How did you spend your weekend?

I spent most of Saturday shooting commercial for an old friend of mine. Mark Racop makes the best replica’s of the 1960′s Batmobile you will ever likely see. It’s his day job. The original car was a modified 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car. The modifications were done by George Barris, the King of Custom Cars. Mark fell in love with the car when he first saw it… during the original run of the Batman TV series… he was three years old at the time, but he knew he wanted one of those cars.

I met Mark in high-school, we hung out and started making movies together.  One day we were looking at the wreckage of his mother’s 1974 Monte Carlo (really good story in itself), and he started drawing up plans to convert it into … a Bat Replica. That Monte was too badly twisted in the wreck… (yes I was driving)… so he found a 1975 Monte Carlo to work with instead. We started the long work of converting it in the spring of 1983. Both Mark and I met our wives while building that car. Chicks love the car.

Fast forward about 20 years… Mark is still in love with that car…(and his wife too). He goes to the trouble and expense to rework the Monte Carlo based car we built in the 80′s, with help from our friend Bill Mollencupp,

This really gets Mark thinking… He acquires a full scale mock-up of the original Lincoln Futura (proof you can buy anything on ebay). He repairs the body, pulls molds  and replicates all of the modifications George Barris did to the Futura to create the TV show Batmobile.  Mark and his partner Jeff Sandburg went into business creating these beautiful cars. FiberGlass Freaks is Located in Logansport Indiana.

Mark Racop is also the founder of MagicHouse Productions. A production company that has shot several feature films and helped produce many short

films, industrial videos and music videos. Having a commercial to shoot and already having a film crew on hand it seemed the natural thing to do. Mark drew up the shot list, we packed up the equipment, fired up the engines on two amazing cars, and headed for the highway… after calling the local law enforcement agencies to let them know what we were up to… they’ve gotten to know us pretty well. They used to call anytime something strange was happening in the area, just to make sure we were not shooting another film.

A few years ago a couple we knew lost their home when the state decided to build a bypass through it… (hitchhikers reference intentional)… So it seemed like

this stretch of highway owed us one.  The Hoosier Heartland Corridor goes from Logansport to Ft. Wayne. the part that we used, doesn’t get a lot of traffic… perfect for what we needed to do Saturday.

It’s not normal to have two of these cars completed at the same time. It literally just turned out that way. That’s when Mark decided it was time to shoot some footage.

Our camera opps  were Greg Fauvergue and Eric Ridge.

Eric has some of the coolest toys… and the best ones he built himself.  Case in point. His camera crane… it’s too cool to be called a jib. It extends about 25 feet into the air and the head is remote controlled.

It’s always a blast working with the MagicHouse crew. I’ve know all of these people for longer than most of us would like to admit. Doing what you love to do, with good friends can hardly be called work.

I spent most of the day as a traffic jam creator. I would drive a few tenths of a mile back from the cars and camera truck and hold back the other traffic.  I’m sure I was called some very unpleasant things by those other

drivers… It wouldn’t be the first time, I’m sure.

We started shooting at about 9:00am and didn’t wrap until about 5:00pm. Afterwards Mark treated the crew to Chinese at China Lane. yum!

At the end of the day the our ‘Stars’ had an opportunity to pose original Monte Carlo replica.

Photos by Chuck Budreau & Eric Ridge

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Posted by admin on October 6th, 2008 :: Filed under Film Shoots
Tags :: Batmobile, Eric Ridge, Fiberglass freaks, Greg Fauvergue, Mark Racop
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