# My friends and I take on Top Gear with our own film w/ E36



## svb325 (Sep 1, 2008)

My friends and I decided to take on Top Gear and challenge their assertion that the greatest driving road in the world was in Europe. We reasoned that it could be found in California, and so we decided to have a cheap car challenge to determine if we were right. We gave ourselves a budget of $5,000 each for the cars and then set out to see what we could find.

I'm posting this here because one of the cars we used in the film was an E36, my 1995 325i -- so I figure there may be people here who would be interested in our film.

If you have never seen Top Gear, it is a well known automotive show on BBC2 that most fans outside the UK download from finalgear.com. Our film is structured in a similar way to a Top Gear challenge, with our own unique twists.

We have a website up for our project here:

http://greatestroadinca.blogspot.com/

We have a trailer up on youtube here:





(I suggest watching it in High Quality, which you'll have to go to Youtube to select, unfortunately)

and here are a couple still shots from the film:


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## Spiderm0n (Dec 19, 2001)

Looks cool!

Stick around Bimmerfest, you will like it here. Lots of Top Gear Fans...


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## TLudwig (Mar 30, 2004)

Very cool! I'm excited to see the final product.


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## svb325 (Sep 1, 2008)

People on a few forums have been asking about how we shot our film, what equipment we used, etc.

Our DP added a post on our blog with a detailed rundown for anyone who is interested.

http://greatestroadinca.blogspot.com/

I also added a couple of "behind the scenes" photos of our film crew at work.


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## Andrew*Debbie (Jul 2, 2004)

We've owned more than a few Fiat 124's. Debbie's '76 had the same luggage rack as your blue one. I can't wait to see if the Fiat was able to finish.


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## big-tex (Jan 25, 2008)

Man, that looks like fun, I'd like to try something like that one day.


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## Gigabyte71 (Aug 8, 2008)

Andrew*Debbie said:


> We've owned more than a few Fiat 124's. Debbie's '76 had the same luggage rack as your blue one. I can't wait to see if the Fiat was able to finish.


lol...when I lived in Europe we had one of these...my dad is 6'4".....enough said:rofl:


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## svb325 (Sep 1, 2008)

I am pleased to announce that the film my friends and I made challenging Top Gear's dismissal of North America in their search for the greatest driving road in the world is near completion and thus, we have decided to provide the first 15 minutes for your viewing pleasure.

Our search for the greatest driving road became more than just driving a bunch of roads all over California; we also tackled a series of challenges along the way and chose to use cheap cars (our budget was $5k each) to make it more interesting and fun.

In the end, our adventure became like a full-on Top Gear special and includes three challenges, a number of different roads, and plenty of mishaps along the way. This is our first effort so it may be a bit rough, and admittedly it's no Top Gear UK, but hopefully you will enjoy it!

*We've made the clip of the first 15 minutes available on our site here:

http://greatestroadinca.blogspot.com/*

We are very excited about this first release and would welcome any and all thoughts/comments/questions!


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## svb325 (Sep 1, 2008)

To give everyone an update, we are really really close to having this done. I want to have the final finished project online by the end of the month. The current runtime is about 55 minutes.

We're likely looking at doing an initial release online where you'll be able to watch it in a small format on a website somewhere. Then a little later, we'll get a closer-to-full quality file somewhere under 1GB and do a torrent release so everyone can download it and watch it as they would do with any episode of Top Gear.

Stay tuned.

Also see full discussion thread here:

http://forums.finalgear.com/top-gear/part-one-of-the-greatest-road-in-ca-now-online-31544/


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## Jever (Apr 16, 2003)

Great stuff! I can't wait to see all of the film. I hope you stay around here, the 'fest' can be a great place sometimes. :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:


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## spydrz (Oct 1, 2004)

Awesome news, can't wait to see the rest of it!!


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## spazmataz (Aug 6, 2006)

oh wow!! i like that a lot! looks like alot of fun.


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## PhillyNate (Jul 27, 2008)

I would hate to over-simplify a phenomenal show like Top Gear but you guys have managed to capture the essence. Nice job.


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## svb325 (Sep 1, 2008)

*WE ARE RELEASING THE FILM NOW!!*

So the title we finally settled on was "A Californian Homage to Top Gear," which, maybe isn't all that inspiring but at least it accurately describes our film. We thought about coming up with a title but ultimately decided to avoid branding ourselves with a silly name.

After long hours editing and much anticipation, we are now releasing the final film!! It's being broken up into 6 parts and is being posted to blip.tv as I type this (and will later be posted on youtube once we sort out format issues).

*All 6 parts are on blip.tv right now. Go to our website for links:*

http://greatestroadinca.blogspot.com/


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## spydrz (Oct 1, 2004)

Sweet!


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## svb325 (Sep 1, 2008)

...


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## Mr_Internet (Nov 10, 2008)

Wow I really like this I think it captures the spirit of Top Gear fairly well


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## svb325 (Sep 1, 2008)

Mr_Internet said:


> Wow I really like this I think it captures the spirit of Top Gear fairly well


Thanks!!

I just updated the links; we now have all 6 parts uploaded to blip in both full-quality quicktime and easy-to-view flash versions. Check our site for details.


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