Director David Kobzantsev talks about his short film, Gold Hearts of Hot Rod County, developed from a proof-of-concept made for a tractor ad, by letting its characters and world come to life.
David Kobzantsev is a US-based director, writer and filmmaker who likes to focus on the unexpected in his storytelling, producing narrative shorts, independent films and commercial work. His latest project, Gold Hearts of Hot Rod County (2025), is a 20-minute short that he developed from a proof-of-concept he had made earlier for a tractor company commercial.
The short was released in September 2025 and premiered at the Beverly Hills Film Festival with a story that centres on Callie, a girl growing up on a farm. She falls for a charismatic stranger called Zack, who she meets by chance, and crashes a local dance party to meet him again and catch his eye. You can watch the film here.
To develop his film, David combined character- and world-building with a level of story development normally devoted to much bigger productions. His inspiration to pursue the project came from the characters themselves. After producing the concept for the spot, the visuals and tone continued to grow in his imagination until it became an entire world. He finished the script and launched into pre-production, choosing an Americana style combined with pop-culture nostalgia. Filming took place at locations in the states of Iowa and Kansas.
Back to Iowa
Here, David talks through the planning and technical details of the production with Digital Media World, from storyboarding to post, and focusses on some pivotal sequences. Scouting for locations led him to a family farm in Iowa that matched the look and scale of the film’s story. The farm’s owner Mike Bower even owned a hot rod tractor and a classic ‘70s Mustang, very similar to the vehicles in the film.
"We started principal photography at the Bowers’ farm, filling up the only local hotel with our cast and crew," David said. "We were extremely lucky. The family and other people in the area could not have been more generous, and once Mike Bower agreed to soup-up his tractor into what our story needed, it became one of the most exciting parts of the project."
A defining sequence pits protagonists Zack and Callie against each other in a drag race confrontation – one in a tractor, the other in a Mustang. Rather than emulating speed entirely in post, the crew swapped the tractor's engine so it could reach 65 mph under controlled conditions, and then made it feel much faster with deliberate editing, sound design and footage ramping. Parts of the scene were filmed from the back of a farm utility or the bed of a pick up truck to capture proximity, vibration and ground truth without compromising safety.
Other key scenes were captured for a romantic fantasy sequence at a Country Western dance in a local bar, choreographed with reference to classic romances like Dirty Dancing, Flashdance and Footloose. Here, David’s team leaned into saturated colour, filmic grain and subtle retro treatments to evoke a wider nostalgia, meanwhile keeping the pace and camera grounded in the characters, their place and story.
ARRI Alexa Mini
David chose two cameras for this project. First, an ARRI Alexa Mini was used to handle the farm exteriors and race sequence, and a RED Gemini captured the dance scenes. He wanted the ‘tractor commercial world’ that the audience is dropped into, to open up like a storybook into a picturesque environment of idyllic Americana majesty – even if, in reality, it’s made up of endless dust-choked gravel roads.
“The Mini would be the top choice to make even the dusty roads, grand blue skies and limitless cornfields feel slightly dreamy,” said David. “This look really amplified the idea of rural romance. The camera’s filmic quality, particularly the noise structure, gave the footage that classic ‘80s and ‘90s blockbuster texture envisioned for the project.
But the Mini may be known best for its true-to-life skin tones and massive dynamic range. David was able to capture the baseline radiance of his actors' skin in any of the natural light scenarios they were in. Once the colour grade was underway, they found they had all the information needed to replicate perfectly the ‘sun-kissed glow’ look typical of the era.
“Because our race sequence was shot practically, the ARRI Alexa Mini was also our first choice to handle the turbulent bumps, high speeds and hard braking inside the farm vehicle and pickup truck we were using as our follow car,” he said. “With me and the 1st AC piled on top of the cinematographer, in the thick plumes of the dust we kicked up, the goal was to make the race scene feel as fully alive and kinetic as possible. Equally important, the Mini was durable enough to match the intense movement we needed to shoot the drag race almost entirely in-camera.”
RED Gemini
In contrast, David’s vision for the Country Western dance hall scene was to portray the pinnacle of teenage glamour of farmland USA, pushing the idea of a small town spectacle as far as he could while staying believable. The bar room setting and location were very dimly lit, especially in the area around the pool tables.
