Help Promoting RC

[sosidge]

Originally Posted by mole2k

I think the trouble is you have to be quite firm with any media coverage you get as they will tend to portray it as people playing with toy cars. I'm not sure what the best way to go about getting them to realise it's more than that is though.

After you convince them then you gotta get coverage that would convince the unwashed masses as well.

I'm afraid that approach won't work unless you are paying for coverage. The media is a fickle beast and if you try and dictate terms they will walk away - or do hack job on you instead!

[mole2k]

Originally Posted by David Church

I agree, but they are asking what I want, and I told them that previous coverage was pants, so hopefully, he says with the utmost optimism, we can get something that looks good and is good!!!!!!!!!!!!

It would be great if there could be a good documentary made showing the true side of it and the sport some proper positive publicity

Originally Posted by sosidge

I'm afraid that approach won't work unless you are paying for coverage. The media is a fickle beast and if you try and dictate terms they will walk away - or do hack job on you instead!

I don't think dictating terms is the best way to go about as you said they will just walk away or do a bad job but at the same time you end up with the decision to make that is any coverage better than no coverage even if that coverage would give a fairly unfavourable impression of R/C racing being people playing with expensive toy cars.

[Alfonzo]

The problem is of course that it is largely iplaying with toy cars. It needs someone to get to depths with the underlying psychology of the sport, some of the characters involved, etc. The technical aspect will never appeal much, but the papers love people related stories.

[David Church]

Originally Posted by Alfonzo

The problem is of course that it is largely iplaying with toy cars. It needs someone to get to depths with the underlying psychology of the sport, some of the characters involved, etc. The technical aspect will never appeal much, but the papers love people related stories.

This i true, and I have said all of this to them, I have listened to people's advice!!!
I have asked if they can film, the races, the track, the pits, the cars and the people!!! I am also hoping that I can be involved in what they film, maybe even further my MC-career, well if they film at all cause they have not said yes yet.
But they are def interested

[terry.sc]

Firstly as has been said, no matter how seriously some people take it we are all just playing with toy cars.
Not 1/10 OR, but to give you some ideas for filming these are the best videos I know of which give much better examples of what r/c is about than the usual dross TV companies film these days as 'entertainment'.

All have been filmed for TV.
WLRC on Top Gear - when they didn't take the piss http://www.wlrc.co.uk/video/videos.htm

Wheelie Small - 2007 bike world champs focussing on the drivers
http://current.com/items/88858800/wheelie_small.htm

Why Don't You - aimed at kids but more chance of getting them interested in starting racing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cRrV7j7tWo

[showtime]

unfortunately like keeps being said we'll never going to get away from the "Toy Car" thing no matter how you dress it up!

take a final for instance from a spectator point of view-
the cars are small so its difficult to see them reacting to the terrain etc!
after a couple of laps you really can't tell who's in the lead
plus the race leader is even harder to predict in Nitro due to different pitstop strategies!

i suppose you'd need to focus almost as much on the characters driving to give a human element but as we all know RC isn't populated by a great number of "Rock star" types!
plus how appealing would a rostrum full of blue faced wooly hatted big scarfed large coated frozen gumbos look
bearing in mind we have at least 50% shit weather over here
even a wet meeting in the summer would look dreary!

i think the only way you'll have anything with any universal appeal HAS to be indoors, in a well lit, temporate environment. the track HAS to be spectacular with a long straight so people can appreciate the speed & plenty of big jumps for the OOOH AAAH reaction plus maybe incorporate something else a bit more interactive in another part of the building, maybe other side of pitting area, drifting or something else joe public might be attracted to? let em have a go! maybe even just a bank of linked up driving games?
(remember the 4 way Sega rally from years ago?) that might be popular?
you need trophy babes, decent announcer, the odd bit of loud music etc
some thing to add a bit of Razzmatazz

look at wrestling, its rubbish big sweaty blokes pretending to fight BUT people go mad for it as they Jazz it right up & put on a hell of a show!

you'd need to think of building some HYPE in to the event & more importantly into the run up to the event

then once you've got peoples attention they can just get used to watching the regular watered down stuff

[bodgit]

Ok so were all just playing with toys....So was Lewis Hamilton not so long ago, and he still dabbles I believe. This is what you have to get over to the media. For some its just a bit of fun , for others who knows could the next F1 world champion be right under their noses. Its a photo opertunity for the future..
A couple of lifesize banners or cut outs of Lewis with his buggies from years ago would certainly get the youngsters interested..

[mole2k]

I think if you had some videos of the events to advertise that use quite long lenses and track the cars around the track quite closely so you can get to see the cars bumping over the track and reacting to the bumps and jumps. Lots of different camera angles varying from static camera's to people with camera's tracking the cars with a good easy to follow commentary track over the top of it.

A single camera following some cars with a fairly wide angle lens wont let you see the cars work and consequently wont make anywhere near as good or interesting a video. Unfortunately doing a video that way massively escalates the costs of it as instead of one guy with a mini-DV you're talking about a team of people with DV cams who can use them well.

I've wanted to do some proper videos for a while unfortunately aside from racing in a small hall on polished wood there is no 1/10 off-road racing here. I am going to be doing a video similar to that I described for a touring car race that's being held near here, if im honest I would prefer a 1/10th off-road meeting as I think there would be more interesting stuff happening and close up shots would let you see the suspension working.