Shifting Gears – Feature Film
Shifting Gears is a story about Tom WIlliamson, a hard working manager at Q-Mark (A Wal-Mart type super store). He started out at Q-Mark in the stock room after high school and is now poised to receive a promotion to Southeastern Regional Manager, or so he thinks. Instead, he gets a huge surprise. Faced with few options, Tom and his wife, Carol, decide to start a “family business” and leave the grind of the city. They pack up their pensive teenager, Jeremy, and free-spirited ten-year-old, Stephy, and move to Bainesville, NC. THe family take over a run down garage bequeathed to them by Tom’s estranged father, Clem. Clem was a brawler and small town dirt track racer. Clem won the garage from local rich boy and town namesake, Conrad Baines, in a race years before. Tom sinks his whole severance into the garage to get it up and running only to get hit with another surprise; the title to the property is not clear and the garage is set to be sold at public auction. Conrad Baines has his eyes set on the property in the name of “economic development” but really wants to knock the garage down and build a Q-Mark. In a last ditch effort, Tom joins forces with Clem’s former teammate, “Dirty Harry” Hawkins, and enters the Dirt Track Grand National in order to win the money needed to save the garage and his family from ruin.
Having already worked on a few racing films, SuttleFilm found themselves on yet another. SuttleFilm provided the production Grip, Electric and Camera Equipment, crew placement, post production services including Color Grading and post sound along with SuttleFilm founder, James Suttles taking on the position of Director of Photography. Shifting Gears brought for an exciting set consisting of high speed cars, stunts, and lots of adrenaline.
The primary camera was the Canon C-500 utilizing the Odyssey 7Q+ 4K recorder along with the Red Dragon, Red Scarlet, a number of Blackmagic 2.5K Cinema cameras and the Sony F65 4K camera. GoPro Hero 4’s were used as crash cams. This is the first feature film that SuttleFilm has used a full set of Canon Cine Prime lenses.
Director of the project, Jason Winn, has elected to have a fast-paced edit so that the adrenaline is infused with the tone and style of the film. This blends well with the use of multiple camera systems as SuttleFilm photographed a very stylized, energetic and visually engaging set of racing sequences.
After 3 months prepping and shooting Shifting Gears under long hours, mud, deafening race cars, more mud, tight schedules, and a lot more mud, SuttleFilm was done with another racing film.