Over the past few weeks I’ve been a video producer and cinematographer on an amazing spectacle of human achievement. The official line from the organizers of the Great Pacific Race event is –

The biggest, baddest human endurance challenge on the planet.

Learn more about this incredible human endurance event and track the progress of the boats from the comforts of your warm dry office here on the official Great Pacific Race website. My slight difficulty of getting up at 4AM to be in Monterey, California by 7AM ready as a video producer and cinematographer is nothing in comparison to these racers. These courageous people are rowing boats across the Pacific Ocean at 2-4 knots per hour (1 knot = 1.151 mph) with a goal of 2500 nautical miles! This is my first video production shooting and delivering in UHD 4K video format, and it’s spoiled everything. The dynamic range, incredible sharpness, and resolution are all superior. I’ve heard people say that once one goes 4K it’s impossible to go back to HD 1080. This is true even on a Macbook Pro or iPad with a retina display. The current standard HD looks like mushy pixel potatoes in comparison to 4K. It’s still the early days in 4K video production, so I hope it stays. This is my favorite shot from five days out there shooting the documentary film. It’s my favorite purely from a video producer technology perspective. For a parallax camera move, standing on a rocking boat, pulling focus, maintaining perfect horizon line, tracking the subject in frame, and not falling of the boat is all amazing to me. All this using a 4K camera rig that weighs less than 10 pounds. The stories in the interviews are amazing too, but you’ll have to wait to see that footage. This is the official trailer for the documentary film being produced by Pete Crowley and Cree Crawford of 4KNET.