In-Production News

BCQtv Wins Best Show Open

rackfocuspost — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 02:33:50 +0000

After 30,000 online votes and several months of voting, the results are in….And the winner of the 2010 Best Show Open goes to…BackCountry Quest TV! It was a great night on the Vegas Strip for the 2010 Sportsman Choice Awards hosted by the Sportsman Channel at the Hard Rock Cafe’. Surrounded by our industry peers, Chris and Casey stepped up on the stage and accepted the first award of the night for a project BCQ and Rack Focus started almost two years ago.

The BCQ Show Open was really the first creative project we all worked on together, and since then we have worked on dozens more, so to see our first receive and award like “Best Show Open” was truly and honor for all of us. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve all come since then and this year we have big plans for a few projects coming down the pipe…which includes a new show open that has been several months in planning.

To see the behind the scenes video for the making of this Show Open go to “The Vault” right here on RackFocusPost.com.

Visionaries

rackfocuspost — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 05:47:08 +0000

A few days before Christmas the BCQ Crew and I decided we needed to step it up in an attempt to win a very sought after award in our industry, The Nikon Monarch Award. This award is given to the Television Series that goes above and beyond to represent Nikon Hunting on their show by using creative and effective marketing. Well, if you follow our production style on BCQTV, you’ll know we have a thing for skits. We came to the conclusion that we were going to create our entry based on a made up skit. After two days of production meetings and one solid day of shooting…we created our masterpiece.

The result was a victory and our crew bringing home the The 2011 Nikon Monarch Award. One of the three finalists was a rap video from The Crush…which really made you want to “put your binos up” and a very well produced entry from “The Zone”. I want to thank Chris and Casey for really doing an awesome job in front of the camera, Trent Skiba for running the second camera and sound, Chuck Keefer for playing “The Doc” and Katie Keefer for hooking us up with the Doctor’s Office and playing a great receptionist.

To take a look at the award winning video click here: Visionaries

Sportsman Awards

rackfocuspost — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 05:29:38 +0000

After all of the votes rolled in there were five categories our shows at The Post survived and are alive for Sportsman Channel Producer awards this January at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock Cafe’. Great job guys, let’s bring home some hardware!

Nominees and categories are as follows:

Best Show Open: BackCountry Quest
Best New Show: PigMan the Series
Favorite Show Host: Brian Quaca-PigMan
Best Shoot Clip: Bowhunting Addiction TV
Best Shoot Clip: Family Traditions

BackCountry Kansas

rackfocuspost — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 04:34:48 +0000

Recently, Rut Media Photographer Rich Schultz and I spent three days in camp with Chris, Casey and the BCQ Production Crew along with Jared Crider and his whitetail operation, Locked Horn Outfitters. The goal of the shoot was to grab several stills, build up our video library for a variety of uses and lay down a bunch of footage for BCQ’s Season Four Trailer.

A new piece of equipment on this trip was the Phillip Bloom Pocket Dolly from Kessler Crane, that the guys at Kessler shipped directly to Kansas hot off the press. Kessler sold out 25 Bloom Dollies in 15 minutes…so I was happy that we were lucky enough to grab one.

I also used a 16mm Bolex to create some retro effects in a few of the scenes we were shooting for the new show open. It was definitely a learning experience with the 16mm, but it was definitely a different satisfaction, that’s for sure. The footage from the Bolex was sent to Chicago and transferred to 1920×1080 HD files I can use…and it definitely was the look we were going for!

Take a look at the short trailer we put together with the footage we shot over the three days in Kansas and some of the awesome stills Rich Schultz snapped during the shoot.

Click Here for Teaser

A Day with Our Buddy

rackfocuspost — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 04:18:50 +0000

We recently wrapped up a commercial shoot with the guys from My Bow Buddy and outdoor personality and good friend Kelly Gotch. Kelly is a fellow Central Michigan Broadcast Alum and has really made a splash with several projects within outdoor television over the last two years.

We had to battle the wind and rain, but by the end of the day, we had a great 30 second spot that we think will be a great vehicle for My Bow Buddy to sell their great product. To check commercial and website we created go to www.mybowbuddy.com.

That’s a Wrap…Whew!

rackfocuspost — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 03:10:04 +0000

Well, it’s been a crazy and exciting last three months for us here at The Post. We’ve pushed out just under 50 original episodes to air and we’re all exhausted. Television production sometimes seems relentless. Deadlines are on you every week, and no matter how much we prepare every year and try to get ahead on the production schedule, it seems like we end up in the same spot…using EVERY possible minute we have to get our episodes out the door and to Closed Captioning. I’d like to thank BackCountry Quest, Livin’ the Hunt, Family Traditions with Haley Heath and PigMan the Series for one hell of a Production Summer! Now let’s go out and lay down some more great footage!

