A Day in the Life of Dax Martinez-Vargas

06.30: The sky is beautiful this morning in Kiev as we embark on this one day shoot for Gonzo snacks via Carpathian Mineral Water. As I look over the shooting schedule, I pull up a track to get me in the zone. Neiked’s Sexual. Skip. Hans Zimmer. Volume up. Ready! 

07.30: Stuntman Eric and I discuss knocking out the first stunt. He nails it first time. Eric really is as much as a G as his costume states (as you’ll see in the following photos).

09.30: We have three takes to get the next stunt right, allowing time to reset Eric’s landing pad several floors below…

Nailed it on the last go! The pressure didn’t seem to get to him - he looked so relaxed he was horizontal.

11.00: Eric puts his body on the (zip) line again – excuse the pun - and we get the shot. It requires a bit of patience to get the camera work just right due to the tricky controller to head movement. But we get there, with some lovely drone footage of the scene too.

13.00: DP Nikita sits in his homemade car seat rig to get a tracking profile running shot of our hero as he runs along a tin roof. In the nick of time, this homemade rescue rig does the job. I hope he’s patented this. Might request this on future shoots!

15.30: How nice! Passing rain brings a rainbow as we wrap our roof shooting. But where’s the pot of gold? Our stuntman Eric dives off the roof in hot pursuit.

16.00: No pot of gold, instead we find an alleyway primed for a mugging, where we tie our story up! Two hard looking dudes are mugging a guy who looks somewhat like Adrian Brody, coincidental because I used a picture of a pitiful Adrian Brody for the victim in my treatment – that’s a first!

Our final shot sees superhero Gonzo the cat swagger off, after stepping in to feed the victim some product (crisps), only to leave him at the mugger’s mercy once again. He can help with hunger, but he can’t combat crime.

18.00: It was tough to watch. “There was something in my eye”, but thankfully no one could see.

19.00: On the left we have Grits, our first AD, who not only manages to schedule back in a zip shot we run over earlier in the schedule (with seconds of daylight to spare), but later straps himself into the hero costume when the second stuntman is pooped. What an AD! 

20.00: A happy team, agency and client. A long, fun day. We drive back into the Ukrainian sunset (don’t let the photo fool you) thinking about high octane stunts, an action hero-cat named Gonzo, a super ‘on it’ crew and overall positive shoot vibes. Go Kiev! In the words of another leather-clad action hero: ‘I’ll be back’.