"A Californian Homage to Top Gear"

[Carmeleon]

That translation is roughly correct, svb. I should know, because I wrote the original in Dutch

I guess it goes without saying that I really loved your video. At first I expected another lame attempt at copying Top Gear, but I ended up leaning back and watching your entire road trip in one go. Great stuff, hope you guys have more planned for the future. Keep it up!

[Cowboy]

that looks like great fun!

Sure it's a little rough around the edges at times but damn you guys must have had a blast making this, and we are just to used to 'real' top gear perfection with megabudgets and 3 middelaged men doing what they do best...... witch is mainly cocking about

3 mates setting of for a roadtrip in 3 junker cars and an improvised cameracar (i can almost see the ducttape holding the camera steady ) making an hommage to the best carprogramme in the world, such..... is petrolhead heaven.

[Matt_mo]

That was great! Really enjoyed it.

[svb]

We're in the process of devising our next project. In the meantime, I cut together a bunch of footage from our group's trip to Europe in January 2009. There was a lot of sightseeing and snowboarding stuff that I left out; this is just the driving bits showing some of the roads we drove.

Between the Autobahn in Germany and the twisty alpine passes in northern Italy, there was some fantastic stuff. Of course, we also had a couple mishaps along the way. The video is a short, approximately 4-minute montage. Check out the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg4JDL0dUTg

Here are some still shots:







Here is a rough map of the route we took through northern Italy:

[eldiaoble]

Wow looks amazingly fun

[Alasondro Alegré]

That's a nice sample for the upcoming video. Looking good.

[mountainman]

If you bring up Google and type "californian hom" the second entry of the drop-down list of suggestions is "californian homage to top gear".

[Beni]

great, looking forward to the full video!

[svb]

I should clarify -- this is not a trailer for a new film.

This is the extent of the driving footage from our Europe trip and there isn't anything more. We were busy with other things on this trip and didn't shoot an entire film. I uploaded this clip just so people could see what footage we did get of some of the roads and cars over there since I thought some of the stuff was entertaining. But like I said, this is all there is.

We are working on a second project, but nothing has been shot for that yet.

[TerranCmdr]

Looks like great fun! I'm very jealous though, I've always wanted to make a trip over the pond.

[Duder]

Nicely done gents.

[mountainman]

There's a nice writeup of "A Californian Homage to Top Gear" here. It's entitled, "The best fan video in the world?"

http://iptablog.org/2009/05/15/the-best-fan-vi.html

I spent some time trying to submit "A Californian Homage to Top Gear" to the Internet Movie Database. All I ever got back were computer-generated notices saying that no-one had looked at the submission and perhaps I could add more information. At the risk of revealing my highly regarded secret FinalGear identity, I uploaded a copy of the IMDB submission form to my server so anyone who's interested can see what kind of information they ask for and what I entered. If anyone here has a contact at the IMDB perhaps you can suggest the submission be considered:

http://www.heurtley.com/richard/homage.html

[svb]

Originally Posted by mountainman

There's a nice writeup of "A Californian Homage to Top Gear" here. It's entitled, "The best fan video in the world?"

http://iptablog.org/2009/05/15/the-best-fan-vi.html

Thanks for this link!! I thought I had tracked down everyone who was linking to us but I missed this one. It's of particular interest since I'm actually an attorney myself, with an interest in IP/copyright law. I submitted a comment regarding the issues he brings up in his post, but it has to be approved first. I love the headline though!

Originally Posted by mountainman

I spent some time trying to submit "A Californian Homage to Top Gear" to the Internet Movie Database. All I ever got back were computer-generated notices saying that no-one had looked at the submission and perhaps I could add more information. At the risk of revealing my highly regarded secret FinalGear identity, I uploaded a copy of the IMDB submission form to my server so anyone who's interested can see what kind of information they ask for and what I entered. If anyone here has a contact at the IMDB perhaps you can suggest the submission be considered:

http://www.heurtley.com/richard/homage.html

I managed to grab all that info and did a submission myself. I'm actually already on IMDB and am even Chris Kerr (I) due to having been in & worked on a student film back in school (which I don't think is out there anywhere at this point). Anyway, hopefully my submission will go through.

Thanks again for your continued efforts! We're all still really stoked on the fact that there are a number of you out there that enjoyed our film and found it even close to comparable with the original.

[ninjacoco]

Love love love this piece. I'm currently a film student, and lo and behold, the next project we've been assigned in one of my classes has the option of "in a car" for a setting. Guess which option I'm considering?

So, a question for y'all: do you have any tips for filming gorgeous car footage (preferably without too many views of the cameras sneaking in the frame)?

[svb]

Originally Posted by ninjacoco

So, a question for y'all: do you have any tips for filming gorgeous car footage (preferably without too many views of the cameras sneaking in the frame)?

Our DP posted a rundown on our site awhile back that details all the equipment we used; hopefully this helps:

http://greatestroadinca.blogspot.com...o-from-dp.html

[jpod999]

I just saw this and watched the whole thing. I really liked watching it! You were up in my hood too, the Bay Area, which made it even cooler.