BMW Films

If you don't already know about the BMW Films (also known as The Hire) then you owe it to yourself to check them out. An excellent series of short films, with a decent budget, famous directors and actors, and Clive Owen as The Driver in each one. Unfortunately, they're not available for viewing or download from BMW's site any more, however with the popularity of YouTube the films are viewable once more. Have a look through the search results and check them out.

Two of my favourites are Beat The Devil and Star. I've got the rest of them on DVD somewhere - I must dig it out again and watch them.

They were made in 2001/2002 and done as a stealth marketing promo by BMW. The films were quite a bit more popular than BMW first envisaged, and were all over the internet for quite a while. a DVD was made, but was very hard to get your hands on.

Pirelli have recently gone in the same direction, with The Call - Once again, another good short film, but personally, I do prefer the BMW films for their variety, the storylines they weave in less than 10 minutes, and of course seeing expensive BMWs being driven the way they should be =)

I read somewhere that the jump in Star was one of the first shots for the movie and once the M3 went up in the air, and came back down, it didn't work any more. Nice start to the filming!