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!!!