Core Racing released a new video covering their Abarth 500 Trophy – this time at Brands Hatch.

Doing interesting racing videos isn’t as easy as it sounds. This is exactly how you do it. Let’s have a look why.

#1 Short cuts

With a few well chosen exceptions, you won’t find a single shot that is longer than 2 or 3 seconds. This is probably the most important value to the quality of “interesting”. Having takes that last only a bit longer, like 5 or 7 seconds lower the tension and entertainment value – unless you have extremly interesting content to show.

#2 Surprises

Especially with game footage that comes from something like an Assetto Corsa replay, we often end up with camera settings and angles that are known very well. In the worst case you could set the replay camera to “TV” and record 5 minutes of driving. Viewers will have a hard time to stay awake, although the TV cams in AC are pretty good – but we just know them.

You need to surprise people with your presentation. The Core Racing video doesn’t only use very different views all the time, but it also contains some unpredictable elements that really surprise, up to things we might have never seen before. The viewers brain instantly leaves the comfort mode, which ends up in excitement. Like wait, is this a real sky editied in? How did they control the camera like that? Oh, audience point of view. => Great work here.

But be aware: Don’t repeat your surprises. They are meant to be special.

#3 The beat

So far this could have been an pretty good video, no question. But it is more. They didn’t only add some music, the whole video is cut within the flow and beat. That’s really exceptional.

Watch it again. The intro with longer cuts, calm and predictable, perfectly match the music. The first beat has a great opening with some fancy zoom towards the surprising and epic looking total/sky, matching the flow of music.

Then the music is a bit more expressive and faster, so are the cuts. Still intro, though.

At 0:19 the race starts with the refrain and both video and sound action raise. Now the song really has a beat – which is (often) defining the exact moments of the cuts. If there was room to critize, you could say that this could be more precise and better synchronized.

0:34-0:37 perfectly matches and presents a short slow passage in the song with a slow, moving closeup – and back to business. Wow.

The best part was already tried in older videos, starting at 0:49 – they let the F5 camera turn around different cars and switch the focused car every beat with high accuracy. This took some effort and practice to produce.

Summary: This video wasn’t cut and then some music applied. It was edited for the music. This is where craftsmanship ends and art begins. If you try this, always make sure you have a little app running on the top or bottom that displays the current session time in milisecond resolution, especially when you don’t drop the ingame sounds. I would be very interested to hear about some tricks from the Core Racing creators .

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Towards the end, the acutal car control and action on the track is pronounced without violating the short cuts, surprise elements and beats. Very creative and technically difficult takes are mixed up, but each type is only used exactly one time. Viewers with AC video editing experience might favor an insane shot at 1:28 where a fly-by is focused manually.

Very well done, guys. I don’t even care about your racing and just rewatch your video. Again. But the most important question isn’t answered: Where do we get this freaking sky mod?