We talked about how to handle a car like this in Los Angeles, something like the Edsel story with lots of locations, so we started talking about Bentley Man, where he’d go and what he’d do…so I came up with about 6 locations…which is kind of a lot for middle of the day shooting in Los Angeles but “Why not” I went to several studios until Hollywood Center Studios said yes, they are great car lovers there, when I pulled up in my Alfa for the scout Richard Schneider came out to greet me, turns out he’s got a TR-6, which a few weeks later I got to see, it was in beautiful, spotless, perfect condition, we talked cars while he showed me the studio lot, the Lucy show was here, The George Burns show, the Lone Ranger, even Mister ED, a lot of early film history here, I went on to Spago, the Beverly Hills Hotel, a Beverly Hills street for our blur mount, its kinda nice, when you have a Bentley no one bothers you, they figure if you have a Bentley you must be doing something important, I think I need one of these, An enormous home in Beverly Hills owned by some very wealthy folks that I can’t mention their name, but I could say that this is the same lot Jimmy Stewarts house was on, they were very nice to let us use their home, now a days everyone wants money, and in Beverly Hills $$$, when I was scouting people were wanting 3-5 thousand dollars for just an hour out front, we’re not doing advertising, and our crews are so small…somehow it all comes together, the best was the Polo Field with the horses, I started calling Polo Teams and ran across Ardeshir Radpour with USC, he was so kind, we talked for a while and he said he’d love to come out, the shot went as planned, the hardest part was after I got home there was a sign in the shot I wanted gone… a lot of cloning!!! Check it out on my website, www.evankleinfilms.com

Chad drives fathers Lusso

I’ve had the opportunity several times to work with Steve’s son Chad. We shot the beautifuly restored Ferrari Lusso and the only 2 Porsches, a 69 911s and 56 1600 speedster, the McQueen family still owns. Working with Matt Stone from Motor Trend we drove and shot the cars up in the hills. The Lusso was restored by Mike Regalia and is now coming up for sale at Christie’s. We shot in an afternoon, Statics, car to car, a mount shot, and Chad driving with some great details too. Chad has a great sense of humor and was fun to shoot while we “played” with the car. The 12 cyl. sang as we drove through the hills, you could hear it in the cabin like a child just waiting to be turned loose in the schoolyard, this was a cool car, even with such a giant motor you could see how frail it could be with those skinny tires and delicate steering wheel, a far cry from american muscle cars. We re-created the William Claxton shot of Steve, with Chad, and the blur mount was funny, Mike was very cautious or hesitant about letting me stick a camera to the car, scratches and dents…I was a bit hesitant too, I’d hate to screw up the Mona Lisa. So I made a special mount that hung off the glass, secured it, and insured Mike that I’ve done this over a 100 times and the camera has never fallen off, I’ll be right there, we’re not going fast, all those things to help him feel better, so Chad and I took off down the road, I walked along side the car triggering the camera, when for some reason I had my hands around the camera, just as a safety, and it came off, I couldnt believe it, Chad looked at me, I looked at Chad, we both looked at the camera…Chad asked “Did it just fall off?” Nooo, of course not, I replied, and like two kids we both laughed, I checked the frames, we had already got the shot, looked great and we moved on! Mike if you’re reading this blog, the camera never touched the car, I promise!!, The Lusso was shot in a real hurry since we had the car for only a few hours and they’re still some of my favorite images, especially the car to car. See the pics!   www.evankleinfilms.com

Train kept a rollin all night long

Spent a whole week in May, in Bar Harbor Maine that is. Beautiful part of America. And what were we doing? I was with the folks from Corvette Quarterly and the GM Designers and Engineers of the 08 Vettes….and we had 4 to play with, hardtops, convertibles, and ZO6’s. This was gonna be a fun trip!! Now it did rain quite a lot, but thats ok, we shot right on the harbor dock with lobster boats in the background and fierce gray skies. And we did some really fun car to car in Acadia park, dont forget to get a permit, Acadia has a 2 lane, one way road thru the park, from tree canopies, to along the ocean, and the road was really long, I just remember shooting, and shooting and shooting, it was fun with the 4 cars behind, we shot some video too. I brought a rig along and we did a front mount on the ZO6, it was super low to the ground, less than 4 inches, I’ve used this rig on Lamborgini’s and it didnt scrape, the ZO6 scraped, that didn’t stop us from getting a fantastic shot coming downhill thru an old stone carrige bridge, we did some days trips to a couple automotive museums, I really didn’t expect collections this large, Seal Cove and the other Owls Head. Ate a lot. Thats ok too, we stayed in a Bed and Breakfast called the Mira Monte, big old home, lots of bedrooms, and they all have private bathrooms. When I got home it took several days to go thru all the images, there must of been about 5 thousand images, I pulled it down to a more respectable 634 selects, well…they all looked so good. I put a bunch of images on my site under the Corvette gallery, www.evankleinfilms.com

The new Mercedes is amazing. I’ve never seen so much carbon fiber on a production car, the front quarter panels are carbon fiber held on with velcro at the edges, velcro. The car sounds great too, with 8 cylinders of appx 500 non turbo horsepower, it started effortlessly and settled to a smooth rumble. We shot all day at the treatment plant, a very cool location near LAX, we called it future city, the streets and structures gave a fantastic sense of scale, and the colors complimented the Mercedes red. I shot with the larger chip 5D, nice camera but still very prosumer, it felt like a 20d with a bigger chip, and yes, still cant hold focus to save its life, so I dropped back to my 1n for all the action, The sun only peeked thru a few times while we shot so I broke out some strobes to spice it up a bit, I like how the images turned out, I think they really captured the essence of the car. I put a few images up on my site,  www.evankleinfilms.com

I was in Detroit last week, shot the new Cadillac CTS show car for a Motor Trend cover. Looks like GM is starting to create some competition for the euro market. These Cad’s have a lot of power. I’ve noticed that cars are getting more and more powerful. I shoot a lot of Corvettes, the ZO6 keeps getting faster and faster, the new CLK is pushing ZO6 territory, and this Cad is expecting All Wheel Drive, thats why the fenders have grown to accommodate this for 09. I shot in the GM lobby using a front mount rig, the images are spectacular!! I shot with the 1Ds Mark2, now this is a great camera, except for the small viewing screen, very frustrating, I kept having to download the card to check for sharpness, the actual image exceeds the resolution capabilities of the screen, I called Canon about this and they agreed…hmmm, and I asked why my 1n has a big screen and the 7000 dollar 1Ds doesn’t… they didnt have an answer, well I’m still going to pick up a 1Ds, I’ve got it on hold at Samy’s Camera, the resolution makes it worh it. The proof was in the beauty of the Cadillac images. And straight from MT, 207,000 issues sold!! set a record, how cool!!! See it on my website, www.evankleinfilms.com