Original Redline Hot Wheels Racing, Cacklefest and Car Show
I have been working on collecting the first series of original “played with” Redline Hot Wheels known as “The Sweet 16”. Just as I completed the collection by flipping some garage finds, Billy turned me on to 3DBotmaker diecast racing channel on YouTube.
Inspired by the incredible tracks, witty and entertaining commentary, and broadcast quality production. I was hooked. I started thinking about building a track. I have pretty much everything I need, a big box full of orange Hot Wheels track, and a Big-O Sizzlers track. I should be able to build a decent track.
Then I started thinking about the scripting. The cars will need a personality. So I just free-jammed it looking at the car and using a common first name and the last name would be an item you’d use in the garage. Hammer, Driver, Welder, etc. You get the drift.
16 is the perfect number for a drag race style series. Heat One with 8 races, the winners go on to Heat Two with 4 races, and then the Semi-Final with 2 races and the final. I decided to go with best 2 out of three runs down the track to get more racing action.
Next was staging and filming. We tried a couple different versions of the track. One weekend in the garage we set up a 4 legged S-curve downhill, with a Loop-D-Loop drag strip set up after. Then another weekend we set it up again in the back patio. This way we can keep it up for several days, test different lighting and such.
For this video, I wanted to give it a bit more personality. I created several personalities for the announcers, field reporter and Jimmy Highway up in the copter. Next I staged a car show underneath the starting line, a cacklefest inside turn one, the pits inside turn 2 and the track services trucks and ambulance inside turn three.
We setup the three GoPro’s two DSLR cameras, the Canon video camera and my iPhone to capture the action. Next was lighting. Since we are doing this in the middle of the day, we’d have to close the garage door and set up our three softboxes and some spot lighting here and there.
Billy was the starter as I held the iPhone to follow the cars down the track.
The editing was another fun aspect. I decided to break the video into two parts with the first heat and cacklefest in Part One. We were quite surprised on some of the racing action. Cars flying into each other, spinning around, and speeding down the track. Then we head over to Turn One for the Cacklefest reported by Rhonda Roadway.
Part Two features Heat Two racing, then we visit with Rhonda Roadway down at the car show before going back for the Semi-Final and Final races.