Doc Mode 3 - The Love of Cars

The essayistic mode of documentary is a mode in which filmmakers create a piece that is both informational and personally relevant to the creators. Essayistic documentaries typically cover a subject that is important to the maker, and allows for the creator to self-reflect on the subject they are covering and its impact on their lives. In this essayistic-mode mini documentary, we decided to talk about cars. When making this documentary, we wanted to focus more on why cars were so important to us rather than a simple “cars are cool” documentary. Cars are more than machines or transportation, they’re stories, emotions, and connections. In this doc, we write a love letter to the world of automobiles, capturing both our passion and the world’s passion for cars and racing. At its core, this subject is deeply personal for both of us. It’s about the thrill of a perfect downshift, the long and endearing process of tuning, and the friendships made and communities united along the way. We aim to capture our personal journeys–how cars have shaped our lives and given us a sense of belonging and purpose–as well as the journey made by the automobile industry as a whole that brought us to where we are today.

For our narration we chose to focus on Graham’s connection to the world of cars, and create a visual experience that added to the story the narrator tells. We aim to establish a comfortable and cozy style of video, with appropriate B-roll flashing by as a calm voiceover narrator guides you through the story. Footage includes a mix of still vehicle b-roll and rolling shots both of road and race cars. The footage for this documentary was sourced from three years of track days and private video shoots Evan has done.  The audio is solely narration for the first half of the documentary, with audio of the cars starting with the onboard shot. We tried to keep the road car sections and race car sections somewhat separate, but aimed to not cut them off too much from each other since the communities themselves are pretty interwoven. Shots were chosen based on what the narration was talking about, with the best example of this being archival racing footage of Graham’s father. We also tried to establish a flow that’s appealing to the viewer, choosing shots that aren’t super harsh cuts from one another to transition into one another.