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24 Hours in 70 Minutes (2012)
A movie for the very specially interested
It's a documentary about team Hoofer Racing, they race 2 BMW M3's at the Nürburgring at the annual 24 hour race. The film follows the team from the day before the race to the beers after it's all over - 24 hours later. Sounds quite simple? It is, but it also works, to a certain degree.
There are a lot of positives with this film, it gives a casual look (although shallow) into a smaller team. Obviously it's all filmed during a live race, so times for interviews etc. are scarce. This is however a film for the hardcore fans, I think anyone who is anything less than extremely dedicated to the VLN series/Nürburgring may find this very lengthy, for reasons I will now go into.
The main issue with this is film is that it feels a bit patched, and I feel as the editors with the selection of their clips have made certain areas of the film very compromised. There is no narration, barely any dialogue. They speak German and it's all nicely translated though, but the only real dialogue you get is at the beginning, with a briefing before the weekend begins. The info you get is with banners at the bottom of the screen (in English) giving a brief description of what is happening or about to happen.
Now, let's get back to what I said about the selection of clips. Just showing clips from the practice sessions takes over half an hour of the films 70 minutes. And the main issue is that a lot of the clips are the same, this basically goes for the whole film; Start of session, cars line up, car goes around a few times (with tripod shots trackside), a few onboard clips, car comes to the pits, driver change. This is basically the procedure for the whole film, and this doesn't work. Especially for the last 10-20 minutes when you end up asking yourselves "Haven't I seen this before?". The only real break from this sequence are small clips in between showing fans around the track and filming of the teams garage, as well as the accidents that do happen. Now I realize that is how a race works, however, it could easily have been made more dramaturgic. We don't need to see a routine driver changeover 6 times (at least), it would be nice to explore other areas of 24 hour racing when the basics are covered.
There is also a constant electro/pop music soundtrack with recognized covers of famous songs, which is nice enough. It however does get tedious, especially into the last stages of the film which become very repetitive.
Even though the film lacks a bit of dramaturgic edge and edit, it's still a respectable effort to shrink so much raw footage into only 70 minutes. And this isn't a big budget racing documentary either, although it does feel a bit too homemade at some points. Obviously this documentary was meant to cover the entire weekend (i.e. not just the race), but I feel that the part of the film dedicated to the race was almost minor, combined with the editing I've critized you do get the feel that this could've been a lot more. In the end, it feels like just watching the race on TV, the latter part of the film fails to go into any more depth than that. It's really a shame, because the beginning is wonderful and they deserve credit for the way they chose to open this film.
In the end, this is a niche hardcore film, there is no point in watching this if you're a casual car fan waiting to get an awakening for 24 hour races. For that I would recommend Gran Turismo's (You can find them on YT) documentaries, they show a wider range of footage and are shorter in length.
Car Warriors (2011)
Poor reality with awful editing and scripting
OK, it's a cheezy concept. 2 teams get 2 identical cars and have 72 hours to pimp them, the one with the most original design and thorough build wins. So it's sort of an extended version of Pimp My Ride. Heck, one of the judges is Mr. Mad Mike of the PMP-crew. The concept reminds me of all the approximately 1,5 million similar shows Discovery has had running for the last 10 years.
Even though Disco might call this a "car" show, it's just a kinky reality. Probably 1/5th of an episode's running time is about actual car modification. The rest is all about different members from each crew ranting, complaining and causing trouble, waking each other up etc. And that's the main issue for me, the cutting and editing of this show. It's starts with some host telling them they're not allow to puppy-guard parts (they share a parts storage from various sponsor makes) and have 72 hours. Then the teams draw up a design on a whiteboard and delegate assignments to a few of the members. That brings me onto something else. It appears that each crew consists of maybe 10-20 people. After 1 hour, I've seen maybe 3 or 4 of them actually do something. The rests have appeared in cameos in apparently busy situations explaining what's just gone wrong or is about to happen, or how little time they have left. Now, back to the editing. The only in-length shoot featuring the car which I saw was the paint job. The rest was just cuts of people running around getting parts from the parts depot (that both teams share). Suddenly, their time was up and both teams had a completed car. Wow, what I saw for the last hour was a bunch of Latino car "builders" get mad at each other for not being able to keep the door for the paint-booth shut and a car nearly falling off a ramp. This also really brings into question the 72-hour deadline they have.
To summarize, the show has no plot (except for that teams have 72 hours to finish a car, which is the same for every episode). The cuts and editing are abrupt and out-of-sync, and barely show any work done to the car in question, which makes you doubt the whole integrity of the limited-time format. An episode is based around a silly conflict involving a few crew members (such as dust in the paint booth) with another 5 which you've never seen before (or do any work, ever) explain how little they've slept and why the 4 others are having an argument. Then suddenly, a hidden hero within the team manages to finish the car, being commemorated by the rest of the team for being the "worlds best" in whatever his trade is (audio, paint, interior etc). The show is meaningless and stupid, it's an insult to proper customizers and car builders, and car people. It's a cheapskate reality with a fancy intro.