Iron Horse Photo Inc. has announced the launch of Race Day, a new-concept short documentary about harness racing, created with user-generated content.
All of the footage used in the film will be shot by people who love, live and breathe harness racing. The producers are urging harness racing participants and enthusiasts to shoot their harness racing day on Aug. 6.
By relinquishing control of the video cameras to racing enthusiasts and amateur videographers, the producers hope to obtain candid and honest footage that captures the colour, emotion, character and characters of the harness racing game.
The most compelling and distinctive footage will be used to create a 20 to 30 minute documentary illustrating life’s highs, lows, and colourful in-betweens in harness racing, all captured in one day.
Race Day will premiere at the black-tie O’Brien awards gala on Jan. 28 in Mississauga. The awards celebrate the best in harness racing over a given year and are the highest honour the sport bestows in Canada.
Following its premiere, Race Day will be available online at www.RaceDayDoc.com and on the Race Day doc YouTube channel. Race Day will be supported by a publicity team that will promote the film for inclusion in film festivals and contests, and for distribution across global broadcast mediums.
It will be used as a tool to increase exposure for harness racing through the power of film.
Iron Horse Photo is hoping for submissions from around the globe, and is accepting footage from anyone age 13 or older. Snippets of footage from all contributors will be included in a Race Day video montage to be released online two weeks before the release of the final film.
Contributors who make the final cut will be acknowledged in the final film credits. There is no cash reward for footage submission.
All footage must be shot on one day, Aug. 6.
Footage must be submitted to Race Day producers by Aug. 31.
A trailer for Race Day will be released online on Jan. 1.
A video montage (includes clips from all contributors) will be released Jan. 14.
The final film will premiere in Mississauga and will be released online on Jan. 28.
Publicity efforts to maximize exposure for the film, and the harness racing industry, will be ongoing throughout 2012.
This project was inspired by last year’s global experimental feature documentary Life In A Day, which invited YouTube users to take a video camera and record their day on July 24. The producers received 80,000 videos containing 4,500 hours of footage. The final piece was 90 minutes long and premiered on YouTube during the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and will be released in select theatres this summer.
Race Day is produced by Iron Horse Photo Inc., which is owned and operated by Kelly Spencer, an award-winning harness racing publicist and photographer. It specializes in equine photography and video production and has, for the past decade, served as the track photographer at five tracks throughout Ontario.
Spencer is also the director of marketing and communications at Grand River Raceway in Elora.
For complete details about the Race Day project, visit www.racedaydoc.com.