The cosmic-coloured spotlights above the dance floor cut through the darkness of the space, but it was a RED Gemini that helped bring out the intensity and vibrance in these low-light settings, without compromising small details in-frame. “Note that we also filled the entire venue with atmosphere,” said David. “The Gemini kept it at bay and didn’t let it compete with the velvety blacks of our dark interior. Giving us a rich, hazy background, the Gemini captured the visual richness and sex appeal of the sequence.
LOMO anamorphic lenses – 35mm, 50mm and 75mm – were selected for the cameras. The crew shot on Steadicam or handheld for nearly all of principal photography, except for locked off close-ups of Callie racing in the tractor against Zack, and Callie with her Dad in a two-shot straight-on shot while driving the truck, using car rigs in both instances.
Drag Racing
One scene needed a multi-camera approach – the ‘start’ sequence of the tractor vs Mustang drag race. David said, “We had our 'A Cam' capturing the master side profile angle of the two vehicles revving at the starting line, side by side, then ultimately shooting Callie's tractor driving out of frame, followed by Zack's Mustang flying off to catch her.
“The 'B Cam' was a GoPro set-up inside Zack's Mustang's rear window, shooting straight-on towards the back of Zack's head and through the front windshield. Our 'C Cam' was a second ground-level GoPro, positioned on the road directly behind the rear tires to capture dirt and rock spray.”
For first-person view (FPV) shots of the race scene – shot flying along at 90 mph – they had a RED Komodo and GoPro Hero 12s on drones. They also used an Inspire 2 for the general sweeping aerial establishing shots and farmland inserts.
Dance Hall
The Country Western bar and dance hall scenes that feature Callie's dance fantasy with Zack, were developed into a sequence signalling the romance between the two leads. Thirty country swing dancers were performing on set as extras, all following choreography and blocking in order to create pathways for the camera, similar to the etiquette lanes of a two-step dance floor.
“The dancers formed three circles in total, leaving the middle of the floor for the two leads, Zack and Callie, whose choreography and movement runs counter to the traffic around them,” David said. “Meanwhile our cinematographer Jeremy Osbern was weaving through the dancers on handheld, keeping up with the central couple free-styling.
“Jeremy and I spoke extensively about how we wanted to create a vortex or centrifuge of dancers flying around Zack and Callie. These dancers ultimately became our parallax effect, surrounding the two central performers.
“Although we made cuts right through the edit, the approach taken from a coverage perspective was that of shooting a single-shot sequence. From the moment Zack and Callie burst onto the crowded dance floor and make their way to the centre, they dance all the way to the moment they kiss. The dynamics and chemistry shone through, showing their personalities through the motion and dance moves.”
Colour – an Emotional Grade
Beyond the edit, David took his vision into post production to work with colourist Andi Chu at Electric Theatre Collective in London. “She did an absolutely extraordinary job,” he commented. “She's a true visionary. We had to accomplish three distinct looks for the colour grade. First was our picture-postcard farmscape universe with an overall ‘dusty’ feel to the colour – keeping everything naturally gorgeous without having any one colour dominate the palette.
“We honed in on the different levels of sunlight – dawn, dusk, full sun – gently romanticising all three so the light wouldn't feel staged or disingenuous. The farmland, in essence, works as its own character in the movie, calling for careful attention to its colour.
“The Dance Hall, on the other hand, is the one place in the entire town where everyone goes out to let loose and show off. The colours are much more punchy, crisp and deep. The dance floor lighting revealed so many beautiful hypercolours that we also used to cascade onto the characters' faces and bodies. Andi enhanced the colours just enough to make us feel like we were right there on the dance floor, just like Jeremy did with his camerawork.”
Finally, Callie's Dirty Dancing-style fantasy featured three critical colours – quintessential, classic red, with black and a single white spotlight. As the most conceptual colour scheme of the entire film, Andi took it to music-video heights, shifting these three very strong, emotional colours – which the Gemini had captured quite vividly – into a daring, passion-charged moment. It is a dream sequence, but one in which Callie explores feelings of attraction in a new way.
Thinking over the key factors that made it possible to elevate his earlier commercial project to a complete short film, David’s thoughts returned to the story and characters. "Turning our commercial spec into a narrative short proved the concept and the characters," he said. "The world has room to grow. The plotline can extend into a longer-form project – a series or even a feature - without losing the intimate stakes that make the short work." david-kobzantsev.com
