David Redhead/UK
Way back in
October 2013, I received a call from Goose Communications Limited, a
company specialising in live events worldwide, and organisers of the
Silverstone Classic, a three day festival of historic motor racing, live
music and flat out fun for all the family.
The
Silverstone Classic, dubbed ‘The World’s Biggest Classic Motor Racing
Festival’, always celebrates pieces of motoring history in a special way
and this year that includes the 50th anniversary of the
Mustang. The Mustang Owners Club have chosen to attend the event for their
official golden anniversary celebrations, which will include a huge track
parade of around 200 Mustangs on the Saturday, plus there’ll be a host of
dazzling displays all weekend, including some famous film cars including
mine and Chris’s. The fantastic festivities, though, are topped by a pair
of very special races staged on the full Silverstone Grand Prix circuit
featuring a record number of competition-prepared Mustangs with cars
coming from all over the globe to join the celebrations.
The team at
Goose asked if we would attend their Silverstone Classic Media Launch with
our cars at the end of April and having submitted some pictures,
in one of which is my 1968 ‘Bullitt’ Mustang following Chris How’s
sinister black ‘Bullitt’ Charger, the seed was sown for a promotional
three minute video tribute to the original Bullitt car chase.
Having decided
to go ahead, Chris and I agreed that in the interests of accuracy we would
not hamper the shoot with conditions on how the cars should be driven as
long as they were insured and not deliberately damaged. Goose then
arranged the shoot with Hayfisher Productions and organised a couple of
Silverstone Instructors for the high speed sections, and of course the
Green Beetle, supplied by Howard Cheese.
Having
produced the storyboard... planning, choreography, half speed rehearsals
and setting up static camera positions, shooting the various video clips
was done in a day.
The whole
thing was then edited overnight to have the finished video ready for the
Media Day Launch early the following morning.
The
professionalism of the Goose team was outstanding and although time was of
the essence we were consulted and instructed on every aspect even though
much of the production didn’t concern us.
The worldwide
response to the Silverstone ‘Bullitt’ tribute has been phenomenal with
over 31,000 YouTube hits within the first three days of the official
launch. It’s now over 63,000
I believe.
Surely
there can be no doubt now about the viability of a Bullitt sequel and
there would be no prizes for guessing who I would vote for to produce it.
David
Redhead
The Chargers skid marks where the CGI showed the
impact. More Details to follow.
