"People fall in love with harness racing for different reasons. Some people really love the puzzle aspect of it, some people really love the horses. Personally I love both of those things but I really, really love the characters and any good piece of media tells a story
- it's all about story-telling and that takes lots of good characters, so I figured 'let's put the camera in the hands of the storytellers and the characters themselves'. From that I think we'll get a really good snapshot of all of the character that makes up harness racing.">.
On today's Trot Radio, Norm Borg goes one-on-one with marketing guru Kelly Spencer. Last year's Golden Pen Award winner for her tremendous marketing and promotional contributions to the harness racing industry is switching some of her focus to film-making as the mastermind behind Race Day, a documentary on harness racing with footage supplied by the people in the industry.
"Whatever their day brings on Saturday, August 6, whether they're racing or not racing...as long as they're doing some sort of harness racing or standardbred-related activity, then they should document it," states Spencer.
Borg and Spencer agree that the biggest assets we have in harness racing are people and characters within the business that devote their lives to it, making this short film project an invaluable promotional tool.
"The key is that people shouldn't over-think this. We don't want people to edit their footage, we just want them to shoot it and send it to us and we'll take care of all the editing. We're really looking for truthful, poignant, sort of home movie stuff. That's the concept people should keep in mind."
Through Spencer's Iron Horse Photo, Race Day will premiere at the 2011 O'Brien Awards. For more information on Race Day, please visit the Race Day website. To hear the full interview with Spencer, click on the play button below.
Episode 214 – Race Day Documentary with Kelly Spencer
Audio Format: MP3 audio
Host: Norm Borg
Please note that the opinions expressed in the featured interview are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect Rideau Carleton Raceway and/or Standardbred Canada.
(Photo credit: Tony Saxon/Guelph Mercury)
