Truthness level of the epic races

They've said in the past that they run the races first, then go back and get the shots they need. I think that this is true most of the time. The most recent one felt like it was contrived. That said, it was a good excuse to drive around in NYC and get some epic shots in.
 
To kinda-sorta quote James May: What you see is true, but not necessarily real.
 
The results are true, the editing makes them look more Hollywood, and 90% of people are easily mislead by editing.
 
GraemeH said:
The results are true, the editing makes them look more Hollywood, and 90% of people are easily mislead by editing.
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Yup. JC beat James and Hammond by over an hour in the first epic race (London to Monte Carlo), but the editing made it look like much closer.

The closest one was Blackpool, though Verbier was close, as well, since we did see JC's Ferrari 612 pass Hammond and May on the road near the destination.
 
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My god I thought this has been explained a dozen times! It's not that difficult to comprehend the logic behind video editing.

Example:
- First shooting is of the actual race. They have 1 camera and sound crew together with them throughout the race and films them from start to end
- Second shooting is of all the extra shots such as exterior shots of the cars driving through the roads etc that they are not able to do in the first shooting. They take note of the events that they cannot film in real time in the first shooting and reshoot them again. It means that the events happened; just that they have to reshoot it to show you, the viewer, because it's not practical to have tens of other cameramen on standby at different parts of the city just to shoot 10 seconds of footage.
- Finally, all the footages are then edited to the final version that you see on the telly. That's why you might get continuity errors etc but to be honest, you have to be really anal to be picking up too much on these things. That's why there's a "goofs" section for movies in imdb :)

Editing compresses what happens in real time and condenses the story to it's essential bits. At least that's to the extent of my knowledge :)
 
Niedermayer said:
- Second shooting is of all the extra shots such as exterior shots of the cars driving through the roads etc that they are not able to do in the first shooting.
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Yep. I think they also call them the "Beauty Shots".

The race themselves are real, and the results are real. The footage is just made more...concise and pretty for us viewers. That's all. :)
 
Another thing to keep in mind, the parameters of each race are picked in order to (attempt to) ensure a close race. For example, if the jet vs 612 race didn't start at the TG studio but instead somewhere with better public transport, results may have been very different. Similarly, if the final meeting point involved less walking distance...
 
I don't think anyone's arguing that the results of Blackpool, Verbier, and Japan were altered in any significant fashion. Blackpool was pretty self-evident from the footage. Hammond looked legitimately shocked to see the Fezza heading down the main street of Verbier. Jeremy was still winded from the run up the stairs at the temple, so the 3:12 figure was very plausible. The lamest attempt to create a little bit of tension, though, was Oslo, with Jeremy frantically looking for the statue; he knew that Hammond and May were out of it at that point due to the chase boat breaking down. I forgive them for that, though, because they had to do something at that point. They didn't put unexpected breakdowns into their calculations, something they'd solved by the time of the Truffle Race. The only thing that smelled about that one, other than the truffles, was that James didn't tell Richard beforehand that the Cessna couldn't fly over ten thousand feet and that he didn't have a night-flying license. All of that nonsense was done for pure tension-heightening. I'd still like to know how much Jeremy really won that race by.
 
The Spie said:
The lamest attempt to create a little bit of tension, though, was Oslo, with Jeremy frantically looking for the statue; he knew that Hammond and May were out of it at that point due to the chase boat breaking down. I forgive them for that, though, because they had to do something at that point. They didn't put unexpected breakdowns into their calculations, something they'd solved by the time of the Truffle Race. The only thing that smelled about that one, other than the truffles, was that James didn't tell Richard beforehand that the Cessna couldn't fly over ten thousand feet and that he didn't have a night-flying license. All of that nonsense was done for pure tension-heightening. I'd still like to know how much Jeremy really won that race by.
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It's really hard to tell, as you get no sense of the timeline from the film.
Hammond and May stranded in a small village called Stavern, which is about a 15 min drive from Larvik.
From Larvik there would be a 2 hour busride to Oslo, and a bit more by train.
But as I said, we dont really know where Jezza was at the point they stranded there.
 
kurthest said:
It's really hard to tell, as you get no sense of the timeline from the film.
Hammond and May stranded in a small village called Stavern, which is about a 15 min drive from Larvik.
From Larvik there would be a 2 hour busride to Oslo, and a bit more by train.
But as I said, we dont really know where Jezza was at the point they stranded there.
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You do sometimes, when they call each other. Not that it means that the calls happened at the time they say or anything, but...

