World RX releases short film “Wildcards” - video

The FIA World Rallycross Championship presented by Monster Energy has released a short film produced by an independent videographer which follows the progress of Lydden Hill’s wildcard entries Tanner Foust, Andrew Jordan plus Monster Energy World RX Team’s, Liam Doran.

We spoke to Josh – the man behind the camera – to find out more…

Hi Josh, what was the inspiration behind your movie? “Motor racing inherently carries a narrative so I just had to be at Lydden Hill: what you see in this film is the event through my eyes. A few things were critical to communicate such as the passion from the fans, the drivers and the noise of the launch control. Then I needed to capture everything in the best way I could. Motorsport is an event and it should be shot like that. TV coverage is great for fans to get updates on results but it's easy to detract from the feeling of the sport. I wanted to deliver to the fans the real feel of the sport, I needed to get under the skin and hopefully that’s portrayed in the movie.”

How was the movie shot? “I shot this piece by myself with a single camera and an onboard camera, whilst there are advantages to this on a live event weekend there are also a lot of disadvantages. On a normal shoot, I’ll typically set up a shot and call action but you can't do that with a live race. You need to be everywhere at once and know exactly what's going on all the time so it's critical to have a plan before the weekend. I loved the challenge of World RX though – this is one of the best parts of the job for me, not quite knowing how it's going to pan out but having the confidence to go with what's happening in front of you.

“The World RX team were kind enough to introduce me to the racing teams that I would be filming with so that I could outline my plans which made life a lot easier. The teams were amazing, really welcoming and hospitable despite the language barrier with some of the mechanics. I also met some guys that came over from Portugal after they attended the first round, to see fans coming from all over is awesome and shows people are really getting behind the sport.”

What was the edit time? “It took about 36 hours… I think. I didn't sleep much. The biggest task was going through the volume of footage, normally I'm very careful not to overshoot as it impacts the editing time but on this occasion it was critical to get everything that I needed given some of my limitations. So I went a bit overboard with the filming! I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted it to be before I started cutting but it's important for me to not have a completely solid plan as I get inspired when I see certain shots. Hopefully I end up making better films as a result.”

Finally, can you talk us through your music choice? “The opening for me was straightforward, it needed to build and nothing does that quite like strings. I wanted it to be cinematic, hopefully something that people that aren't into motorsport can understand. I was still able to inject a bit of my personality in with a bit of hip hop for the event montage. It's really difficult to find music that won't get a record company knocking at your door so it's one of the most time consuming parts of the edit trying to find music that fits!”

FIA World Rallycross