An exciting Mini Car racing event from the 1970s

The vintage home movie that I’m presenting in this article was one I found in a Noris 8 Projector I bought from eBay and features a Racing Event from the 1970s involving many Mini Cars.

Film of the Mini Car racing event

Processing the film

I scanned the film using my recently completed 8mm film scanner and did some post scan edits using Davinci Resolve. Although I normally scan films using a 3 image, exposure compensation technique and merge the images to produce a final image with a higher dynamic range, for this film I scanned it using just a single photographed image per frame. This was mainly just to see how well the final scan came out because for a well exposed film it’s a much faster process.

In terms of post production edits, all I needed to do was add a small amount of sharpening to the clip, tweak the colour balance a bit, and remove a section of about 10 seconds where the film was blank. I then added a title sequence and a decorative border around the film which removes the raw edge of the film frame.

The Mini Car racing event

The actual event features mostly minis but does also have some other makes of car, including a couple of what look like racing cars. The event itself seems to take place on public roads, and there is a sequence at about 1:50 that shows a building, possibly a stately home. If anyone recognises the event or the house please let me know using the comments section below because I’d love to be able to add some more details to this.

The event seems to be involving timed runs of a course because the cars are not racing against each other, so that also may provide some clues as the the location and date of the event.

If you find this sort of film interesting please have a look at the other films on the site, accessible using the Films menu above and consider subscribing to the site.