Howdy Clark —
Been thinking about this more.
I think there’s a pretty simple version where I come along, shoot the heck out of the Rally, and do it without turning the week into a production.
I’m not really interested in making a traditional event recap. I’d rather make something that feels like the trip itself: a bunch of small cars making their way across central Japan in October, with several days of mountain roads, food, strange stops, beautiful ryokan, and whatever else happens in between.
Less event recap and more moving field note.
The goal would be to come away with a series of short shareable films and library of footage that feels like RoundCat.
What I’d Make
At the center would be one hero Rally film — probably a minute or two — built more around the feeling of the week than a strict day-by-day recap.
But I’d also be shooting with the shorter stuff in mind from the beginning. Little films that can live on their own: ten seconds of a kei car disappearing into the fog, a whip from one car to another on a mountain road, a low-mounted run through fallen leaves, maybe some random roadside stop ends up being perfect on its own. Though, I’d rather let the trip tell us what those are than promise a giant list upfront.
Basically, a steady stream of bite-sized pieces that feel made for RoundCat rather than chopped out of a longer recap after the fact.
And at the end, I’d give you a curated, organized library of the best footage from the week so RoundCat has a proper moving-image archive to keep using.
How I’d Shoot It
I’d work solo, keep the setup small, and move with the group.
Visually, I want to get the cameras into places they normally wouldn’t be. Low off a bumper. Hanging just above the road. Looking straight back at the car behind us. Skimming alongside a wheel. Starting on a mountain view and whipping around as another little car comes flying into frame. There’s some really fun (and portable) car-mount technology now that lets a tiny camera ride smoothly right down near the bodywork, even when the road gets rough.
Then I want to counter all that movement with stillness. Long lenses across valleys. Cars disappearing into mist. A kei truck the size of a postage stamp against the Alps.
I think that contrast is cool: Sometimes we’re inches off the asphalt. Sometimes we’re half a mountain away.
And because a lot of those car-mounted moments are naturally short and graphic, they’re perfect raw material for social — five, ten, fifteen seconds that can hit hard without needing a whole story around them.
The stuff between the driving matters too: meals, stops, conversations, objects, and those little moments where the Good Design Feeling shows up naturally.
The simplest setup is pairing me with a solo driver as a co-driver. That keeps me inside the Rally and lets me shoot without complicating things. If possible, I’d also love to float between cars now and then so the footage picks up different vehicles and perspectives.
If there’s a stretch where a chase car would genuinely open things up, we can talk about that too.
Beforehand, I’d love a quick route run-through with you so I know where you think the good stuff might be hiding.
The Rally still comes first. Everyone will obviously know I’m there, but I don’t want the filming getting in the way of anyone actually enjoying the week. The whole point of keeping the setup small is that we can get surprisingly ambitious images without making the Rally feel like a production.
What You’d Get
One main Rally film, plus a handful of shorter social pieces cut from the strongest material.
And a curated footage library for RoundCat to keep using afterward.
I also like the idea of lightly working route details into the edits — place names, map lines, elevation, whatever — but keeping it very understated.
And if we end up with great material around individual cars or participants and somebody wants something more bespoke afterward, we can always figure that out together.
RoundCat comes first.
The Trade
I can get myself to Japan and would plan on arriving in Tokyo a few days early so I can prep everything properly before we leave.
What I can’t realistically cover is the cost of joining the Rally itself.
So my thought is simple:
I trade the production and post work — shooting the trip, creating the finished films, and delivering the curated footage library — for my place on the Rally, including the accommodations that come with it and a workable way for me to travel with the group (ideally a seat as a co-driver, or access to a car if that makes more sense).
There may be a few small production expenses to sort, mostly media and storage, but nothing crazy.
Beyond that, I’d like to keep the whole thing as uncomplicated as possible.
Let’s Go
I think there’s an opportunity here to make something genuinely beautiful.
Not simply documentation of the RoundCat Rally, but a body of work that captures why somebody would want to go in the first place. Small cars. Big landscapes. Good roads. Interesting people. Japan, of course. And all the weird little details in between.
Mostly, I want to make something that feels like the trip will probably feel:
A little offbeat.
A little beautiful.
And a hell of a lot of fun.
— カイル