Year-in-review video recaps historic season

The most visually-compelling sport known to mankind has just wrapped up its most pivotal season in more than three decades.

Now, race fans can relive the captivating moments of that dramatic campaign with the new "NASCAR Nextel Cup 2004 Year in Review" DVD from NASCAR Images.

The feature-length video recalls every significant pass, pit stop, and breaking news story of the season with never-before-seen camera work that takes viewers far behind the scenes.

"As with our previous projects, our goal is to bring the fans closer to the sport," said Jay Abraham, CEO of NASCAR Images. "We want to give them an in-depth view so they not only know what happened, but why it happened. This is a high-energy, high-production value video."

While the "NASCAR Nextel Cup 2004 Year in Review" DVD offers a comprehensive look at the entire season, it showcases the Inaugural Chase For The Nextel Cup, from the survive-and-advance drama of Richmond to the final showdown in south Florida. This special collectors edition DVD features exclusive never-before-seen cinema-style film footage and driver-by-driver recaps of the 2004 season, chronicling the story of each title contender and their 26-race road to "The Chase."

"This is the third year-in-review DVD we've done, dating back to 2002," said Abraham. "We knew that given the new Chase format, we couldn't produce this year's DVD the same way we'd done in the past. We knew we had to tell the story in a different way, paying special attention to the Chase contenders and how they got there, then giving a really in-depth analysis of the last 10 races."

If you've seen any of their previous releases, you know that nobody does a better job of maintaining continuity than the folks at NASCAR Images. In addition to its riveting story line, "NASCAR Nextel Cup 2004 Year in Review" gets high marks for production quality.

This year's DVD is punctuated by a more liberal use of high-quality film. And of course, film affords much more vivid imagery than videotape.

"We shot a lot of supplemental film as opposed to videotape," Abraham elaborated. "We still used videotape, but we also used as much film as possible. In the last 11 races, including Richmond, we shot over 72,000 feet of film. That's the first time we've ever done anything like that. Film allows you to slow the sport down to the point that you can really see the intricacies of what happens. For instance, if a lug nut is left off, we can slow the action down to show how that happened. It adds a whole new dimension for the viewer."

Abraham gives much of the credit for the enhanced imagery to executive director of production Jim Jordan.

"Jim joined our team in March 2004 after serving as executive producer for NFL Films," said Abraham. "He's the one who really pushed us to explore what we could do with film versus video."

The music genre for this year's DVD also differs from previous year-in-review productions. In a departure from the popular recording used in the past, orchestral music serves as the background for the latest release.

"In the 2004 DVD, we chose music that would accent the story, rather than drive the story," Abraham noted. "In some of our other videos, we used a lot of popular music to and built a lot of the video around that. Using the orchestral music allows us to focus more on the script and story line itself. We think that the story should always drive the content."

The DVD will also include an assortment of bonus material, along with links to a number of NASCAR-themed web sites.

"NASCAR Nextel Cup 2004 Year in Review" is the latest in a series of videos from NASCAR Images. Other DVDs currently offered at the NASCAR.COM SuperStore include: * A Decade at The Brickyard * NASCAR Winston Cup 2003 Year in Review * NASCAR Adrenaline * Tony Stewart: SMOKE * Dale Earnhardt Jr.: Any Given Day * Robby Gordon: Extreme