Throwing the Switch

rackfocuspost — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:49:26 +0000

Recently here at The Post, we completed two new websites that we’re extremely excited about. The first is a re-design of the homepage from our TV Partners at BackCountry Quest TV. You can check it out here: www.backcountryquest.com The second is a completely new design for an exciting new product that will change the way we supplement an attract deer. Rack1 Whitetail Systems hits the shelves next year but will be building the brand over the next several months through commercials, print ads and product placement in some of the best hunting shows on outdoor television. To visit the site go here: www.huntrack1.com

Three More Telly Awards for Rack Focus

rackfocuspost — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:31:21 +0000

We just got word that we received three Telly Awards for three of the Series we are very proud to produce here at Rack Focus. BackCountry Quest, PigMan The Series and Bowhunting Addiction all received a Telly Award for Outstanding Outdoor Television Production. Thousands of entries from production, film and network series are submitted each year and only a handful actually win an award. I want to thank all of our Production Team in the field, in front of the camera and in the edit bays for your hard work.

Shooting on the Georgia Red Dirt

rackfocuspost — Fri, 28 May 2010 01:57:45 +0000

The few months leading into the Q3 Episodes for all of our shows…well, let’s just say it gets a little

Shooting scenes for the Opening of the show with Haley using the Jib.

hectic. We’d had the last few days in May inked in for quite a while to shoot spines for the first several shows of Family Traditions, along with the new intro for the show and a ton of creative stills from the newest member of the Rack Focus family, Rich Schultz, who will be heading up The Shutter Shed, the photography division of the company.

Rich and I were fresh off the HuntVe Commercial shoot it Missouri, so the 14 hour drive to Macon, GA was still going to hurt…but we were in a little bit of a “groove” and ready to get down and meet up with Haley, G.O. and the kids on their beautiful piece of ground.

The Heath Family waiting for us to get another shot for the opening set up.

We rolled through the front gates around 7pm, unpacked our gear and immediately started touring the property for shooting location for the next three days. The property really had everything we were looking for…big pines and hardwoods, beautiful trails, green fields and lots of fence line. During the shoot, Rich would be wearing two different hats. The focus was to roll a “behind the scenes” angle each day, but more importantly to shoot hundreds of still images for Haley and G.O. to use for Show advertising, website and print media. This was also the first official shoot for the photography division of Rack Focus.

Over the next three days we laid down some phenomenal video with the EX1R and grabbed some unbelievable stills with the Canon 5D. In all we shot three show spines, eight “Haley’s Hints” Segments, one Commercial Bumper, an entirely new Show Open, 24 GB of still photos including stills for the opening sponsor bumps, closing credits and all sponsor products….and crashed an airplane. Yep, that’s right…I was in a Ultralight Plane crash getting the VERY last shot of the entire week. Fortunately nobody was hurt but it could have been very bad. If you want to see the plane crash all captured on the EX1R, make sure you watch the last episode of Family Traditions this season. Hope you enjoy some of the stills we captured during the week.

Lights, Camera…BCQ Bumpers 2010 “Roll Tape”

rackfocuspost — Fri, 21 May 2010 02:47:19 +0000

Casey looks on as we get the first of four jib shots for the Bohning Bumper.

Well, we did it again. After the huge success of last year’s Bumpers for BCQTV and literally hundreds of emails from viewers about them, we shot the 2010 versions this week…and let me just say that at least one of these bumpers will be VERY talked about. Our goal with the bumpers are to offer our show sponsors a little more than the usual “Segment Bumper” we have all been accustomed to. We feel that making a memorable 15 second bumper is more effective that just flashing a logo up for 8-10 seconds…but not all shows can pull this off. We have one big advantage…the Keefer brothers. They seem to feed off each other and their comedy is very reminiscent of “Ron Burgundy” and several others from the Will Ferrell school of acting.

The EX1R soaring high in the sky.

Preston Bovee, RF Editor for BCQTV, and I headed up Monday night and met with the Keefer’s at the BCQ compound. Preston would be running the camera for the “Behind the Scenes” featurette and snapping stills…along with about 10 other things. The next morning started off with an 8am rendezvous with Officer Bret, a local Gaylord City Police Officer and friend of BCQ Field Producer Trent Skiba, who was willing to spare a few hours for the first of three Bumpers for the day. Bohning has a new slogan this year…”Big Silly Grins” and we decided to make a play on that for the Bumper. The challenge was finding a speed limit sign…which on a northern Michigan backroad must be non-existant, and you know when our local man of the Law can’t think of a side road with a speed limit sign, you may be in for a long search. We literally split up to find a sign that was a far enough off the main drag, knowing we would need to set up the jib in the middle of a road for two hours. Well, after a short search, Preston and I found the sign and began to set up the scene.

Chris taking a look at the EX1R during a "Glide" shot.

We had the spot scripted out pretty well, so the shoot went very smooth. We shot right up to lunch and got everything we needed to make the bumper extremely entertaining. Chris and Casey did an awesome job as usual and Bret from the City of Gaylord Police Dept. was PERFECT. I want to thank him for bearing with me when I said the famous…”great job guys, one more time”. The remainder of the day we shot a ThermaCell and Outdoor Edge Bumper…which both were hilarious! To see the bumper, please tune in to BCQTV starting June 28th on Sportsman Channel. Take a look at the pics below to check out the behind the scenes aspect of the shoot. We’ll also have a “Behind the Scenes” video up on the website in the coming days. Go to www.backcountryquest.com to read more on the BCQ Boys.