So this morning I figured, hey why not dig up that old Spain Grand Prix recording from 2018? Still remember screaming at the TV when red car guy tried that wild pass around the outside at turn three. Pure madness. Grabbed my ancient hard drive – thing sounded like a lawnmower spinning up – scrolled forever through folders named stupid stuff like “Misc Crap” and “Vids Maybe.” Took ages.
Found the files finally. Opened my editing software – not gonna lie, it froze solid twice right away. Just hung there mocking me. Coffee turned cold while I rebooted. Loaded the main race footage first. Whole thing looked kinda washed out? Like faded. Had to mess with the color sliders for like half an hour. Pulled the shadows up way too much at first – everything looked flat and weird. Backed it off slowly until the dark bits looked dark again without hiding all the details. Tweaked highlights too. Colors were still off… skin tones looked weirdly orange. Played with the tint slider forever till people didn’t look like oompa loompas.
Cutting together the good bits was messy. Needed the start chaos for sure – cars bunching up into that first corner, that crazy near-miss when silver car almost clipped blue car’s rear wing. Searched through like an hour of footage just to find those ten seconds. Kept rewinding and playing, rewinding and playing. My eyes crossed. Wanted that tense pit stop moment too – the one where yellow car crew scrambled like crazy ants but messed up the front tire change. Watched it frame by frame just to see the wheel nut bounce away. Hilarious. Almost forgot that insane radio message from the guy who cussed out his engineer over the team radio – pure gold. Took a while to isolate that audio cleanly too.
Got distracted watching old battles. That one duel lasted like five laps! Couldn’t leave that out. Chopped it down hard though, kept the close wheel-to-wheel stuff where they were nearly touching. Slapped together a rough sequence. Played it back… felt way too jumpy. Needed smoother links. Tried a few transitions – basic fades mostly. One fast zoom looked ridiculous, like a cheesy action movie, scrapped that instantly. Simple cuts worked better. Color still bugged me – the green grass looked way too neon. Pulled down the saturation a little.
Realized I’d barely touched the sound. The raw engine noise was just a constant roar. Lowered the general race audio big time so you could actually hear the tires screeching during cornering and that metallic scraping sound when one guy rode the curb too hard. Made the radio messages punchier with a bit more bass. Found some half-decent background music that didn’t sound like elevator tunes – something kinda driving, not too distracting.
Rendered the thing. Took forever. Computer sounded like a jet engine. Finally played the finished highlights. Spotted a typo in my opening caption – fixed that fast. Looks alright? Good enough honestly. Sometimes you just gotta stop fiddling and say it’s done. Remembered why I loved that race though – so much drama! That unexpected pass for the lead in the final laps? Goosebumps every time. Maybe next I’ll dig into Monaco 2017.
