For Kai Brauneis (12), cars are more than a means of transportation.
In fifth grade, Brauneis and his friend Oscar Wood (12) discovered that they shared a love of cars. They began working on Wood’s old jeep together, along with their friend Francis O’Donovan (12), their sophomore year. While O’Donovan and Wood repaired vehicles, Brauneis found that his passion was filming them.
“It’s just really fun,” O’Donovan said. “Especially now, since three or four of us have project cars, we just go hang out at someone’s house and help them, and it’s a good time.”
Brauneis combined his passion for filming with his love of cars to start telling stories.
“Sometimes I take pictures along the way,” he said. “So like when fixing other friends’ cars, I take pictures a lot of the time because I think it’s really cool to see the process before and after.”
Most of Brauneis’ interest in cars and film developed through his dad, who passed down his old film camera from his senior year of high school.
“He’s not particularly into cars. But he did have a super old Volkswagen, and he had to work on that a ton. So I learned a little bit off of him,” Brauneis said. “The first film camera that I got was my dad’s, and he got that senior year of high school, so he passed that super old film camera down to me.”
Brauneis’ social media is based on a lot of car shoots. People who see his work can reach out to ask if he can film their car or make an edit of their motorcycle.
Recently, Brauneis decided to turn his hobby into a business. He’s starting to charge customers who reach out to him through Instagram.
“In my opinion, if they can afford a nice car, then they can afford to pay me,” Brauneis said. “It’s a big part of my time now that I’ve been spending towards filming.”
Brauneis believes he’ll be able to make some profit from the time he spends on each individual project.
“I really want to go more into working on cars, because I feel like there’s just so much that I could do,” Brauneis said. “Then I feel like filming is kind of part of the process.”
He still enjoys fixing and filming cars with his friends, as well as meeting new people with similar interests throughout his journey. He hopes to continue to work on cars in the future.
“I think filming cars is a hit or miss, but if I keep pushing out videos, they may be able to become a thing,” he said. “But I feel like working on cars is kind of a guaranteed path, and I’ll get to meet a lot more people through that as well.”
