It’s been about a month since Falken Tire grabbed the 2nd spot on the podium in the ALMS at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca and there’s almost another month to go before the America Le Mans Northeast Grand Prix at Lime Rock. So, any new news, info or videos are greatly welcome. That’s why we were excited to see a new video from Falken Tire come across our news feed yesterday. The title, “Laguna Seca Lap with Wolf Henzler”. The info on the video itself says, “Join Falken Team Driver / Porsche Factory driver Wolf Henzler as he completes a lap around the famed Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.” We assumed, shame on us, this would be a driver’s perspective lap of the circuit. That’s not quite what we got.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the video (we love the radio chatter), it’s just that we can’t figure out why it is so cut up? It’s not just Falken Tire that’s doing this. Lately, other than the guys at DRIVE, most of the racing videos we’re seeing are chopped up, jumping from one view to the next. All we really want to see is what it’s like to drive that Porsche 911. Either that, or tell us a story! In fact, one of my all time favorite ALMS videos is a Falken Tire production that tells the story of their win at Baltimore in 2012.
Maybe, given the amount of high quality production coming out of new media organizations like DRIVE (and other up and coming YouTube channels) our expectations have changed? This post isn’t meant to bash Falken Tire and we apologize in advance if it comes off that way! We’re huge fans of the team and the drivers. We just want to see the racer’s perspective and not get a headache from videos jumping all over the place.
What about you?
What’s your preference when it comes to racing videos? Do you want to see laps from the driver’s perspective? Stories like the “Road to Victory” video above? Or, are you fine with the choppy, cut-up editing that seems to becoming the norm for promotional videos?
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Interview with Wolf Henzler
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View Comments (3)
All I want to see is an ENTIRE lap with the less chatter the better!! If they can add that same lap again with a driver's commentary as a follow-up, I'm good with that, too. :-)
The choppy, jittery hand held camera views seemed most popular in feature movies and TV reality shows three or four years ago. Once the "new" wore off most videos returned to the steady cam to better relate the story. Camera work should never be noticed. Only after one has viewed a video or movie and absorbed the entirety of it should the camera work be considered as part of the total experience. Somewhere the newer generation of video photographers must still prescribe to the jerky jerky school of shooting. You are capturing the action, not creating it.
As a former TV Producer for SpeedVision (before Fox bought it and changed to Speed Channel) AND a motorsports enthusiast, I found the problem with this style of editing usually is with the Producer or Editor who is not a motorsports fan. As Jim says, these non-fans who edit or produce the content sometimes believe they need to create the action since they might think it's "boring". I've worked with very many talented people in TV who simply are not fans of motorsport, and they think they have to emulate a music video style to engage the viewer. This is wrong since the viewer of the Falken video will probably be a fan of motorsports and we know that we like to hear the sounds of the car, (not a music soundtrack), we like a well-placed in-car camera and would want to see a full lap of that as opposed to cutting-away constantly, etc. I could go on like this for a while, but you get the idea. It's finally compounded by the fact that a company like Falken will usually employ an ad agency to create this content and again, many times these executives are not motorsports fans....
I miss that job at SpeedVision come to think of it....
ES