It's been a bit quiet around here lately - too quiet. That could be a line from a film.
Things have not been idle in Overdrive towers however. We've been hard at work with a documentary on the amazing and inspiring Kartforce and throwing all our efforts into next year. We've already started to refresh our social media outputs with Twitter, Facebook and now Google+ pages, and our videos are coming out on our Youtube channel
Coming in January 2014
Chris with the Caterham 7 160
Coverage from the Autosport International Show - this year with more action from the Live Action Arena and Autosolo
Gearbox - Our look at Road Cars starting with the road car highlights from Autosport and a road test in the new Caterham 7 160 (which our presenter Chris loved!)
Our first event - We're going Ice Karting! Watch this space for how to get involved in a very different karting experience
A fresh new look - Still red and black, but the website will be getting a brand new look in January
Further ahead, we've got more news with our bi-weekly news bulletins which will be kicking off with the racing season in March and presented by Holly Rust. They'll include news and results from club and national motorsports, looking beyond the circuits and onto the rally stages, Autotests and all manner of clubman motorsports. There will also be more from Gearbox and we're working on 2014's features.
Until January then, we'll leave you with some highlights of the 2013 Autosport International Show.
Well, it's been very slow progress as far as the website is concerned! We've been really busy and concentrating our efforts on our project with Kart Force.
Because of the demands on the team's time, we're making a few changes - we'll be trying a system where we update twice a week. So, Tuesdays will be the time to visit us for Results and Reports from the weekend's action whilst Fridays will be the day for other news and event previews - maybe a few results too. So if you're a potential contributor, e-mail your results and reports to us by 9pm on Monday and your news and previews by 9pm on Thursday.
We'll also be announcing our new webmaster soon.
For this weekend though, you can look forward to the qualifying and race reports from the BTCC at Rockingham, and there'll be a live stream from the Silverstone Britcar 24 hour race when the race starts at half past 3
Whilst you're waiting, here's a video we shot earlier in the year - we met up with Autotest legend Russ swift, who told us about how he got started, his precision driving career and the Prime Minister of Malasya's Limousine
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!
Regular visitors will have noticed that things have been somewhat quiet around here lately - this is partially due to some technical difficulties we've had here at Overdrive Towers recently, but mostly down to the increased workload that has resulted from launching Overdrive Filming Services. We're just completing our first projects now, and from there we can get back on with producing the programme - which is, and always will be our main focus.
Unfortunately, that means that because I do most of the editing and manage the site, I've been letting the website slide a bit in terms of new content. We've got a huge backlog of press releases to get through now... So I thought I'd use the bank holiday to hit the big red "Reset" button, and work a bit on getting some fresh content up online. This does mean that some releases are going to get missed, for which I apologise, however from now on, it should be normal service resumed.
The overdrive TV page which holds our programmes is currently unavailable due to maintainance, it'll re-appear shortly. In the meantime, you can still watch our programmes on Youtube at www.youtube.com/overdrivemotorsport - Thanks for your support!
It would be greatly appreciated if you could take some minutes of your time to fill in our online survey about Overdrive, it's video content, and what you'd like to see on both the site and programme. Many Thanks!
Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.
Well we owe you all a huge thank you! The stats are in, and May has been the most successful month for us since we started last October. We'd just like to say thank you very much for your support, and we hope that you will enjoy what we've got coming up! Thanks!
Photo courtesy of Michael Nielsen of Victoria, Austrailia
Well, to coin a phrase, it's all gone Pete Tong here at Overdrive Towers. It comes down to this... workload.
Overdrive is a project that I've been running in my spare time up to now (and funding it myself as well) primarily to gain experience in the big wide world of the TV industry. As such paid work takes priority - and until someone wants to sponsor the project, Overdrive isn't it.
When I'm not at a race track, I actually work as a technical apprentice for a small production company here in lovely South Wales (see my other blog - www.kevinmcmullintv.blogspot.com), which is great. But it's been really busy since March with some major projects. From any other perspective than Overdrive, that's fantastic news.
The result is that I haven't been able to work on Overdrive, and at the moment it's only me who has the capability to edit the programme! At the moment we've got a film from March about Marshals ready for Dave to work his magic over, but... erm... nothing else. Planned Shoots didn't happen because of a) Tiff Needell and b) See above.
So, Overdrive will continue, but it will be a heck of a lot more sporadic than I'd have liked, and the format may change away from the 10 minute magazine type thing. Currently looking at changing it to a quarterly format with only 4 issues this year, finishing with a grand review of the year in December. I'm not abandoning the project. Just slowing it down a bit.
Meanwhile, if anyone wants to keep this blog up to date with features all about UK club and national motorsport. Please get in touch. The pay's terrible (well, non existant!) but it could be just the thing for an aspiring motorsport journalist to take on. My focus has been, and always will be, the video side of this project. But I think that the blog has potential to grow.
Finally, a huge thank you to everyone who's shown us support especially all of you great guys and girls on Twitter. Please please follow them if you're a fellow tweep... We're @overdrive_uk and they are @rupturedduck, @fastestcat, and there are a hell of a lot more fine people where they came from.
You can now find the trailer and first episode of Overdrive on a brand new page, cunningly called "Series 1" over on the pages menu to the right hand side. Eventually all the videos will be posted there, as well as here on the home page. It's going to be much easier to find them to catch up on what we've done so far!
Don't forget you can also find us on Facebook and Twitter which are both kept updated with interesting tweets from the UK motorsport community.
In the meantime, we're planning a special edition coming out soon with a new presenter. Watch this space!
