Shooting the Hankook MT2 Like a Commercial

Hankook brought me on to capture the launch of their new MT2 mud-terrain tire, and from the first conversation I had one goal in mind: this should not look like event coverage. It should look like a commercial. A tire is a hard product to make exciting on its own — so the job was to build the excitement around it, through the trucks, the terrain, and the way the camera moves.

Over two days we ran a fleet of vehicles — Ford F-150s, GMC Canyons, Toyota Tacomas, and SUVs like the Acadia and Yukon — through real backcountry mud and trail. My job as DP was to turn a slow, careful drive through a bog into something that feels fast, dynamic, and cinematic.

From the Delta to the Mud

Each day started downtown at the Delta hotel, where the group gathered before we convoyed out to McLean Creek near Bragg Creek — a public land-use area west of Calgary with exactly the kind of terrain a mud tire is built for. By the time the convoy rolled onto the trails, the trucks were already caked in dirt, which is the best thing that can happen on a shoot like this. Clean trucks don't sell mud tires.

Shooting It Like a Commercial, Not an Event

The difference between event footage and a commercial is intention. Event footage documents what happened; a commercial is built, shot by shot, to make you feel something about the product. So instead of standing back and covering the day, I worked a tight shot list — the trucks attacking the same mud section over and over, the tires biting in, the spray coming off the tread — and treated every pass like a hero shot.

Tire POV: Rigging the DJI Action 6

The shot that sells a mud tire is the one you can't get any other way — down at the tread, in the mud, watching it claw through. I rigged a DJI Action 6 right at the wheels to grab that tire-level POV as the trucks pushed through the bog, then shot all the hero angles on my Canon C500 MKII. The action camera gives you the visceral, in-the-dirt perspective; the cinema camera gives you the polish. Together they cut into something that feels like a real ad.

The Look: Motion Blur Meets Slow Motion

Here's the trick to making a tire test feel fast: the trucks were often crawling through the slow, technical mud sections — but you'd never know it. On the action passes I dropped the shutter to let the motion blur streak across frame, so even a slow-moving truck reads as kinetic. Then I flipped the other way and shot the tire and mud-spray details at 120fps, stretching a half-second of grip into a slow, weighty, cinematic moment. That contrast — blurred speed against crisp slow motion — is what gives the recap its energy.

Driven by Richard Warrington

None of the action happens safely without the right person leading it. Hankook brought on Richard Warrington, a professional driver and off-road trainer, to guide the convoy and coach everyone through the terrain as they put the new tires to work. Having a pro setting the pace meant I could position the camera exactly where the shot needed it, knowing the driving would be precise and repeatable take after take. You can follow Richard on Instagram at @richardwarrington.

By day two we'd dialed the whole thing in — the convoy, the mud sections, the camera positions — and the footage just kept getting better. The result is a piece that does what it set out to do: make a mud-terrain tire look like the star of a commercial.