I think the problem in Stavern, if it is the trip I am thinking of, is that they "didn't know" where they were or how to get from there to Oslo.

Does it really matter how real it is, anyway? Star Wars wasn't real, and I enjoyed that.
 
The Spie said:
I'd still like to know how much Jeremy really won that race by.
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Oslo or the Veyron/Cessna race?

Oslo ~ Like kurthest said, there's no real sense of a timeline. (I'd say not during most of the second day. The first day made a bit more sense to me.) So that's somewhat harder to gauge. Jeremy did say they were neck-and-neck when he/they was/were 50 miles away. So somewhere between there and Jeremy's arrival in Oslo, the second boat broke, and James and Richard ended up in Stavern. (I don't think he knew about it until he got there.)

Veyron/Cessna ~ I think this one was somewhat close. I read somewhere, don't remember where, that all three were on the same floor at NatWest Tower at one point (though none of them knew they were all on the same floor) before reaching the top.
 
Niedermayer said:
- First shooting is of the actual race. They have 1 camera and sound crew together with them throughout the race and films them from start to end
- Second shooting is of all the extra shots such as exterior shots of the cars driving through the roads etc that they are not able to do in the first shooting. They take note of the events that they cannot film in real time in the first shooting and reshoot them again. It means that the events happened; just that they have to reshoot it to show you, the viewer, because it's not practical to have tens of other cameramen on standby at different parts of the city just to shoot 10 seconds of footage.
- Finally, all the footages are then edited to the final version that you see on the telly. That's why you might get continuity errors etc but to be honest, you have to be really anal to be picking up too much on these things. That's why there's a "goofs" section for movies in imdb :)

Editing compresses what happens in real time and condenses the story to it's essential bits. At least that's to the extent of my knowledge :)
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Thanks excellent reply ;)
 
shellygrrl said:
Veyron/Cessna ~ I think this one was somewhat close. I read somewhere, don't remember where, that all three were on the same floor at NatWest Tower at one point (though none of them knew they were all on the same floor) before reaching the top.
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This is the one I was asking about in re how close it was. If that's the case, the results may not have been manipulated, but the race was, heavily, and the way it was done made James look like a total moron. For instance, the whole routine about "Well, we wasted fuel going around the Alps" was faked; when James took off from Cuneo, he asked air traffic control for clearance to LFMH. A quick trip to Google shows that this is the code for the airport at St. Etienne. This is where James and Richard ended up stopping for fuel. In other words, they didn't stop for fuel because they wasted it. It was where they were going to stop for fuel anyway.

From this, it's easy to figure out that James and Richard's route was always going to be Cuneo -> St. Etienne -> Lille -> Eurostar to London. It was disingenuous to state otherwise.

That being said, the only other blatant bit of race manipulation I can think of was the Japan race. The lack of traffic in Tokyo must have thrown them for a loop, hence the tweaking with James and Richard being separated, as well as the disappearance of Ami the Satnav.

But you have to admit that nothing TGUK's done has been as blatant as what TGUS did with the Miami-Key West race, all for the sake of the shot on the Seven-Mile Bridge.
 
If I remember right, in the race to Verbier Hammond and May waited for over an hour in one of the train stops, that wasn't shown in the telly. Do they make the schedules for trains etc. so that the race would be close? Dunno.

Still I don't care that much, they are fun and I like that they have a little bit of tension at the end!
 
I would love for James and Richard to win one, Just to see Jeremy's face.
What was the last one they did where is was Jeremy vs James and Richard? It seems like ages ago.
 
iam-nobody said:
I would love for James and Richard to win one, Just to see Jeremy's face.
What was the last one they did where is was Jeremy vs James and Richard? It seems like ages ago.
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Would it have been the episode in Japan where JC was in the Nissan and the other two were on the bullet train ?
 
Vislami said:
If I remember right, in the race to Verbier Hammond and May waited for over an hour in one of the train stops, that wasn't shown in the telly. Do they make the schedules for trains etc. so that the race would be close? Dunno.
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They have to, in order to give the car a chance.

I wish I knew the exact routes for the Verbier and Truffle races, because I've always wondered if Jeremy could have saved any time by one change: instead of cutting across France diagonally, he could have gone through Germany and utilized large stretches of unrestricted autobahn. Would the gain in speed been enough to counter the extra distance? And, let's admit it, who wouldn't have loved to have seen the Veyron on that dragstrip known as Autobahn 5 in southern Germany?
 
Even with the unrestricted Autobahns in Germany I doubt he could've saved any significant time over going through France. Also probably really boring reasons against it such as insurance, etc.
 
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