit i was even wearing black skinny jeans in the snow. I had always used a carabiner for my keys, so I toke it off and we used it to attach the sled, and left Murphy behind. We finally got back to the cars, it was cold and after dark. We had the balloon payload with the footage, my carabiner was bent, but I still have it and use it today.

We had been mostly focused on shooting and getting the balloons up and back. We had not seen the aurora yet, and we didn’t know how the shots would look. We were getting gas about to head out for a night shoot and the sky lite up, I just felt like howling, can’t explain it, it is so right, the eyes know how massive it is, you just can’t believe this happens in nature.

I grabbed one of our modified cameras and placed it on the ground in time-lapse mode, with a little salt-pebble so it was tilted up. We could finally see if our cameras could pick it up and how it would look. It ran for like 5 min, we pulled the card and looked on the computer, it was there and exposing! Now we knew what to expect and could choose the best mode for different conditions..

This was the first time in my life I had seen the aurora borealis.

Ben being an astro-physicist had connections to the Chena Springs Aurora Watch Observatory. He had arranged for a tour of the facility, and a filming opportunity.

The observatory was spectacular, the telescope was supported by extensive solar and aurora monitoring systems that made predictions on corona diameter and intensity. They were watching the sun’s flares and stellar weather in real-time. Space geek heaven.

For the technical minded, the aurora happens when radiation is ejected from the sun flares and other reactive solar events on the surface of the sun, just like light it travel towards the earth as charged particle, and what you see as the light from the aurora is the magnetic field on the earth ( from its nickel core ) ionizing the solar energy bombarding it. So what your are really seeing in the interaction between our magnetic field and space weather.

After the tour and shoot it was dark and but Fortunate for us it was right next to the Chena natural thermal hot-springs, which for Alaska’s temperatures is a god send. We decided to relax in the springs. We payed for entry, changed into our bathing suits, walked down the covered wooden boardwalk and waded into the large steaming springs. There was snow all around us, cold fresh night air and the water was a warmer than our bodies and felt amazing.

Well that would have been enough but what we had been waiting for the entire trip just… opened up. The entire sky went alive with greenish/blue aurora, it went full-force between the clouds. It is one of the most magical and connected moments I have had in my life, to be in water heated by the earth, watching something more beautiful than anything I could create, naturally above me. It really moved me. My filmmaking career has stumbled on a few of these moments, I think thats why I keep coming back.

The only thing is, we were no where near a balloon, today we was the observatory shoot and all are cameras were dead. We only had a few hand-cams with a little juice but missed the ultimately misses strongest aurora we had seen. I remember thinking a phrase that night that I have used a lot when I just missed a shot, it comes from my not being able to really capture my light-show performances.

“It was for the eyes.”

If you cannot get the shot, simply let the emotion imprint you (advice).

Anyways, now inspired we should head back and get gear set to film the next one. Shit, Jordan locked the keys in the car with Murphy haha!

We decided to change locations a bit so from Fairbanks we drove south toward Denali National Park. Everything outside the car window was massive, the mountains, the distance. Moose where on the side of the road, I even stumbled on one while peeing on a snowbank at gas station ( gnarly I know! ). Everything had this substantial presence to it.

After several hours, we arrive in Talkeetna, Alaska. We went to the local airport to see how we can get to the mountains. Jordan really does have this amazing charm and shameless joy about him, people were really helpful and interested in what we were doing. We walked out on the tarmac, burned stickies ( away from jet fuel ), tried to wipe oil off the underside nose cone, mounted the rest of the planes exterior with cameras, loaded the payload and helium, and all boarded.

Ask me two months ago, I would have never guessed that I was going to be in a ski plane landing on a glacier on the highest mountain in North America. It kinda expands your imagination to what is possible and what your life is capable of.

The red single prop plane took like 30 min from Talkeetna to the Ruth Glacier on Denali. They just landed on the long ice-flow. We unloaded the cameras, rigs, helium gas, payloads and balloon gear. Then the plane took off again, they said they would be back in a few hours before sundown, with a little smirk.

For our second launch we wanted to put a balloon up over Denali. This is the flight that got the best daytime video of near space ( we retrieve it later ).

Soooo on Ruth Glacier it was cold. Like – 5˚F in the sun and like -15˚F in the shade. Abe is seasoned in cold weather and snow environments so he was fairing better but we were all kinda like damn its cold. You could barely pull your hands out of your gloves to change modes, batteries, cards or even push record.

The Project Aether Team launched a tethered balloon for the 9 camera spherical rig made by Travis, the extreme temperature made it run very short, but it helped bring back visuals for further prototyping. You win some, you learn from others.

They used the same balloon to launch a second payload to near space, a beautiful daytime shot. Everyone was in a great mood, it was some thing special to share these dramatic natural settings with your fellow man. Eventually the plane did come back before sunset. Nothing like looking at a single prop approaching at speed and landing on a glacial ice from the glacier. Such talent with those pilots.

After the Denali balloon launch the Project Aether team received beacon information that the camera payload landed near Denali, just outside the park, literally across a stream. So we hired a small 4 seater helicopter to fly from Fairbanks down to Denali National Park and into the bush. The pilots name was also Mike.

On arrival to the location we were in the wilderness. We had to be careful where we touched down so the helicopter wouldn’t sink into the snow, and get stuck or tip. All around a very delicate situation, especially inside the helicopter. We found the payload after pushing through a small stream and Ben grabbed a photo of me getting back into the helicopter with Denali in the distance, I will post when I find it.

We loaded the video footage that night for review. The sky is space black with a bright sun falling behind the planet. You can see the massive Arctic mountains and snow-masses below, your above the thin blue atmosphere and even through the curve of the fisheye you can see the planets horizon gently bending around a sphere.

We had some amazing really footage, but no aurora at altitude.

Wrap Out

So finally we come to the end. Plenty of camera’s have captured the aurora before, it is a beautiful visual phenomena of nature, and many were better suited for it (Canon 7D and 5D were big at this time). For us it was the challenge to see if our camera could do it. That ethos was constant at GoPro, we pushed ourselves beyond our best to push the limits of image capture and had fun doing it.

It’s not about shooting with GoPro, many filmmakers with all kinds of tools know these feelings. It about making beautiful content that is intimately connect to your subject, then trying to share that with other people.

I was asked to stayed behind after the GoPro team had to leave, to support the final launch of the Project Aether Team. So the next day we sent up one final balloon at dusk, and recovered it in the morning. In the photo you can see the setting sun blowing out the globes horizon. The HD2 is tilted up towards the balloon for the shot, but not great for product in use. And in the background there is the subtle green glow of the aurora borealis form a weather balloon in near space, with a GoPro Hero 2 in the foreground.

I had got the shot.

The video. My how far we have come.

You are never really aware of how this all starts until later, and then looking back it all makes sense.

It is always a little embarrassing to show old videos, they have lost a temporal uniqueness and context, music styles change and attention was longer too.., but anyways this is the video from my first production with GoPro, and as it always was, it was a true adventure trying to get the shot.

~Fin~

That’s it for now. Coming next is the story of my introductory summer on the GoPro Media Team and shooting my first camera launch, the infamous GoPro Hero 3.

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