Author Topic: Salt Flats Documentary Collaboration Invitation  (Read 6497 times)

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Offline Steven Xu

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Salt Flats Documentary Collaboration Invitation
« on: March 04, 2019, 09:46:10 AM »
Hey salt flats cavaliers,

We are a Chinese award-winning documentary team working on a documentary series named Adventure of life, which tell Chinese audiences the amazing and encouraging human stories around the world. Inspired by the freedom of land speeding, the camaraderie between teams and the legacy of salt flats racing, we want to make a 60 mins documentary to introduce the passion and charm of salt flats land-speeding from different kinds of racers' stories. Now, we have some challenges finding teams which will go land-speeding on Salt Flats in 2019 speedweek this year and open to sharing their unique stories with us. If you are interested in our project, please do not hesitate to contact us! We strongly believe that our project will help racers and Bonneville Salt Flats racing expand its influence and attract more sponsors from Asia and China. We are looking forward to seeing you in Bonneville speedweek this year.


Contact:

Steven Xu

Assistant Director

email: weichao1018@126.com

-----------------------------------
More info about our program:

Adventures of Life 奇遇人生 is a 10-episode series of a hybrid of Documentary Film and Reality Show. Largely invested by Tencent Video, one of the three largest video portals in China with over 800 million users and 50 million subscribers, the project is the first of its kind in the country to set a new genre on factual entertainment content.

This project invites 10 public figures to go around the world to meet someone who is doing something special, the public figure will engage in the action that may echo, challenge or inspire himself regarding his own spiritual and physical concerns. We hope the project will promote communications between different peoples and show the diversity of human lives that may illuminate our own for any options or change.

Last year in Season One, we got over 500 million view counts online, generated a lot of hot topics and public conversations through social media, and with the celebrity’s influence, we organized a campaign for improving public awareness on wild animal protection issues (which related to one of our episode topics).

About our Team

Qi Yu Studio is a documentary production company based in Beijing, China. We have several Emmy Awards, Sundance, and IDFA and award-winning productions:

Last Train Home

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1512201/

Fallen City

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2101352/

The Chinese Mayor

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4056808/

——————

Offline Seldom Seen Slim

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Re: Salt Flats Documentary Collaboration Invitation
« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2019, 06:09:05 PM »
It's news to me, too, kiddos.  Let's see if there's something good here.
Jon E. Wennerberg
 a/k/a Seldom Seen Slim
 Skandia, Michigan
 (that's way up north)
2 Club member x2
Owner of landracing.com

Offline Doc B.

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Re: Salt Flats Documentary Collaboration Invitation
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2019, 01:47:46 AM »
FWIW I was contacted yesterday by the production coordinator for what I presume to be the same group, and he seems to be located in Utah. I had to decline because I am already a couple of months into shooting a 2019 season documentary with another filmmaker (and still have a doc from the 2018 season to complete!). This group seems pretty legit.

velocity

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Re: Salt Flats Documentary Collaboration Invitation
« Reply #3 on: March 05, 2019, 04:20:37 AM »
Racers, please do your homework and looking what this production company does before you commit yourself and your precious salt time. I have worked on many productions at many levels through the years and the alarm bells went off reading this "invitation" My guess is they are using this website forum to cast a wide net hoping to catch a couple anxious racers here. I could also be dead wrong.

Reality shows might seem like a grand adventure into TV glory, but get a clear, written statement about how you will be portrayed. Understand that you WILL do this for free (or for a paltry bit of expense money) and have no say in the final cut.

Once you sign that "talent release" your life is theirs to with what they like - for as long as they like as many times as they like. And they will make money. Not you.

This may be a great opportunity, or you might bitterly regret getting involved. "Legit" does not mean good, it only means they are an active production firm. The key is having a director who can understand the sport and then later translate it into proper perspective in the editing bay without the sport getting clobbered.

