La Prova: A journey through time

The history and evolution of Ferrari's sports cars has been represented in a beautiful new film created by a production team from Hong Kong that brings together 75 years of the marque using three very different cars from three different eras –shot in a very unusual way. 

Frank Liew is a film writer-director based in Hong Kong who also deals with importing Prancing Horses into the country through his role as Chief Marketing Officer for Blackbird Concessionaires, and his passion for everything from Maranello shines through the short film titled ‘La Prova’ or ‘The Test’. 

Shot in the hot summer months of 2022, perhaps the most surprising aspect of the ten-minute film is that no professional cinema camera systems were used at all in the shooting. 

Instead, Apple provided five iPhones which were then put through a rigorous filming schedule, from being strapped to a compact, manually operated crane on the back of a truck to being strapped to numerous drones for some of the aerial shots. Yet you would be very hard-pressed to tell this was the case; the result looking not just cinematic in feel but also in scale. 

Without giving too much of the plot away, La Prova tells the story of a young, Ferrari-obsessed artist who finds connection to his father as his life progresses, through a love of his father’s 250 GT SWB Berlinetta, a Testarossa and at the end, the latest 296 GTB, set against an original music score by up-and-coming London based genre-splicing music producer Miink.

Frank was keen to underline the history involved saying: “La Prova speaks of a reverence to lessons learnt from the past, yet looks forward to what the future brings. All values that I think are also passed from generation to generation at Ferrari, a brand which stands on the shoulders of giants after 75 years of being the best in its field.”

In terms of the final car driven in the film, the 296 GTB, Frank was particularly effusive, saying: “The 296 GTB, in my eyes, truly represents one of the biggest leaps in technological advancements for the brand and is a car that I think is destined to become a future classic. 

“As the first of its kind powered by a smaller hybrid engine, it packs a ton of cutting-edge technology yet features so many beautiful design cues from past iconic models. When I first saw and then had the privilege of experiencing the car at Fiorano, my ultimate takeaway was that this is a car that had learnt all of the lessons of its predecessors. A truly remarkable piece of engineering and art.” 

While the filming was certainly unusual in that it lacked the large camera equipment seen on a big-budget project, Frank was in no doubt the ‘phone-only’ experience added to the finished movie. 

“One great thing about the filming process was that because everyone is so comfortable using a phone it led to a very co-operative environment during location visits. Almost everyone has an iPhone – so everyone involved on the team would have ideas about cool or interesting ways we could capture the action,” he explains. 

“And it was such an enjoyable experience working with these cars, each one of them an icon of the era they are from, that I can honestly say the only downside was that the two older cars had no air conditioning. One day, I swore I got sunburnt just on my finger as I waited in the Testarossa for a take! You miss the creature comforts, but then you remember that you’re capturing priceless pieces of automotive art, both beautifully restored to factory conditions, and that makes it all worthwhile.”