Highlands 6HR Endurance Race: Expert Motorsport Video Production

Overview

Highlands Motorsport Park in Cromwell, Central Otago, celebrated its 10th anniversary with a weekend of motor racing, culminating in a 6-hour Endurance Race, reminiscent of a half Bathurst. Volt Media has a long-standing relationship with Highlands, having covered their first-ever event, the Highlands 101. For this milestone, they entrusted us to create high-end and highly entertaining coverage of the entire weekend's racing.

Challenge and Opportunity

This major event presented an exciting challenge, and we were thrilled to sink our teeth into it. Although we were familiar with the venue, having produced live motorsport there before, the size of the event and the extensive 15-hour live broadcast posed a complex challenge. This required meticulous planning and coordination to manage the event's scale and intricacies.

It was a fantastic opportunity to collaborate closely with the Highlands team, ensuring the anniversary event reached a broad international audience. We welcomed the chance to demonstrate our expertise, help create a unique event, and deliver a truly outstanding broadcast to an international audience.

Approach

To achieve this, we partnered with Image NZ for television trucks and technical crew, assembling a 37-member team including freelancers, We were also lucky enough to be working with broadcast veterans in V8 Supercars commentators and pit reporters Garth Tander, Chad Neylon and Greg Murphy as well as Sky Television’s Stephen McIvor.

Key elements of our approach included:

• Deploying 22 high-performance cameras for comprehensive coverage.

• Designing the 6HR Endurance logo for Highlands marketing campaign, and creating a comprehensive graphics package for live race timing.

• Producing 15” and 30” commercials for Highlands and their sponsorship partners.

• Arriving two days prior to the event to produce driver profiles, archive pieces, track maps, and technical stories.

• Ensuring seamless coordination with the Highlands team and the Race Director for smooth event and broadcast execution.

Results

The broadcast was exceptional, ranking among the best live television productions we've done. Despite the event's complexity, the broadcast was technically seamless, garnering glowing feedback both at the event and on social media. Our efforts contributed significantly to the roaring success of the 10th-anniversary celebrations.

Testimonial

“The Volt team did a fantastic job of managing the logistics and relationships not only on the days filming, but also in the lead up and also taking care of all of the delivery and nuances of ensuring we had the TV time confirmed with various parties, both domestically and internationally.

They took our feedback and advice well and actively sought to deliver the show with the elements we felt were important, while at the same time ensuring it was a world class production. It was a great partnership."

Josie Spillane, Group CEO

Hamptons, Highlands and Taupo Motorsport Parks.