by Nathan Earl
It seemed like such a simple comedic premise…and it was. A young bloke, on his P-plates, just driving around the Launceston ‘blockie route’ in his mum’s 1994 Holden Barina.
Having grown up in regional Australia, I knew the practice well. Too young to go to the pub, too old to sit around at home with your parents – so you’d head into the local town centre on a weeknight and ‘do laps’ – celebrating the newfound independence having a driver’s licence finally gave you.
It was this concept, after a long journey, that eventually became an eight part web series called Australia’s Best Street Racer.
Launched exclusively on YouTube less than two months ago, the series has already had more than 1.4 million views and the numbers show no signs of slowing down. Clearly, this little show about an 18-year-old street-racing wannabe has hit a nerve with audiences.
Conceived by Launceston locals Dylan Hesp [pictured above with Nathan Earl] and Michael O’Neill, I came to Australia’s Best Street Racer via an initiative called #ComedyConcentrate. Driven by film funding bodies Screen Tasmania and Screen Australia, #ComedyConcentrate matched up-and-coming Tasmanian creatives with industry mentors. The goal being the development and production of a proof of concept pilot that could then ideally find support within the marketplace.
But sometimes the marketplace doesn’t always know best. Sometimes you’ve got to go where the audience already is, rather than try to drag them to you.
YouTube was a natural fit for the talents of Co-Creators, Writers and Directors, Dylan and Michael. They had been playing in that space for years, honing their skills and crunching the platform’s data. Plus, they knew – instinctively – that that’s where the Street Racer audience was, waiting in the wings, ready to watch, share and comment.
One Stone Pictures was no stranger to making content in a roundabout way. Our previous series, Plonk, had a unique funding and distribution model, that also circumvented a traditional TV commission. And although this approach means crafting content on leaner and meaner budgets, sometimes more frugal productions can actually enhance the comedy being made. In a way it intensifies the need for each scene, each location and each character to be refined, to justify their existence in the script.
And it’s hard not to point to the results and say: “see, with the right idea, targeted to the right audience, even the smallest of productions can have a big impact”.
Working with Dylan and Michael on their Street Racer project, shepherding it through development, scripting, production and now rollout has been one of the most surprisingly rewarding experiences I’ve had in TV. In many ways it reminded me of those heady days producing The Chaser’s War on Everything or Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure – pure comedic projects, driven with purpose and conviction by a team who all knew exactly what they wanted to say.
And if that’s not worth freezing your arse off, filming in a Launceston car park at 1am, I don’t know what is.
Nathan Earl is executive producer of Australia’s Best Street Racer.
Photos by Mel De Ruyter
