The Claw’s First Commercial

Words Darren Berrecloth

Photos Todd Barber

Date Oct 18, 2009

I’m here in Utah after the first day of shooting for the Nissan tv commercial – and man what a day.
When I originally heard about the commercial that nissan wanted to film I never thought I would actually get the job – but here I am on the set of an official tv shoot.

The basic story line of the shoot is, I am flying around in a helicopter looking for a epic line in the Utah desert then we decide I can’t land on the top of the line so I get out of the heli and jump into the nissan Xtrail and drive to it and then I shred the line then jump back into the Xtrail and drive away. Pretty cool eh?

berrecloth tv commercial utah nissan helicopter

Freeride Entertainment has paired up with some of Hollywood’s best in order to pull this off. I have brought my bud Cam McCaul out to do some POV riding and he is the backup guy in case I get hurt.

We shot all day yesterday which was pretty crazy, watching how much of a cluster it is filming a shoot like this. There are over 30 crew on this shoot. That’s a lot more than what I am used to when I make bike movies. It’s usually two filmers and one photographer so it’s pretty overwhelming. We filmed me landing in the heli, then jumping out of it and getting me into the Xtrail. After that the professional driver took over and did all of the ralying shots through the desert with the heli chasing it.

Day 2 of the shoot was quite an interesting one. We woke up in the Utah desert and quickly realized the weather was not in our favour. It was blowing 30 mph and a deadly thunderstorm was headed our way, so the camera crew got stuck in a rain storm in the sand dunes. Good times I tell ya when the rain comes and the wind is blowing in a sand dune.

The Freeride crew pulled it together to get some sick shots of the car catching air 5 feet off the deck and plowing into the sand upon landing. Then after the car stuff was done the helicopter landed in our front yard of where we were staying and the plan was to go ride the big mountain line that I had scoped and built a few days earlier. The problem was that it rained all day and we were not quite sure if it was too wet to ride the line. Cam and I jumped in the heli for a quick recon and decided that the dirt was too wet to ride.

Day 3 started at the break of dawn with a little breaky at our favorite spot. Then we rolled into the desert to get a some shots of me flipping my dh bike – which I had never done before. To make it even harder on myself it was on a hip.

That went really well and we got some amazing slow motion flip shots. which led us up to doing some ground camera angles of my big mountain ine which was rad cause I was super excited to ride it.

So McCaul and I hiked up and rode the middle section together since he was helmet camming me. We got some good shots and then it was time for me to ride the whole line top to bottom. It was a little bit windy but i dropped in nonetheless and rode the line exactly how I wanted to.

The line started at the very top of a mesa with a techy drop with a short landing which ran onto an exposed knife ridge that had a few small steps. Then it rolled out to a diving board that I sent it off and screamed down the rest of the ridge into 2 bigger drops at the bottom. And that was the end of day three.

Day 4 we rolled up out of bed and got into the heli. Tom, our pilot, let me hang out the side of the heli (strapped in) while I held onto my bike and he shuttled me up to the top.

The first shot with the heli was the hero shot where they circled around the top of the mountain with me standing on top of it with my bike, After that was done Big D waved his hand out the side of the heli and it was on.

With the chopper blades spinning at my back and thousands of dollars worth of film rolling the pressure was on and I shredded the crap out of the line 4 times, using the heli for a shuttle. Pretty cool I thought.