A "legit" firm I worked with ONCE - also with many Emmys - thought it was just dandy to show a crash 16 times in a single 1-hr production, much to consternation of the team and family. Nothing I said to them about being sensitive to the situation made a difference.

What they care about is eyeballs and NOT your eyeballs.

LandSpeed Louise  
« Last Edit: April 19, 2019, 02:58:47 AM by velocity »

Offline Steven Xu

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Re: Salt Flats Documentary Collaboration Invitation
« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2019, 09:50:04 AM »
FWIW I was contacted yesterday by the production coordinator for what I presume to be the same group, and he seems to be located in Utah. I had to decline because I am already a couple of months into shooting a 2019 season documentary with another filmmaker (and still have a doc from the 2018 season to complete!). This group seems pretty legit.

Thank you, Doc B. Wish you all the best for your doc projects. Our project is still in the pre-production stage and our team has a coordinator in the Salt Lake City to help with the project. We are totally the outsiders from the great Salt Flats community. Every story and every post your share here deepen my understanding. In order to make an authentic project, we have a long way to go.

Cheers

 

Offline Steven Xu

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Re: Salt Flats Documentary Collaboration Invitation
« Reply #5 on: March 05, 2019, 10:18:16 AM »
Racers, please do your homework and looking what this production company does before you commit yourself and your precious salt time. I have worked on many productions at many levels through the years and the alarm bells went off reading this "invitation" My guess is they are using this website forum to cast a wide net hoping to catch a couple anxious racers here. I could also be dead wrong.

Reality shows might seem like a grand adventure into TV glory, but get a clear, written statement about how you will be portrayed. Understand that you WILL do this for free (or for a paltry bit of expense money) and have no say in the final cut.

Once you sign that "talent release" your life is theirs to with what they like - for as long as they like as many times as they like. And they will make money. Not you.

This may be a great opportunity, or you might bitterly regret getting involved. "Legit" does not mean good, it only means they are an active production firm. The key is having a director who can understand the sport and then later translate it into proper perspective in the editing bay with the sport getting clobbered.

A "legit" firm I worked with ONCE - also with many Emmys - thought it was just dandy to show a crash 16 times in a single 1-hr production, much to consternation of the team and family. Nothing I said to them about being sensitive to the situation made a difference.

What they care about is eyeballs and NOT your eyeballs.

LandSpeed Louise 

Thanks for sharing and your outspoken criticisms for the commercial documentary production! I am sorry for your awful experience with the documentary production before. I understand how a commercial team could manipulate a story and how it harms the people who share their trust and invest their love and emotion in the film making process. I am sorry for this kind of result and try to avoid it by communication. In my team's perspective, we want to find a proper way to introduce this unique Salt Flats racing story to the board Chinese audiences who do not know anything about racing. To fill this gap is one of the significance of what we are doing. And we also want to let my Chinese fellows understand they could also have free choice to pursue their dream and fight for it with their dignity just like your guys on the Salt. It is not an easy task but worthwhile for everyone to accomplish. It is fair to be meticulous about communicating with us. We do not want to make misunderstanding here. We are a production company far from the Salt Flats and has little access to reach the racer community, so that is why I post here at the forum. Besides, we have tried ways to contact the different teams that we searched online through emails or facebook messages. Here is one of the attempts that we want to build communication and make our project happened.

Offline Steven Xu

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Re: Salt Flats Documentary Collaboration Invitation
« Reply #6 on: March 05, 2019, 10:50:50 AM »
Here is the information of the director of our project, Zhaoqi:http://www.zhaoqifilms.com/about-zhao-qi.html
Here is the recap of the Adventure of Life season 1:https://youtu.be/Lk210Tqos38

Offline Doc B.

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Re: Salt Flats Documentary Collaboration Invitation
« Reply #7 on: March 05, 2019, 12:19:52 PM »
Racers, please do your homework and looking what this production company does before you commit yourself and your precious salt time. I have worked on many productions at many levels through the years and the alarm bells went off reading this "invitation" My guess is they are using this website forum to cast a wide net hoping to catch a couple anxious racers here. I could also be dead wrong.

