No, you’re not watching the 5 o’clock news or an episode of “Nitro Circus,” what you’re probably seeing is another awesomely raucous video from the guerrilla filmmakers at IMV Films. Based out of Gainesville, Florida, this video production company focuses on all aspects of the automotive world and racing, and we mean all.

It’s feature videos and DVD’s are filmed documentary or “YouTube-style” and cover a wide range of motorsports, including all the ups and downs of street racing, drag racing, professional road and rally races, track days, and dyno pulls. IMV has produced three DVD films so far: Moab: Like Nothing Else, Team Tork and the Scumballers – which follows the Gumball Rally – and Vehicular Lunatics. The company has joined the movement toward online streaming and on-demand video.

IMV Films’ goal to punch out creative, edgy, and hilarious films while showcasing and documenting some of the finest cars in the world with a high standard of quality has certainly been achieved as IMV Films’ are renowned for being some of the most controversial and entertaining we’ve ever seen. We spoke with IMV Films’ Producer Sav Charudattan to learn more about the company and what goes into the films they produce.

PowerTV: How did IMV get started?

Sav Charudattan: Through the car club [International Motorsports]. Around 2001, a friend of mine, who is now our associate producer, started showing up at some of our meets with a home video camera. He’d get off work and show up and ride with me and start filming. Within about a year or so, he brought a friend he’d met at school that also had a camera like his and was interested in filming cars. When they both started filming, they decided to make short videos.

Courtesy: Sav Charaudattan

PowerTV: How did you transition IMV from short videos to full-fledged DVD films?

Sav Charudattan: The short films were kind of like a quick treat. You just throw it up online, do something entertaining, and watch it. Our very first DVD, Lunacy At It’s Finest, was nothing more than a compilation of internet videos strung together in order. When we did Vehicular Lunacy, we wanted to make a bigger, full-scale DVD.

Vehicular Lunatics Preview

PowerTV: What sets IMV apart from all of the amateur automotive videographers on the web?

Sav Charudattan: A few years ago, before HD became popular, what set us apart and still sets us apart is our willingness to not exactly censor anything. A lot of it is the story; we like to have some sort of human emotion and we want to have something going on with fantastic audio – like car audio, and good footage.

PowerTV: How much time does the typical film take to shoot?

Sav Charudattan: Vehicular Lunatics took two years to shoot. It was a variety of stuff from 2003 and 2004, and then once shooting was complete, we had 110 hours of raw footage plus an additional 29 hours of Gumball Rally footage. All that was sort of condensed down into one hour and 50 minutes. The whole editing process, with creating a storyline and recording the voice-overs, took four months.

PowerTV: How much manpower and equipment is involved in filming?

Sav Charudattan: Two Canon GL2 cameras, some small audio equipment such as laser mics and boom mics, and the computer hardware and editing software. Right now, there are three of us filming and editing.

PowerTV: What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done or encountered while filming?

Sav Charudattan: We’ve been around guns and fire, we’ve driven through fire. Our executive producer, Jerry Reynolds, crashed his Viper in the desert in Morocco during the 2004 Gumball, and we just happened to catch that on film just by chance. That was exceedingly scary, because we all had a thought in the back of our mind that something was going to happen. He hit a couple of bumps in the road that were probably equal to a couple speed bumps at 130 miles per hour, and it bottomed the car and jumped it up in the air, and landed almost at a 45-degree angle and shot off the road and went into a ditch, flipped up in the air and did a cartwheel. It looked so horrible that in our minds we were just freaking out. We though that he was dead.

Vehicular Lunacy At It’s Finest Preview

PowerTV: Whats the craziest thing that’s ever occurred during filming?

Sav Charudattan: There’s a lot of things. One of the craziest things we did was burn a car that we were using as rally car and filmed it, that whole day was pretty crazy.

PowerTV: Have you had run-ins with the law or been arrested for something you’ve done for a film?

Sav Charudattan: In the filming? Not exactly, but in the years of racing, yes.

PowerTV: What’s ahead for IMV films?

Sav Charudattan: Pay-on-Demand. And another big movie. I don’t know the name of it yet, but something that’s longer than 45 minutes but under two hours. It’ll be on either DVD or Pay-on-Demand. And our website will be getting a refresh.

Getting your hands on IMV Films’ DVDs cannot be easier than just visiting IMV Films’ website and clicking on theirstore. We look forward to IMV Films’ future projects and the lunacy and mayhem that they bring to each video.