Standing in for Usain Bolt

Working as a stand-in for Usain Bolt for an NHK
sports science documentary.

I got to do a really interesting shoot the other day. NHK wanted to do a special documentary on Usain Bolt ( in particular his musculature and trying to figure out if there is some usual physical element that makes him so fast), but as he would be in Rome during the time of the shooting and they have to fly in to meet him, they wanted to do a dry run of all of the camera work they would use to film him here in Tokyo. As a function of that, (and the fact that apparently our legs are roughly the same size) they called me to be his stand in for the Tokyo shoot.



More than anything else, it consisted of taking a range of slow motion videos of my muscles in motion to figure out what angles, lighting, would work best for the actual shoot with him. In one respect, when I arrived on set, I was bummed to find out that I wouldn't actually be meeting him, but in another, man what a cool job. It isn't often that one gets to watch their actual muscles working in super slow mo, and it was fascinating to watch them try and find the best ways to film it. I was really tempted to start giving them suggestions, but if there is anything I've learned from doing this for 8 years, it's that by the time someone gets into the position of a professional working director, it's that they (usually) know what they are doing.

While I have met a few idiot directors in my day, Ive also come to realize that when you are working with good ones, if they seem like they know what they are doing, then they have probably already taken every detail into consideration, and they made the choices they did because there are other factors to consider that you may not be aware of.

A good example of this was the name for the last project I did, Ninjya-size. As a ninja-based exercise video, I thought the spelling "Ninja-cise" was a much closer representation as to what they were trying to create, and the most logical choice for someone looking for it on the web. When I inquired about to the producer however, I came to find out that they chose the spelling that they did based on the fact that the spelling I had suggested had already been copyrighted by someone else, and this was the next closest option they could use without having to worry about infringement.

Unfortunately as I was just a stand-in, the footage of me will never actually be used for anything, so no one will get to see it. I did actually request a copy of it though, and if I get it (sometimes they send it, sometimes they don't) I'm sure a bit of it will make it into a demo reel sometime. Cool stuff!