The unfiltered reality of producing a documentary in the middle of the Saudi desert

The Dakar Rally bivouac is a moving city in the middle of the Saudi desert, built on dust, diesel and highly controlled chaos!

Every few days it packs itself up, drives hundreds of kilometres and rebuilds somewhere new, moving thousands of exhausted, motorsport mad human beings along with it.

And this January, that’s been my office.

Sara Price, Defender Rally driver, talking to the team back in the bivouac.

We’re a small documentary team from all over the world, embedded with the Defender Rally operation. We’ve all got different backgrounds, different passports, different tolerance levels for sleeping on a moving bus but as a crew we’re all united by a single mission: to follow Sara Price, one of the most exciting and quietly formidable motorsport talents in the world, as she takes on the toughest motorsport race on the planet - the Dakar Rally. 

Our moving home, where we sleep, snack and plan!

So what does it actually mean to produce a documentary inside something this big, this fast and this relentlessly unpredictable?

Let me tell you…

Our outdoor production meeting hub!

As a producer, you learn to control the controllables.

Plan for everything. Schedule everything. Have Plan A, B and C. Colour code the spreadsheet until nothing can possibly go wrong. However, here, producing isn’t about perfect plans, it’s about staying calm while everything moves around you in a dusty chaos at 100mph. 

The real focus is:

• Making sure we don’t miss key story beats while the race and the teams are constantly shifting

• Managing access, personalities and permissions 

• Keeping the crew safe, sane and fed

• And protecting the story when everything wants to pull it in a different direction

At any given moment, we’re juggling:

• What’s happening on the ground

• What the edit will need in a few weeks time

• What the client expects

• What the audience should feel

• And most importantly, what’s actually authentically unfolding

Out here, detailed planning happens mostly verbally, last-minute stage coordinates and start times mean that planning only works if every single person is on their A-game. 

Sara Price, at the start line of a race stage.

At first for me, Dakar was a shock to the senses, feeling completely insane but also reliably homely at the same time.

The bivouac, the place where teams, mechanics, drivers, media crews and the occasional stray puppy (yes, I have Googled how to bring one home from Saudi!) somehow all co-exist. The location of the bus, our moving home for the 19 days remains the same, as does the location of all your other needs, the media centre, catering, Defender base camp. Then, this all becomes routine.

The animals of Saudi, the tiny puppy lost from it’s parents outside the bivouac and Anastasia meeting one of the camels with the local farmer.

Within about 48 hours, everyone starts rating bivouacs like TripAdvisor influencers:

• “Hot water in the showers? Solid four-star.”

• “Phone signal. This is a luxury resort!”

• “Great scenery for Jason’s portraits within five minutes of the bus? Chef’s kiss.”

You start talking casually about 900km liaison days, service pit stops and debriefs and whether the battery life of the onboard Osmo’s survived the marathon stage - as if it’s natural as talking about the weather - and you become absurdly proud of extremely small wins - like getting the start line coordinates to work on Google Maps!

Our production bus is a strange kind of intimacy. Camera operators, producers, data wranglers, all living inside a metal tube that bounces across Saudi Arabia together. You quickly learn who snores, who hates the cold showers and who has a secret spa sleeping aid that they’ve been holding out on sharing with everyone. By week two, you feel less like a crew and more like a slightly unhinged family road trip that accidentally wandered into the world’s toughest motorsport event.

That time when Yusef and Lorenzo finally got Fifa downloaded on the bus playstation.

The sleeping eye mask working it’s magic after a busy day for Vicky. Gav and Jason likely up to no good, in a rare moment of downtime!

We’re not just filming cars going fast, we’re inside the operation. We’re embedded with Defender and the level of access we have is a privilege. We’re filming the highs, the lows and everything in between. From mechanics rebuilding engines at 3am, drivers and navigators coming back wired, emotional, committed to realising their dreams to witnessing leadership making decisions that determine the future strategies of the Dakar result.

Gav doing some late night coverage of the mechanics as they work through into the early hours, getting the cars ready for the next day.

We’ve interviewed a Saudi Prince. We’ve had doors opened that simply do not open for most media, thanks to permission of the ASO, who run the Dakar Rally and believe in this story. We’ve been trusted with moments that are raw, tense, funny, heartbreaking and deeply human.

That trust is earned, not given and protecting it has been half of our job whilst here.

At the centre of it all is Sara Price.

One of the most friendly, grounded and quietly badass women we’ve ever had the pleasure of being around. Dakar throws everything at her mechanical failures, stage wins, a brand-new rally team, relentless pressure and she takes it all in her stride, wearing her heart on her sleeve for anyone around to see. No drama. No ego. Both she and her co-pilot Sean get back in the car the next day and do the job the team asks her to do. 

For Sara, the dream is to be the first American female driver to win Dakar and when you speak to her, you know that she won’t stop until she does.

Sara Price, post stage interview with the team.

Scott and Yusef deep in footage back up and story development

Every now and then, when you WhatsApp someone back home, you suddenly think:
Oh right… yeah this is completely mental.

But inside the Dakar bubble, this sandy, loud, exhausting, brilliant circus, it’s just work.

You don’t survive Dakar. You adapt to it.

Around here the phrase that gets thrown around, half joking is:
“That’s Dakar for you.”

And honestly?
It’s one hell of an office.

Left to right back: Gavin Barclay (Camera Operator), Scott Marshall (Executive Producer / Series Director), Jason Hearn (Camera Operator), Vicky Hepburn (Executive Producer), Yusef de Rojas (Camera Operator and DIT), Theresa Radka (Sound Recordist)
Left to right front: Me (Executive Producer), Lorenzo Di Felice (Warner Bros. Discovery)
In Qatar - Anastasia Papanian (Warner Bros. Discovery)

WHERE TO WATCH

Sara Price: Chasing Dakar
UK and Ireland: TNT Sports & HBO Max from May 15th
USA: Discovery & Discoveryplus from June 4th 2026
Europe and Asia-Pacific: Eurosport & HBO Max from June 8th 2026
Latin America: available on Warner Brothers Channels from June 12th 2026