News from Overdrive Towers : The Producer's Blog

Hello visitors to www.overdrive-uk.com - It's your gallant (hah!) Producer here...

It's been ages since I wrote something, so here goes. I thought it might be nice to bring you lovely people up to speed with what's been going on in "Overdrive Towers". Actually that's a bit misleading as we don't actually have any towers at the moment.

Rosie interviews the very enthusiastic Rhodri Jenkins

You'll have seen our coverage from the Autosport Show. This year we filmed on two days and we've already got plans for next year's event. Oh yes, we'll be back. And we'll probably badger Andy Noble from Caterham for another interview (He loves us, really!)

Other highlights from Autosport have been the artist Ian Cook who certainly provided us with a unique interview. I don't think we've ever interviewed an artist before! We also for the first time interviewed a bear on Ginetta's stand.

What you haven't seen yet due to a few issues with internet connections and a few other things is the footage filmed at the WyeDean Rally and also the first round of the British Autotest Championship. The problems are now sorted so hopefully the Autotest video will be online shortly.

Well, we've been really busy, but not on making our own programme! Firstly we delivered a documentary on the opening rounds of the Welsh Sports And Saloon Car Championship after being commissioned by the Welsh Racing Drivers Association to go and film for them. The resulting film has been made into a DVD and distributed throughout the Drivers and Marshals who attended the event, one of whom has since told me that he is looking forward to playing it repeatedly and boring his family with it...

The Pembrey shoot was the first thing for our Overdrive Filming Services (we're now known as "Team Overdrive Productions") and we're hoping to expand this business and will be pleased to talk to you about creating video or even full blown TV programmes related (or not, we're not picky) to the Automotive and Motorsport Industries.

Rosie and BTCC driver, Tom Onslow-Cole.

Although we're not doing complete programmes this year, we're making smaller features instead. The first one this year took place at Bedford Autodrome at the invitation of the E-Bay motors BTCC team where Rosie and I went off to interview Tom Onslow-Cole. A nice bonus was not only riding in the touring car with the man himself, but also getting to drive 7 amazing cars at the Autodrome. I've got a new respect for racing drivers after that - although I was best at Auto Solo and somehow bagged an award for Karting despite finishing 6th! Still don't know how that happened. You've probably already seen our interview with Tom on the site.

On the subject of the site, Our team has just grown a bit. We've now got our own resident Stills Photographer Chris Lucas who will also be doing some presenting for the features that we'll be releasing over the rest of the year, and off the camera, and indeed off the set but by no means making any less of a contribution is Daniel Gould - our new researcher and webmaster whose domain I've just invaded to make this post.

What else has been happening? Well we got an e-mail from Dave Player from the Charity Kart Force who approached us about a new project that has gone on to dominate most of our time. Kart Force offers soldiers who have been injured in the course of their duties [often horrifically badly] the opportunity to get back to some form of normality in their lives. 4 of them will be taking on the challenge of a 24 hour marathon to set a new world record - and as only one of the soldiers has both his legs, they will do this by using some really innovative and to my knowledge unique hand controls. These guys really are amazing and really do deserve your support. The upshot of Dave's e-mail is that we're working on a hour long documentary about these inspirational drivers and we're really pleased to be able to support the team in this way. The problem we've got though - Kart Force is a Charity and, well, Money's a bit tight for everyone at the moment. So we're asking for your support to help us make it a reality. Our goal is to fund the documentary and eventually get it broadcast so we can spread the guy's story even further. So... if you could see your way to donating a bit on our wefund page, that would be very nice of you indeed and if you donate enough we'll send you a copy of the DVD and a T Shirt in return. Many thanks in advance for that. Oh yeah, quick note, Yes, Team Overdrive Productions is a business, but honestly, we won't be making any money on this project, just seeing the lads get their stories out there a bit more is reward enough.

We're off to Middlesborough to film these wonderful guys next week, so make sure you're following us on Twitter and Facebook (new facebook page by the way after technical problems nobbled our last one)

So, apart from Kart Force (and that will even include a bit of Olympic Fever too!), we've also got some interviews with Ali Rushforth to pull together, and we'll also be hearing from precision driving legend (and multiple autotest champion) Russ Swift very shortly too. I will try and do a blog a bit more regularly from now on so watch this space for more ramblings!

Thanks for continuing to visit us here, and watch out for our new videos soon!

Kev