Thursday, May 20, 2010

1908 Greatest Auto Race: In the beginning...




The Greatest Auto Race on Earth took place in 1908. Today, it's hard to even imagine what these men went through as they travelled from New York, across the USA, across Japan, Mother Russia, Germany, and on to Paris. The film The Greatest Auto Race on Earth is a documentary we produced to advance the story and tell this fantastic adventure story to a new audience. www.thegreatestautorace.com

We're going to try to let you know how the film was made. One of the interesting details is in the construction of the Thomas Flyer and German Protos replica cars. Yes, we built exact full scale running replicas of the cars. If you look at the photo closely, you'll notice that the brakes are not period but modern GM disc brakes. This was, of course, for safety. The challenge was to mount hand-made (by Dale Anderson at Anderprop) wooden artillery wheels to the discs. This was ingenously designed out of foam core, then a CAD drawing, and then made out of steel using a computer assisted cutting system. So, we have a safe car ... but they are not period and some of the brass era enthusiasts would see that; as a result, through careful editing, Computer Graphics by Rat Creek, and colour correction the disc brakes never appear in the film. The cover of the DVD case had the discs Photoshopped to appear as old school riveted drums.

But, why don't we go back to the very beginning ... January 2000.









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