Behind the Scenes of our DRAGG Car Pursue Movie
Behind the Scenes of our DRAGG Car Pursue Movie
A week or so ago, we posted our in-house-produced movie of an S550 Police car pursuing a robbery suspect in a BMW, drifting their way through an epic pursuit that eventually finishes with the subject cuffed and rammed up against a private plane. Or was it just the potential criminal’s bad fantasy? That’s up to you to determine.
Your author ventured up the Camarillo (CA) airport about an hour north of Los Angeles to observe the movie shoot and get to know the players, and the photo gallery here is what came out of that, plus the killer photography of 9nine2.
The idea came out of the minds of our former videographer Johnny Wilcox and the guys at Haul Racing Against Gangs & Graffiti (DRAGG), Sergeants Charles Woodruff and Daniel Shrubb. Woodruff and Shrubb formed DRAGG toughly seven years ago, beginning by building a two thousand six Mustang (after wooing his commanding officer that it was a good idea) and taking it around to schools to talk to kids about the dangers of gangs and general delinquent behavior, and that morphed into a shop class-style program that the students could get a semester credit for taking.
Woodruff said, “Our main thrust now is getting kids involved in the automotive industry instead of having them spend time on the streets getting into trouble. We want to thrust them to look at what’s out there for them, instead of going down the path that we see far too many of them taking.”
Woodruff said gangs, drugs, and violence is a big problem in the Ventura/Camarillo area, a predominantly agricultural area—there are a lot of strawberry and onion fields there—and many of the kids don’t have strong role models to help guide them through their teenage years. Woodruff was a basketball coach a few years ago so he had practice mentoring students, and would love it when a student would come back years later and thank him for the practice. That led him to attempt and “coach” the same way to the kids in trouble that didn’t know they had any other choices, hence the formation of DRAGG.
He said, “We’ve had a superb response to the program. It began with the local schools and is now with the entire (Ventura) county. We give them lots of hands-on practice at different locations—there are six students out here today on this movie shoot and we’re attempting to incorporated them into the movie. That’s the indeed cool part: not only are they in class learning to switch oil and stuff like that, we also take them on tours to Vortech’s place, for example, to showcase them why they need the math and computer abilities.”
One of those students, Jonathan Gonzales told us, “The DRAGG guys came to the school and gave a speech, and it sounded like something I wished to do. My counselor signed us up.” Jonathan is presently in the process of building a one thousand nine hundred eighty seven Chevy C10 pickup and said he would love to write for a car magazine. We told him to pay attention in English and writing classes and call us when he graduated!
The DRAGG team built this two thousand fifteen EcoBoost Mustang, named Skinny Blue Line, for the SEMA display, getting the car from Ford and outfitting it with some basic bolt-ons, and that’s when Wilcox witnessed the car came up with the idea for the movie. Woodruff said, “This is a non-profit program and we have no marketing budget, so we worked with Wilcox on this movie, and as we got closer, more and more people hopped on board. Like the chopper in the video—he donated his time and helicopter to the movie, and he’s a big-time Hollywood and police chopper pilot. He didn’t have to do that.” (Just the fuel bill for this shoot would have been in the thousands of dollars, but it was all gratis once he learned of the program). Likewise, none of this have been possible without the support of the following: DRAGG; Ford Spectacle, Lucas Oil Products, Vortech Superchargers, Five.11+, Borla, Air Lift Spectacle, Mustang 360, and Super Street Network.
We can’t leave behind the drivers behind the wheels of the Mustang and BMW—they are “Officer Dan” Brockett and Matt Coffman, both former Formula D drift drivers. Brockett…sorry, Officer Dan said, “I met the DRAGG guys three years ago at the SEMA demonstrate. They had a cop Mustang and asked me if I wished to drive for them. That was an effortless answer—YES! So we did drifting demonstrations out front of the demonstrate all week, very likely the best SEMA Display I’ve ever had.” Coffman is a friend of Dan’s and came down from his home in Oregon to take part in the shoot. He told us that he’s done a bunch of drifting and pro rally racing, but like 99-percent of racers found out that actually making a living in racing is a almost unlikely, so he’s attempting to get into stunt driving now.
So check out the photo gallery for all of the behind-the-scenes of this multi-day movie production, and stay tuned for more to come!
