MK Sportscars ‘Behind the Scenes’ from an independent view.
MK Sportscars is a car manufacturing company that sells Lotus Seven inspired kit cars. The business has been run by its current owners for around four years. From an embryonic start in early 2000's producing chassis and suspension components for the Locost, the company was quick to develop its own roadster. Since then, the team have worked to constantly develop and improve their product range, ensuring they maintain affordability, high quality and good performance.
Not only does MK Sportscars have its own website, but they can also be found on various social media, from Tiktok to Instagram. However, I went behind the scenes for the 88th edition of Workshop Walk, published to YouTube.
Workshop Walk
What is Workshop walk? Workshop walk is a series on YouTube for people who are interested in MK Sportscars and what car and services they can provide.
Every week, one of the presenters will go out in one of the Sportscars for a test drive or do a road-test. This highlights to the audience the various qualities of the car.
Today, for our segment, the Striker aero was being presented.
The whole behind the scenes filming process was very interesting. First, Anna, the videographer, and Neil, the presenter who was driving the car that day, met at a relatively quiet location, I arrived just as the cars were rolled out of the workshop. There was a slight delay however, due to Neil forgetting to put on his microphone, in which, Anna had to get out the car she was going to film from and help him out. After a short delay, we were ready to go; the shots we were first going to film were the front facing action shots.
The camera car we were in was a convertible, this was ideal because it meant Anna could turn around and rest her camera on the rear of the car for the rearward facing shots. Then, we drove around some twisty roads, where these sports cars are best suited, so we could get some good videos of the striker car in action.
After this, it was time to film the ""up and by"" shots. We stopped in a road that wasn't very busy, and Neil proceeded to drive up and down the road around 5 times. Anna left a device on the floor which could pick up the sounds of the car’s engine as it drove past us. Every time the car drove back down the road, Anna would switch sides - I later asked why she did this, it was so that she could edit it to make it seem as if the car was driving past the camera, and the camera was moving. She would later also edit music and the sound that she’d previously picked up onto these clips of the striker.
After a few drives up and down the road, it was time for us to move location. We found another quiet road, exposed to the sunshine, where Anna could get some close-up stills and cutaways of specific parts of the car whilst it was stationary. These are called; B-roll, Up and By's and tracking shots. During this time, Neil went live on YouTube; this creates some excitement and teases his audience about the car that will be showcased, it also reminds watchers of the YouTube channel to stay tuned for this car if they are interested, encouraging them to turn on notifications for the channel.
Then we made our way back to the workshop, where everyone who worked for MK Sportscars was hard at work.
When we arrived back, some customers had arrived. They who wanted to go out in the cars to experience them first-hand. Anna thought that this could be featured in workshop walk and, with consent of the customer, the go-pro camera was positioned and they were filmed having fun in the car.
If you watch the footage from this week’s workshop walk, you might also notice the variety of wide, landscape camera shots, these were filmed using a drone. Again driving up and down some more quiet roads, the drone filmed various angles from above, getting the landscape backdrop in to really broadcast the speed at which these cars can travel. These shots help put together the montage for the VT roll.
Once filming day has finished, the videographer takes the footage away to be edited; this will then become a new feature week of workshop walk. You can see the finished product, Episode 88 of Workshop Walk, in the film below.
Written by Finny
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