Category Archives: Supercar Spin

Supercar Spin March show all done

Note, all the official Supercar Spin articles will be on www.supercarspin.com from now on.

Supercar Spin March show

> Watch the show in HD here <

All done with the March show of Supercar Spin, this month we have news from McLaren, Porsche, Jaguar, Lamborghini and Aston Martin. Brendon and I had the most fun making this show yet I think.

What did we try new this month? well my friend Ash gave lots of top tips from his presenting/filming experience and one of them was to try filming in takes instead of one long 10 minute filming. So this is the first show trying that method out, how’s it look? better than before?

The other new bit for this month was that friend Jay Ng make a new titles sequence for us. He didn’t have time to get it to us in HD (that will be included next month) but we still got in in this months show, just before the deadline.

Just had the first comment on YouTube for this show and its a nice positive comment:

“i like it :). i like how you guys add your own opinions about
the cars rather than just telling us the specs.”

What’s new for next month? well we have a new filming location for a trial and also the possibility of a guest presenter also for  a trial and guess what she’s a girl that’s really into her cars, a rare find.

Supercar Spin Feb 2011 edition all done

Note, all the official Supercar Spin articles will be on www.supercarspin.com from now on.
Supercar Spin Feb 2011 edition

Here it s the February edition of our little show supercar spin, I think this month turned out pretty good. We had a couple of small changes this month:

  • The intro layout is now a short 15 seconds blast of all the upcoming news bits for this month, then it goes to the intro titles then onto the main show. This was Jays idea to make the beginning of the show more impactful, I think it works much better.
  • The supercar stats or ‘Hot specs’ as I call them, are now scrolling across the bottom of the screen in a news ticker style way. This is good as in future episodes we can leave the techy stats stuff down there scrolling along and leave the main talking in the show to a more personal natural discussion.

Some good stuffs been happening behind the scenes, we were approached by a women who likes the show is really into her cars and is keen to get involved if she can as a guest presenter on the show. Were in discussion with her now on that so we’ll see if it works out as a trial.

Lastly Jay the master of Adobe editing (you can see some of his editing work here) is cooking up a new title sequence to replace the current one I made. I know he will make something pretty dam sexy and in HD and featuring a lot of supercars of course, we’ll see.

Jan episode of Supercar Spin is done yay!

Note, all the official Supercar Spin articles will be on www.supercarspin.com from now on.
Supercar Spin Jan 2011–The monthly sports & supercar news show

The 1st episode for 2011 is done and up for our subscribers on YouTube and iTunes!

And if your wondering why I’m a bit quiet in the episode compared to previous episodes, well it was a 33 degree’s on the day of the filming, and I was so uncomfortably hot I couldn’t concentrate!

It was also so hot I forgot to plug the proper microphone in for the 3rd take (the one you see here) that’s why the sounds a little echo’y and distant. Now I know why all proper television studios have aircon!

By the way 2700 people downloaded and watched the December episode on their iPhones/iPods last month, cool.

December edition of Supercar Spin & some viewers stats

Note, all the official Supercar Spin articles will be on www.supercarspin.com from now on.

The December edition of Supercar Spin is now available, well to tell the truth its been up for 2 weeks now but I’ve been lazy to get to my blog. We filmed it back at the ‘Zonda’ studio again, much better sound, not so echo’y and a great drive through the Royal national park in the RS4 to get there, camera gear sliding around in the back.

You can watch the episode as usual on YouTube above (here’s a link to it in HD) or by watching and subscribing to it in iTunes below:

Supercar Spin Monthly news show on iTunes

I have finally got some realistic viewers stats working with the help of the Blubrry.com stats logging service.  This is good as we can see what sort of devices people are watching it on like iPhones, other phones and iPads and what country there from e.t.c. It seems that people arn’t watching Supercar Spin on YouTube but thousands are on iTunes on their mobile devices.

Here you can see all our episodes so far from the Pilot episode to the latest which is Dec10, the latest episode of Dec is more popular than the Nov one which is what we want to see!:

scssummarystats.jpgHere is an interesting one, where everyone is watching the episodes from. It’s the Asians that are gobbling up our episodes the most; I would think the reason for this is that mobile entertainment through media consumption is so popular in Asia with its mobile data the fastest and best in the world. I think everyone has better than 3G connections there so everyone is walking around watching video on demand shows and podcasts like Supercar Spin.

scsstatstopcountries.jpg

Supercar Spin November 2010 show released

Note, all the official Supercar Spin articles will be on www.supercarspin.com from now on.

image

We just tackled episode 2, well strictly episode 4 if you include the pilot show and the Lotus Paris show special. I was just getting over my cold and we filmed it the day before the Sydney to Gong ride at mine not Brendon’s this time to better fit in with our busy schedule over that weekend. The problem with mine is its a very large room, so there is a bit of echo through the recording but its not too bad. Things we have done/improved for this episode were:

  • Slightly altered the into sequence most noticeable with the longer music.
  • Floating ‘supercar spin’ word and sound effects special effect in the outro.
  • We both use the laptop setup just under the camera lens for a cheap autocue. Last month Brendon used he laptop ‘autocue’ and I used paper so I was looking down at the paper too much.
  • For the intro and outro ‘wrap up’ sections we practiced both saying individual lines to make more interaction between us in these 2 parts.

imageExample Intro autocue slide

Comments so far from friends and family have been really positive on this episode with everyone saying its the best and most professional looking one so far, but I’m sure we can make it even better still with more practice. We clocked up nearly 200 watches on people iPods and iPhones through iTunes on just the first day which is really good.

