Posted by: Goran Razic
20.02.2016
Long duration events, especially when they are on a hard terrain and when it is expected to be very fast in ‘run and gun situations’, make me feel like I'm on my home terrain. In the spring 2014 Istrian peninsula hosted some of the best trail runners in Europe. The second edition of 100 miles of Istria trail running race showed to the world the very best of Croatian natural, cultural, gastronomic and historical heritage. 100 miles of Istria has also become one of the most popular and certainly the best organized trail running events in Croatia. The race started
Friday and ended Sunday afternoon. Two days of blood, sweat and tears, but in the end all participants were filled with happiness and satisfaction after finishing one of the three scheduled races: 60 km, 100 km or 100 miles long race. Event management organized a powerfull video and photo production. Dejan Hren was official photographer and Blenda ltd. was official video production company. We had two two-person teams with one cameraman and one journalist in each. We also had in postproduction disposal some beauty shots that were taken by Level 52 crew, as well as some areal shots. Our start was Friday afternoon with two parallel race starts in two different sites. The first night was very long, we could not find time for the short break, battery charging or quick rest before 4 AM.
Early morning, just after first runners have passed through our site in Buzet, we started our journey through Istria, tried to catch some good action shots and some brief interviews with already very exhausted runners. Our end point was Umag, where we had to be early Saturday afternoon, so that we can film victory entrance through the finish line. From filming perspective these events are always very challenging. As I already mentioned, one have to be very quick and effective. There must be plenty of batteries and very reliable lightweight camera. Also, a very good audio input because of the interviews, so I used Rode Reporter
microphone with 5 meters long XLR cable. I also had small hotshoe LED light for night shots.
Camera was my lovely Sony FS700 with Canon 24-105 f4.0L IS lens. In a little less than three days we made about 450 km by car. We took dozens of interviews and filmed more than 3 hours of raw footage. We ran few kilometers with runners while filming them, we also jumped over plenty of mountain creeks, and climbed up on trees with our camera gear. All of that just for the one reason - to make the best materials for 25 minute TV reportage for Croatian National Television (HRT).
