Anyone who’s anyway interested in motorsport knows that in every race all over the world what you need is a circuit, the vehicles (race cars, bikes, trucks), the drivers and… more. We’re talking about those “orange” men and women standing trackside and watching over every single second of the race.  If something goes wrong, some of them start flagging, some others go on track looking for the driver and his health, and others came out with estinguishers in case of fire, just because their mission it’s clear: make sure that everything is ok for all race long.

Some say they are “the eyes and the arms” of Race Director, but, who they really are? And what it means to be a Track Marshal?

There’s someone who decided to answer these questions, focusing the attention on Marshals during real races and tell the story which is behind their life inside and outside tracks. His name is Edward Sanchez, film director and founder of Soft-Focus Productions (www.soft-focus.co.uk), a young company started in 2011 specialized on producing documentaries, making promotional videos and commercial photography based in Birmingham, UK, and his project is named Trackside, a 360 degrees documentary featuring “the orange men”.

https://www.facebook.com/tracksidefilm

As independent project, Trackside is based on sharing with community the chance to be realized, therefore the whole project is presented on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is one of the largest funding platform for creative projects (film, music, art, theater, games, comics, design, photography), where everybody can support projects creators by voluntary money pledges, in order to allow them to achieve the necessary budget to cover the costs of making.

This, with a peculiarity, as Edward explained us during the interview we made to know something more about the main features of  Trackside.

Hi Edward. So, one day in 2013, in the hi-tech era where guys normally are interested in their idols like football players, F1 champions, popstars etc., you decided to become director and producer of a documentary featuring Track Marshals. This is quite unusual, how did you get the idea?
I’ve been the director and DOP on several documentaries in the past few years about a range of different subjects and themes, but having been a life long Motorsport fan I thought it would be really great to make a film about something I am really passionate about.  I was at Silverstone for Silverstone Classic and found myself watching the marshals and what a great job they do!

Why do you think that is important that people know something more about the Track Marshals?
I think they do a great job, and we’re not saying that no one ever shows them appreciation, they quite often do get recognition, but many people still don’t realise the full extend of what it is that marshals do at each race around the world, mostly voluntarily.

Which steps you will follow to tell us all the things that we don’t know about the men and women in orange?
We are following several marshals in the UK going from day to day learning not just about their marshaling life but also about their lives and experiences outside of marshaling. Through this we will also be exploring and talking to marshals who have various other roles within the entire marshal team.

And so, during the story you will look also at the security on track issue. What are your feelings about that?
Security is obviously a very important issue for marshals in Motorsport. We know just as much as others as we are having to fill in crew forms so that we can gain permissions to film during the races themselves. There were several incidents in throughout the season in 2013 season in which drivers and audience members alike were hurt. This is obviously something that has been looked at ready for the new upcoming season.

What do you expect from this experience?
We have already started spending time with our marshals and really enjoying finding out about their lives as well as marshals. We attending the Marshals Training up at Oulton Park, near Manchester in the UK at the beginning of February and this was a really good chance for our crew to learn about all the important rules and regulations that marshals must learn , and we had the chance to pick all this up as well.

UK is one of the few countries in the world with a glorious motorsport history. We can consider Trackside a little tribute to that?
Trackside will certainly be looking back into the history books and archive reels about how marshaling and Motorsport has changed over the years. We have a very exciting interview booked that contains an interesting moment from the sport back in the late 1970s which we think will show a stark contrast to what could happen now-a-days.

Trackside is an independent project, you will have some filming and production costs I suppose, so what about the funds?
Producing a documentary is quite expensive. We have absorbed most of the costs ourselves and have already started paying, however to go to as many races and get as much footage as possible is going to get very expensive. Not only that but there are Festival Fees, Music & Film licensing fees and many other costs. To help with these we are using Kickstarter. This gives people from all around the world a chance to help fund the film but in return for various rewards.

Rewards?
Yes, they range from Digital Downloads of the film to DVDs, Patches for their overalls and signed merchandise. People interested in helping can choose pledge amount, it goes from a £5 to a free over £100 offer. Rewards are assigned to each kind of donation. It is really important we hit our target of £5000 or we get nothing that people have already pledged to us!

Your favorite track in England?
There are so many great tracks in the UK and all great at different things. Its quite an obvious one but I’m going to say Silverstone!

Your favorite track all around the world?
The Abu Dhabi GP has to be one of the best races to watch on the world wide GP season.

Thank you and good luck, Edward, we hope that fans will widely support you and we wait to see your film very soon!

https://www.facebook.com/tracksidefilm

Official website here.

(Versione italiana qui)