The Home Stretch

I have the first cut done!!!

This cut doesn’t include the Narration and the sound-mix isn’t quite completed nor is the color correction & grading. But this cut does help me get finalize the story and gives me a really good sense as to how well it flows.

I watched the cut last night and really liked the stories & people that I followed at this event. It’s shaping up to be one of my favorite episodes and which is good; because I was very nervous going into this event. More on that in a bit.

The next phase will be the script. I’ve talked about this in the past, and I still don’t know if my approach is widely used or even accepted. The edit is very close to where it will be come the final release and I don’t have a script yet. I haven’t even started it yet. While I edit, I basically visualize what the talking points will be and I have a good sense of how much time it will take to get my point across.

The script usually takes a week to write and sometimes it ends up in some changes to the edit, but I should be in a position to record the Narration mid-May. I haven’t set a release date but I believe that the week of May 27th will be when this one drops.

The Voice

Charlie was the perfect voice for the Silver State II movie. He’s exactly what I wanted for that episode; hence the change. IFMAR is a different type of event though. It’s less of a party and much more serious; Silver State was one of the most laid-back races I’ve ever gone to since I began filming “Come Drive With Us” in 2014. Not that there wasn’t fun being had in Perth, but it’s just different type of Movie. IFMAR events are much more serious; and the emotions and drama run a lot higher at an IFMAR event vs. a race like Silver State.

I’m happy to announce that my good friend Mike Garrison will be voicing this episode.

What’s next?

I currently have 3 productions queued up. JBRL, DNC II, an RC Cribs & the Ice Breaker. There is one small issue; well to me it’s a significant one.

I chase perfection. I’m probably my own worst critic. For JBRL, I decided to shoot 3 seperate JBRL events: Palm Desert, Thunder Alley & Revelation. The theme I was going with wsa “The Good. The Bad. The Ugly”. This is no small undertaking especially for a one-man crew. The first shoot at Palm Desert (The Bad) went quite well. There was lots of emotion (Wickham); the race was exciting, and I was really happy with the content.

The next shoot, which was absolutely critical to the production was at Thunder Alley (The Good). The weather was great; the characters at this event were on point, there was just one issue. My dad passed away just a few days prior to this event. I was going to cancel the shoot, but because it was a critical piece to the JBRL story; I thought I would be fine.

I was not.

Filming an episode of CDWU requires me to be extremely focused. I have to ensure that I’m following my stories effectively, and I wasn’t able to do this. I didn’t successfully capture the stories of this event. While my focus was better at Revelation (The Ugly) for the final race in the episode, I just didn’t really capture either of these events to the level of perfection that I feel I needed to.

At this point, I’m not convinced that the JBRL content is up to my standards to be released as part of the “Come Drive With Us” series. This is very disappointing to me as I was really excited about this episode. But with what I view as only 1 successful shoot it might be difficult to tell this story. I will be looking at the content after the IFMAR movie is done, but I’m just not totally convinced that there is a compelling story to tell here. It has nothing at all to do with Jimmy or his series; this is purely on me.

Or maybe I’m just over-reacting and the content is great; but I wanted to be transparent as my next episode may end up being DNC II.

I hope to see many of you at the Silver State Race next week (especially Mark Stanta Maria)! I won’t be filming (I don’t do re-runs); I will be racing!!!

Well it’s been an eventful couple weeks. I’m actually writing this while at yet another race! This time, I’m not filming…well…that’s a lie…I always film something when I’m at an R/C Car Race. Anyways, I am more participant than filmmaker at this one. As far as filming goes, I will be shooting what is affectionately referred to as “B-Roll”. This is supplementary footage that I will use at some point. I just don’t know what that point is. It will most likely go into the intro of the Brazil Worlds movie (If I decide to go). I got some really great footage this weekend, but nothing beats the scene of Britani Toszer and her swear jar. She made over $160 in just 3 days! I had to make more than a few contributions this weekend 🙁

I need to stop getting so fired up at these races!!!

The race that I am at is the 2019 Big-Barn Race in Chilliwack, British Columbia. This was my first time on the track with my new XRAY Nitro & Electric Buggy. Seriously though…XRAY, why would you put Blue air-filter oil in an eBuggy kit??? All my screws fell out!!!!!

I digress.