Click the video below to watch, or you can watch it on YouTube in HD also, make sure you watch the HD version full screen to get the quality.

Supercar Spin November 2010 show

1st real episode of Supercar Spin show

Note, all the official Supercar Spin articles will be on www.supercarspin.com from now on.

Hi all, Brendon and I filmed the 1st real episode of the Supercar spin show last weekend.  We got great positive comments on the pilot show so we thought lets do it and make a proper 1st episode.

Filmed in Brendon’s office we took everyone’s comments on board and made some real improvements behind the scenes:

  1. Brendon look at the camera more!
  2. Don’t talk over each other so much
  3. Try and inject some more character and fun
  4. Use a light on the background so we don’t get shadows on the back wall
  5. Brendon used a Autocue (MS PowerPoint on Laptop) for a trial and I used good old fashioned paper to refer to
  6. Include some video of the cars not just images
  7. Include the cars stats or main points of each story
  8. Make our small logo in the news bar down the bottom easier to read

I hope we improved on our Pilot episode, so here is the 1st episode:

‘Supercar Spin September 2010’ – Lotus Paris Auto show special

There was so much news for September we had to include a special additional part to episode 1 on all the new models Lotus released at the Paris Auto show, here is this extra bit:

‘Supercar Spin September 2010’ The Monthly Supercar & Sports Car Roundup

Supercar Spin show is now on iTunes for your iPod/iPhone

Note, all the official Supercar Spin articles will be on www.supercarspin.com from now on.

Apple approved our Supercar Spin Pilot show today so it is now up on iTunes for anyone in the world, anywhere to see.

To get to it, go to iTunes on your iPod, iPhone or computer and search for ‘supercar spin’ and it will come straight up.

Now we will gauge how popular it is on YouTube and iTunes, look at the feedback comments and viewing figures to decide wether to make another episode.

supercarspinonitunes

Supercar Spin Pilot show – it’s ready for the world to watch

Note, all the official Supercar Spin articles will be on www.supercarspin.com from now on.

This has been a project I’ve been keen to spend my spare time on with Brendon over the past month. After looking around all the YouTube and iTunes/iPod Podcasts all around the world, I couldn’t find a good monthly news show on all the juicy bits on supercars, sports car and luxury car news that car nuts just love to know about. So I had this idea of putting together a pilot episode of a monthly news show where we sift through the month’s huge pile of Press Releases from the automotive industry, and bring the viewer just the best bits so they don’t have to.

supercarspinshot

A scene from the show talking about the price of the new Porsche 918 Spyder

Brendon was a bit hesitant to give it a go as he thought he would be bad on camera (the results show that was a false worry, he was even more natural than me I think) but I convinced him and we recorded it at his place with his lovely hand drawn picture of a Red Zonda as the background.

We felt we had got it right on the 3rd take and it was shot in one long continuous take to try and make it more natural, less edited. We were hoping for more of a feeling of two guys who are nuts about cars just talking about the latest gossip and adding their own opinions to the mix.

Brendon’s friend Martin DeMontfort www.mdillustration.com created the logo for us on his computer by hand using his graphics tablet and the final version with its tyre marks looks great! Martin hand draws a lot of the covers for the Australian MAD magazine so we knew he would do a great job at the logo. I altered the image with a Red Zonda to make it stand out more for the iTunes/iPod Podcast library featured logo.

supercarspinlogo The Logo hand drawn by Martin The iTunes/iPod Podcast logo

My friend Jay Ng (a local short film director) gave some advice on how to make the titles stand out more and other little bits of production advice through the project. The best bit of advice from him was to actually try and give it a go in the first place after I told him the original idea some months ago. Jay also came up with the all important catchy name ‘Supercar Spin’ which is much better than the working title we had ‘Supercar monthly news’ 🙂

Filming was done using my Sony HD video camera and a external miniature microphone taped to the desk in front of us and all the post-production was done in Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects and Photoshop like I do all my videos in now.

Overall I’m very happy with the results of the pilot show which is after all a bit of a test to see how it came out. I added a header to the video at the top of the screen to ask for comments and feedback Good OR Bad because we really want to know wether to make another episode. The video was only 2 hours on YouTube and we received our first comment which was great:

“I liked the show in my opinion it was filled with a lot of information in a small package. I hope you get enough support from the viewers to continue producing the show.

Thumbs up.”

If we get more positive feedback we will have a go at our real first episode 1. I have submitted the video to the Apple iTunes/iPod Podcast library but unlike YouTube, Apple have to watch and approve the video first for content and quality before it is approved and allowed to go up on iTunes. If it does get through it will be viewable by anyone in the world with a iPhone or iPod by just by typing in ‘Supercar Spin’ which could open up the video to 1000’s of views a day.

So enough talking about it, here is the actual show to watch (click to play).
If you want to watch it in Full HD you can view the HD version.

Please, let me know what YOU think of it?