The VW-Bus Principle
Reading time: 7 Minutes all posts"Everything is part of a compact, functional system - Whiteroom fits in a VW bus - including team and equipment"
When we leave the office for a shooting, we pack our bus. And that always happens according to the same principle. Over the years we have adapted our camera equipment to our mostly alpine shooting style. Everything is part of a compact, functional system – Whiteroom fits in a VW bus – including team and equipment.
A team in the size of a VW bus has many advantages. All key positions – camera, director, production management, audio and drone – are covered. In addition, when shooting a film, communication is key! And the smaller and familiar the team, the easier it is to communicate. If you know your partners, you understand each other without words – this is particularly important in the mountains.
You save time, you’re more flexible, you can react spontaneously to changes and thus minimize the coordination effort from the outset.
From a certain size, the entire production system changes during a film shoot or on the set of an advertising campaign – everything becomes more complex. A single car with an experienced team is agile and always in the right place at the right time. This enables us to shoot at more locations than common in the film business. Our nightrider tool: e-bikes with trailers that we use to transport the camera equipment to remote valleys and corners in the mountains.
You can compare the VW bus to a climbing backpack. If you have only little space available, you will think exactly about what to take with you and what to leave at home beforehand. Good planning becomes the base. In alpinism, effectiveness and speed are extremely important for safety. This also applies to filming in alpine style.
We are minimalistic, because our space is limited, but we do not lose any quality.
In the past, filming professionally was extremely unwieldy the equipment was hardly affordable. In 2010, the 5D SLR was the first camera to hit the market being able to create a cinematic image with shallow depth of field. From then on, a cinema-quality setup, suitable for shooting in the mountain environment, slowly became affordable.
Due to the fast technical development, the market for cameras, drones and other equipment has exploded in the last 10 years. Thanks to the modern equipment, it is now possible to shoot films and commercials in cinema quality in 4K to 8K with only a backpack. There are small, powerful drones, and the lighting has become more space-saving thanks to LED technology – a high-quality setup fits in the trunk of a VW bus. Of course, large advertising campaigns or films still require a lot of effort – and that’s nice, too! However, a lot is possible in a small team.
more articles