Both buggies broke-in quickly and were instantly competitive. Which was a good thing because the competition was very stiff here. I struggled with squid drivers in 40+ & in eBuggy and ended up 8th over-all in 40+ (should have been 7th but some guy ran out of talent and hacked me out). The quality of drivers in the open class was far better, but because of some costly mistakes in the B-Main I missed the bump by 1 position and ended up 19th in the class. I also struggled with traffic in eBuggy and finished in 30th or so. The race was a blast, but the lack of sportsmanship was pretty extreme. This was my first indoor Nitro race in at least 15 years; there was a lot to learn about tires & saucing, but I’m pretty happy with my results. As many tires as I packed, I didn’t bring any Pro-Line Slidelock’s and they ended up being the tire to have. I had to borrow some…but they were mounted onto white wheels 🙁

This year I will be doing a lot of indoor racing. I’ll be attending Silver State as well as the Southern Nationals. Speaking of Indoor races, I just got back from one that was real decent…

The Ice Breaker

First off, I want to give a HUGE shout out to Peter Husser & Indy RC World 2.0. They treated me awesome…thank you so much for everything you helped me with ranging from feeding me to turning off the music in the pits (YouTube’s fault)! This event was pretty darn good; the track was fun and had a nice flow to it; I did a few laps with Adam Drake’s eBuggy. Incidentally, it took Mark Santa Maria 2 days to beat my hero lap from my 5 minute practice session. Shit. He is going to be on a mission at Silver State.

The Venue was really good; the air quality was amazing for a small indoor venue; a testament to the ventilation system. The organization was top-notch and they ran a smooth racing program. I was impressed by everything. The vibe at Ice Breaker was very similar to SoNats; laid back and not a lot of pressure. The all night practice was also a big hit. This is definitely a race to put onto your bucket lists. Rumors are that this is the last Ice Breaker held at Indy RC; they want to move this race to a larger venue. Personally, I think this would be a mistake. I loved the ambiance at IRCW; sure it’s small, but that just puts everyone closer together and makes us feel more like good friends instead of strangers. I would maybe suggest just capping the entries to something in the 350 range instead of moving the Ice Breaker to an arena? Plus, there are so many arena events already… just my thoughts; the event was a ton of fun as is.

The Calcutta

I’m not going to explain in detail what this is; this has been done already. If you need to know what it is before continuing you can just google it; but this was the first time I’ve seen this at an RC race. For me as the producer of a doc the Calcutta was awesome. It injected a ton of fun into the production and makes for some really good (positive) drama. Especially
Maher Ouda, who put 2,000 cash bucks on Adam Drake Winning Truggy. The only thing more exciting than the actual bidding war was when I was standing 8 feet away from Maher (just out of punching/strangulation range) when Adam broke in the closing minutes of the Truggy final. Classic scene of anguish! Adversely, Mark Santa Maria of “On the Tone” fame made out pretty good. He had formed a bidding posse end they won the bids for Joe Bornhorst & Jared Tebo. Joe went for the bargain basement price of $600; both Joe would win the Truggy main and Jared, after having technical issues in the Truggy main, would go on to win the Buggy class. Each member of Mark’s group walked away with around $1,000!

As an enthusiast of R/C I’m not sold on Gambling at RC races. Sure it’s exciting, but is it a precedent that we want to set? In the end, it was seemed to be a big draw; so if that’s what it takes to make our sport exciting so be it. I’ll guess I can support it.

Lots and lots of Editing…

After DNC & the Ice Breaker my backlog is significant at this point; but I think this is the release schedule that I’m aiming for:

Come Drive With Us – Perth Worlds: May
Come Drive With Us – JBRL (Pending)
Come Drive With Us – DNC II: August
Come Drive With Us – The Ice Breaker: October

IFMAR Edit

I haven’t been keeping up with this blog quite as much as I’m very focused on the Perth edit right now.

Even without any narration, the cut is flowing really well which is always a good sign as my last two nitro worlds movies had this same trait. I’ve got 4 of the 6 rounds of Qualifying fully edited and the script for those sections is taking form quickly. The final day of qualifying is always the hardest because I need to ensure that I setup the story lines for the semi’s & the final properly. Also, one of the story lines for round 5 is pretty complex. Adam Drake extremely candid interview at DNC about Ryan Maifield’s REDS/OS deal and I’m trying to decide if I should put this interview in the Perth movie or save it for DNC II. It’s also a delicate topic and it’s taking a bit of time to do it right.

I’m really loving the content in this one, and I had quite a few different drivers frequenting the podium throughout qualifying so it one of the most diverse groups of featured drivers I’ve had in a CDWU episode yet.

I’m starting to get a bit worried though; Warner Chapelle hasn’t given me license for the music that I want to use as the title song. I’ve gotten really attached to the song and don’t want to have to replace it. Hopefully it works out! My plan is to release this episode in May; I have Silver State and a Conference with the Day-Job but I’ve made some great head ways on it in April.

Later on this week or possibly early next week I’ll be doing a short Silver State teaser for Joey so stay tuned…