In the moment before a car crash, time pauses and allows two drivers to have a conversation. It becomes clear that speed will determine the outcome.

The danger with this type of script is it can become overly dramatized if the tone isn’t just right, so casting was the most important part of making this. We wanted relatively unknown actors who could pull off the seriousness in a very real way. It’s a big conceptual idea, but needed to be played out in very small moments where we see them really thinking about what is happening. These two guys suddenly realize a complete stranger is the most important person in their life. That connection is strange and awkward, full of anger, nervousness and ultimately regret. But they needed to be likable too, we need to empathize with them while hating the mistake.

We didn’t have a big casting call. We did a long callback with many takes on a few selected actors. Karlos Drinkwater really wanted the ‘Dad’ role and invested everything to make it work. It wasn’t an obvious choice at the beginning for everyone, but the director was sure and sticking to this certainty paid off. Tim Foley who played the ‘speeder’ captured that wave of regret he needed to feel from the first audition.

The shoot was relatively easy because both the actors had worked hard to find the important beats to hit. It was working at the first take – everybody watching the playback monitors was quiet. The spot has been embraced outside New Zealand because the casting helped people from almost any culture see parallels to their own experiences on the road.