We shot a couple episodes last week in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and it was really quite an experience. We flew in a day early to scope out the event we were going to shoot and get a feel for it before our camera man was to arrive the following day. Turns out, it was a good thing we did.

The event was the Gran Feria de Autos Antiguos; loosely translated, the Grand Festival of Old Cars. It’s held at an exhibition center in San Juan, and it’s the biggest car show in the Caribbean, boosting over 2,000 cars. When we got there tho, we found that the vast majority of these cars were under large tents; row after row of them. It was like a huge tent city.

The tents are there because the sun can really roast you in San Juan, and it could just as easily be pouring down rain at any time too. It was actually pretty nice for spectators, but it was clearly going to present some challenges for shooting.

There was definitely a festival atmosphere there. It was like somebody threw a huge party and a car show broke out. The place was packed and there was all sorts of stuff going on. There was even a roving band of musicians playing high-energy island music complete with multiple drums and horn section. These guys were really working up a sweat!

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Wow! A blog. Imagine that. But then, why not? After all, the new season is about to launch on SPEED, we’ve got a cool new website, and I’m zeroing in on my shooting schedule for 2009. There’s a lot to talk about, or rather, blog about. So here it is; my inaugural blog!

This is the 14th year on TV for MCC, but it is the first one that has been shot in High Definition. The cars look spectacular in HD, although I probably look better in standard def. The lead-off episode premieres on Feb 22, and it’s a good one for HD. It was shot last spring in Lehi, Utah at the UVSC car show. The show is held at a facility called Thanksgiving Point, and it is about as nice a setting as you could imagine.

The cars are all on grass, and the whole area is rimmed by snow capped mountains. The weather was perfect that day too. In fact, the biggest problem I had at that event was deciding what five cars to feature since there were just so many interesting and high quality cars in attendance.

We did manage tho, and I think the result is one of the best looking episodes we’ve ever done. We’ve only finished editing about four of this year’s 26 episodes so far, and they all look really good. Initially, I wasn’t all that thrilled about going to HD because of the increased cost, but I have to admit, it does look awesome!

As you can see, we have also done a radical redesign on the website. We’re a TV show, but our old site really had very little video on it. However, web technology has come a long way in the last couple years and we’re now able to offer fairly high quality video without ridiculous download times.

You’ll be able to watch clips of the new episodes, entire Eastwood Garage segments, and even some behind-the-scenes stuff. I’ll probably do an occasional video blog too. Bottom line, there’s going to be a lot more going on at the MCC website than ever before and I encourage you to stop by often.

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