Paul Brown's Tiger Racing Documentary B5141872 a Film by Allan Crocket
- 6 Sept 2011
The documentary is the passion work of Allan Crocket and friends from Crocket's Barber Driving Experience, homed in Camarillo, California. The film takes a revealing look at what Tiger Racing has had to overcome and work through this season. The in-depth exposé examines the 1969 Mustang Boss 494 Can Am Series from concept, to build, to testing and on to the first races of the 2011 Pirelli World Challenge GTS season.
Tiger Racing is a professional and vintage motorsport team based in the Los Angeles suburb of Covina, California, and their lead driver is K&N sponsored, Paul Brown. The films name "B5141872" is taken from the Mustang's VIN number, and although recalling the film's title may present challenges later, remembering the honest, heartfelt, emotional roller-coaster imagines will not. The film begins and ends with Brown's triumphant victory at this year's Grand Prix at Long Beach, indeed a story onto itself, yet for Brown the win at Long Beach only marked what is shaping up to be a historic milestone season for him and his Tiger Racing team. Piloting the K&N Motorsports Infiniti G35, Brown sent notice early this year by setting several track records, and by winning the opening two rounds of the Redline Pro Time Attack Events for Super Modified RWD. And with his trusted friend and veteran Crew Chief, Adam Cox, Brown followed up his sweep of both races of the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, by increasing his points lead in the SCCA Pro Racing Pirelli World Challenge GTS Driver's Championship and finishing second in both races of the weekend at Infineon Raceway.
"We were all looking forward to another good weekend and even though we had the car to win, the focus was to score points and keep our eye on the real prize, the Championship," Brown remarked. "Going into Rounds 9 and 10, we had one goal in mind and that was to keep it clean, stay out of trouble and finish both races in the best position possible." Brown currently has the points lead with 1249, 221 points over second place, with two rounds of racing remaining. K&N Race News spoke with Allan Crocket about making a race documentary, and the possibility of "B5141872 Part II - The Championship." What inspired you to take this documentary in the direction that you did? "A few things got me going on this project. First and foremost it involved a very talented, good friend (Brown). I raced Mustangs in 2008 to a Time Attack class championship, and so I knew that this car would be good, significant and potentially historical. It really started out as a build documentary, but as things developed, the build became just the building block of this story. The quality of the people and the strong fundamentals, work ethic, and friendship they showed, won me over to make it a larger picture. I literally was compelled at that point. My right-hand man, Stephen Sanderlin, and I started in October and ended filming in April; I'm guessing I have about 700 hours in the project." Ideally what do you expect to achieve with the film? "The piece is designed to be adaptable as ether a one hour TV format, film festival, or Web product. The story is not over, the journey is well underway, but as professional racing is a show, the SCCA has to slow Paul down to make the racing close. So he is now dealing with power restriction, and worse tons of "rewards weight". Can he hang on for a championship? Hard to say, but it will be fun to find out. It is possible the sponsors will request the piece to be expanded to a feature release based on this piece and the potential of making history.
What sort of challenges did you face making the film, and does it live up to your expectations? "OMG - plenty of challenges! Where do I start, there was really no script, set, sound stage. Sound was a serious challenge as we filmed on noisy racetracks and interviewed people while at SEMA with tons of background noise. Another challenge is we didn't go with a crew of 20. It was Stephen and I, or many times just me, with an ENG style HD video camera. Stephen was shooting with a Canon 7D and these two cameras look very different when you edit. Over the project we learned to set the Canon's scene files to be closer to the Panasonic Video camera. Lots of learning on the fly. In a way I guess, this is an ultimate reality show, no set, no actors, just competition with the clock, the checkbook, and the other teams. Ultimately however, we feel that it looks acceptable, and after a few hundred hours mixing, it sounds very real." "Does the project live up to my expectations? Yes, because my journey was very rewarding, and I think we tell the story well. Really though, it's all through the viewers eyes. They will determine the good or bad of it." After the premier in Ojai, what is the plan for the film? "Like Paul, I am in competition. I want to measure myself against the people, and companies that do this sort of thing. That means film festival competitions. I also want to continue this story and it looks like there is a very real chance that may happen." Find K&N products for your vehicle using the K&N application search then use the K&N dealer search to find a K&N dealer in your part of the world. |
