[ News
| Homes
| Life
| Entertainment
| History
| Science
| Community
| Shop ]
| Sport
| Culture
| Cars
| Money
| Broadband
| Learning
| Health
| Dating
| Games ]
[ Text Only: Homepage ]
[ Graphical: Channel4 Homepage ]
Home | Programmes | Behind The Scenes | Hot Rod History | Custom Creations | Find Out More
Series director Sam Eastall gives us the lowdown on what happened off camera
As some people might have gathered, the format for the show originates from the United States. It was our mission at LWT to create our very own British Monster Garage. That meant coming up with eight challenges that were uniquely British, and finding some of the best mechanics and engineers in the country who could carry out the builds in just four days.
The filming schedule was intense, with only small gaps between each challenge for presenter Cookie to recover from the last. Each team had a few late nights as the four-day time limit meant, in some cases, using the nights as well as the days. But, as a testament to the skill of the teams, every build was completed within the given time.
It's not every day you get to turn a Range Rover into a hot air balloon or a Rolls Royce into a muck spreader, but the guys and girls in the garage took to the unusual tasks as if it was their normal routine. Well, not quite everyone fitted in to the teams in the way we expected. Some were so used to working alone that Cookie's style of leadership was too much to take. One mechanic who crossed the big guy suggested that he was putting his hard man act on for the cameras. His reply? 'Right, turn the cameras off!' The mechanic quickly took back his accusation.
After shooting the first episode, 'Kiss my Grass', the editing began but one of the main elements was still missing. We couldn't decide what character 'the voice of Monster Garage' should have. On the first show, editor Richard Buss put down a temporary voice track. Usually Richard's voice sounds perfectly normal, but as soon as he got into the booth to record the temporary track something strange happened! The tape with the temporary voice track found its way to Channel 4 and to our executive producer, Joe Houlihan. They both loved it. It soon became clear that no other voice would be monstrous enough, so Richard ended up doing all eight shows!
The mechanics and the production team all had a lot of fun making the series. Their reward was to see some of the most unusual vehicles ever created. Our main aim was to try to capture that sense of fun and achievement in the episodes. I hope we succeeded!
Graphical version of this page