Filmmaker Interview: Bryant Swanstrom - Uncovering Beautiful Imagery in Designing Adventure

Seaverns is a filmmaker who can find stories in both sports and car commercials, marrying stunning imagery with a narrative that can tug on the heartstrings. As a commercial cinematographer, documentarian, and sports filmmaker, he has covered a wide range of events, including F1 and MotoGP, as well as major ad campaigns for brands such as Titleist, Toyota, and Polaris. However, this knack for visual storytelling was forged in the sea with celluloid. 

"In the surf world where I started, I shot on film," Seaverns shared. "I traveled for most of my early career, shooting Super 16 and Super 35, and we had the spectacular ability to travel with big gear with small crews, which is the kernel of magic that can blossom from the surf world."

Joining him were cinematographer Bryant Swanstrom and Lyttleton Carter, who not only helped produce the shoot, but also rigged the stabilizers, operated black arm, and shot additional footage on long lenses.

For his recent project with KC HiLites, titled Designing Adventure, Seaverns focused on Brad Kowitz of Trail Recon, a YouTube Creator known for off-roading, overlanding, and outdoor adventures. Through it, he captured not only Brad's story, but also the tools that make his adventures possible — specifically the KC Platform One™ Roof Rack, a new roof-mounted light for off-road vehicles.

"I had done a bunch of off-road spots [for] Toyota or Polaris," Seaverns said. "And when KC HiLites wanted to do a big launch for this new product, they wanted to do a film about [Brad] because he's really well known in their world and people love watching him."

By leaning on his experience from his time in the surf world, Seaverns stretched his budget to include a few extra days, allowing him and his compact crew to capture stunning moments that required more setup and planning.

“Creatively, we wanted to go to the prettiest places, that we can get to without driving hours and hours off road, and be there, ideally, at the best times to film,” Swanstrom said. “There's usually only like three really good hours in a day, but because of the locations we chose, we found both shadow and light and used the cameras to our advantage. We were able to film without much additional lighting.”

"We had to put everything together and tear everything apart ourselves," Seaverns added. "But we had all of the middle of the day to build and set up, because we're only going to shoot in good light, which is usually a battle if you're shooting exteriors in a natural way."

Filmmaker Interview: Bryant Swanstrom - Using the Sony BURANO to Capture Good Light for Designing Adventure

Designing Adventure was shot in a mountainous desert location, featuring rocky terrain, sandy dunes, and expansive vistas untouched by the city. For this, Seaverns and his team chose two Sony BURANOs as his main cameras, with additional footage shot on the Sony FX3. Over four days, the team would rig their cinema cameras on arms, hard mounts, jibs, and go handheld. 

"We were able to light an awesome interview out in the woods with multiple cameras, do hard mount setups, put [the BURANO] on a Flowcine Black Arm and speed rail, rig it off the back of the truck to do some road stuff, and then run handheld and then do interior mounts," Seaverns said. "We covered all of the different angles that you would typically go shoot with a 30+ person crew with three people."

While the team had some lighting for the interview, everything else was shot with natural light, often during golden hour or blue hour. These low-light scenarios were pushed even further, as Seaverns had to capture the intense light of the KC Platform One™ Roof Rack.

"We're not lighting the other scenes. It's all natural light, so we're shooting only in the best light," Seaverns added. "And [KC HiLites] is a lighting company, so we also want to shoot in the dark to show the lights working. That's where latitude gets real crazy."

"It's basically black outside. I want to see the spread of the lights coming off this truck, but also, I want to see the mountain. Every inch of latitude you could ever ask for is within that shot."

For a shoot like this, which features super bright lights as the product, Swanstrom had to consider how to balance the exposure. Between the bright lights and the dim background of blue hour, the dynamic range posed a challenging creative hurdle for the BURANO. 

“But the BURANO could handle that,” Swanstrom said. “We used ISO 3200 for the extra highlight roll off and it just perform so brilliantly. I can actually see everything.”

"As long as we didn’t shoot straight into these lights and we've got at least some ambiance from post-sunset it was unbelievable what we were getting just in the shadow detail of the Land Cruiser,” Swanstrom continued. “We were able to retain a nice level of light from the main product while still being able to see the full landscape we were filming in, which blew my mind.”

Even in such difficult lighting scenarios, the BURANO captured all the detail the project needed without forcing Swanstrom to utilize filmmaking techniques he’d used on car commercials even a few years ago. From the distant mountains barely illuminated by the sun, to the bright light bar atop Kowitz's Land Cruiser, the BURANO provided the color and subtle lighting that Seaverns and Swanstrom saw on the day.

"It was really fun to get back into the color bay when we're done editing and go,' Okay, it's all there,'" Seaverns said. "I could see the mountain, you could see the lights, nothing's blown out, and the colors are amazing."

The projects that Seaverns usually shoots are all about speed. From cars to golf swings, his subjects move fast. But Designing Adventure was different as the overlanding world most often moves at a snail's pace. Capturing these slow and methodical climbs over dunes and rocky terrain leaves no room for covering things up with the blur of speed.

"I think one of the coolest parts about this project is that overlanding is not fast," Seaverns said. "Everything else we shoot typically is translating speed, so if you're shooting slow, you better look pretty. Because the truck doesn't move very fast…it needs to look pretty to allow the viewer to marinate in the image rather than be convinced that it's the wildest thing you've ever seen."

It was in these moments that Seaverns and his team discovered how the BURANO could support them in both creative and technical ways. They found that they could trust the camera to handle the dangers of the adventure realm and push it further to capture more with less. 

“The most difficult thing to shoot on this project was any of the nighttime stuff,” Swanstrom said. “Like, the product is the brightest lights I've ever seen on a car. And I have a light. I don't think we would've been able to do (this project) without a camera that's so sensitive in low light and has such a nice highlight roll off.”

"[The BURANO] was built to operate in a simple, small form factor, but at a very high level," Seaverns added. "When you're out in the mountains and you're 45 minutes from a paved road, the camera can't break, the camera can't suffer from getting dusty and get fudgy and start to get finicky." 

"We've had [cameras] get wet. We've had them crazy dirty. We've had them in really extreme temperatures, both high and low. We were going to plug all this stuff in, and then we're going to pull it off and throw it on a gimbal attached to a black arm in the desert, and it's all going to connect and it's all going to work."

No matter what Seaverns and his team threw at the camera, it only gave back stunning imagery. He could rely on the tool when he needed it most — in the untamed wilderness. 

“The more I use [the BURANO], the more comfortable I am pushing it,” Swanstrom said. “I’m blown away with how how far we can push even the X-OCN LT codec.”

"Knowing that the [BURANO] was robust and going to be able to capture the latitude," Seaverns said. "There was a willingness to trust…and push the camera as far as we could."

Filmmaker Interview: Bryant Swanstrom - Designing Adventures and Beyond

With the KC Platform One™ Roof Rack product video and the short documentary version now released, Seaverns awaits for word from the International Motor Film Awards.

Until then, he is onto his next project, either solo or with a small crew, but the Sony BURANO at his side. 

To learn more about the Sony BURANO and the other cameras in the Sony Cinema Line, visit our camera comparison page.