Reality shows might seem like a grand adventure into TV glory, but get a clear, written statement about how you will be portrayed. Understand that you WILL do this for free (or for a paltry bit of expense money) and have no say in the final cut.

Once you sign that "talent release" your life is theirs to with what they like - for as long as they like as many times as they like. And they will make money. Not you.

This may be a great opportunity, or you might bitterly regret getting involved. "Legit" does not mean good, it only means they are an active production firm. The key is having a director who can understand the sport and then later translate it into proper perspective in the editing bay with the sport getting clobbered.

A "legit" firm I worked with ONCE - also with many Emmys - thought it was just dandy to show a crash 16 times in a single 1-hr production, much to consternation of the team and family. Nothing I said to them about being sensitive to the situation made a difference.

What they care about is eyeballs and NOT your eyeballs.

LandSpeed Louise 

Thanks for sharing, Louise. I've been involved in various aspects of the entertainment industry for some time and your concerns could certainly be justified, particularly when the term reality is in the mix. One does have to keep in mind that our racing is our art, that we will craft the way we wish. And a documentary is the filmmaker's art, that the filmmaker will craft it as he wishes. Interestingly the filmmaker I am working with for 2019 initially decided to make his doc because he felt that most event coverage being put out these days seems to be by people with an involvement in the sport, and that the content is created for fellow racers and thus not very relatable to the general public. After some time spent learning about the sport he is now looking for a bike to race himself. It seems at least on the surface that these guys may have the same perspective.

Is that kind of coverage of these events a good thing? It's a conundrum. The community wants attention of the general public to help fix the salt. Yet the community wants to stay small and friendly. The community is composed of people with enough ego to want to set records and get noticed by the general public. Yet the community is very protective, and rightly so, as I find it to be one of the finest I have been a part of.

 

velocity

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Re: Salt Flats Documentary Collaboration Invitation
« Reply #8 on: March 05, 2019, 01:15:00 PM »
To be clear, my post was not a condemnation of the Chinese production company, it was merely a broad-based notice to racer about what they might be getting themselves into.

It is very easy to be dazzled by the chance to grab a few minutes of screen time fame so it is equally important to know who you are working with.

Think of it this way:  Before you would put a part in your engine you would do serious research, wouldn't you?

LSL

Offline Steven Xu

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Re: Salt Flats Documentary Collaboration Invitation
« Reply #9 on: March 05, 2019, 07:38:49 PM »
To be clear, my post was not a condemnation of the Chinese production company, it was merely a broad-based notice to racer about what they might be getting themselves into.

It is very easy to be dazzled by the chance to grab a few minutes of screen time fame so it is equally important to know who you are working with.

Think of it this way:  Before you would put a part in your engine you would do serious research, wouldn't you?

LSL

I agree with LSL, people should have a clear understanding of the media they work with. You should know their intention and their background to have overall judgement. As filmmakers, we also need to carefully choose the people who we work with to avoid the failure of the production. It is a big stake for us. If we choose the unreliable person, it could be a disaster considering that we need to bring all our equipment and a big crew to the US. So I need to do my job as meticulous as possible too.

I could share some information about the team here:

Director: Zhao Qi
https://www.cinemaescapist.com/2017/03/interview-zhao-qi-chinese-mayor-documentary/
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3614633/?ref_=tt_ov_dr

Co-director: Zhao Qing
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7647346/?ref_=tt_ov_dr

Director of Cinematography:Sun Shaoguang
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3617671/

Director of the Sound: Fan Liming
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3507279/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Assistant Director Xu Weichao (This is me)
Alumnus from MFA in Documentary Media of Northwestern University, Evanston.


Cheers.
« Last Edit: March 05, 2019, 07:42:30 PM by Steven Xu »