The Hallway creative partner Simon Lee completes his debut feature film ‘Dream Racer’

Simon Lee (left), creative partner of independent advertising agency The Hallway has today announced the completion of his debut feature film “Dream Racer” – the inspiring true story of one man’s attempt to single handedly take on the world’s most dangerous motor race – The Dakar Rally – on his motorbike.

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“Dream Racer” is the triumphant culmination of what has been a grueling three-year creative process. Confined by a minimal budget scraped together from brave private investors, Lee single handedly wrote, produced and directed the film. For 16 days, acting alone as cameraman, sound engineer, data wrangler and all other production roles, he drove over 10,000km across some of the world’s most inhospitable terrain.

“Dream Racer” was born out of a chance meeting between Lee and business consultant Christophe Barriere-Varju, who outlined his ambition to attempt this legendary race. Like so many creative people in the industry, Lee harbored a desire to go beyond advertising and saw this as the opportunity to chase his ambition. So, just a month after the birth of his second child he took a dramatic risk, quit the security of his job as a creative director and flew to Argentina and Chile to embark on what he refers to as “the most ambitious creative project I have ever undertaken”.

Both men endured heartbreaking hardships in the quest for their individual goals. Barriere-Varju almost failed to make the start line for the race due to inadequate financing, preparations and support. On the shoot Lee, as a one man production company, faced a grueling schedule – driving up to 1000km a day in a tiny rental car, filming, interviewing, backing up the enormous amount of data he was capturing and keeping his five HD cameras alive in the harsh desert conditions.

If Lee was doing it tough, Barriere-Varju was doing it tougher. With an injured back and torn triceps, he raced up to 800km a day over rocks and giant sand dunes in searing heat, putting his life and sanity on the line.

Three years later the dream is complete in the form of a 93 minute docudrama feature film with a “TV hour” version to follow. But a journey that began as an escape from advertising has had the opposite outcome.

Says Lee: “Dream Racer is above all a great human story. I am more excited than ever about the power of story in the work that we do at The Hallway. The lines between advertising and entertainment are becoming increasingly blurred and “Dream Racer” has given new inspiration for what it can mean to be a great advertising agency in 2012.”

Says Jules Hall, managing partner at The Hallway: “It is nothing less than extraordinary that Simon has brought this film to life. He has huge creative talent and akeen sense of storytelling that is so evident in this film and also in his daily work at the agency. I am enormously proud to say he is my Creative Partner.”

Dream Racer will be shown for the first time at an exclusive media industry screening on Wednesday November 14th at the Verona in Paddington, Sydney.