The power of sound
On 31 July 2025, Amazon Prime released a four-part docuseries that follows Torsten Gross on his relentless mission to compete against the world’s most elite race car drivers. Torsten is quadriplegic, having broken his neck in an accident when he was 15.
Just Hands: For the Love of Racing is a story of human resilience, determination, and defiance. And we’re proud to say that Artlist plays a leading role — because every sound effect and composition you hear in this series comes straight from our catalog.
In this article, we’ll hear more from the team at Sonic Gods, the production studio behind the Just Hands documentary series, and find out how they utilized Artlist in both pre- and post-production to enhance storytelling, mood, and build tension and emotion.
Who are Sonic Gods?
Sonic Gods is an entertainment studio that merges production, digital, and brand content to create unscripted TV formats and community-driven storytelling that reaches and inspires global audiences. Their team has decades of experience in the film and TV industry, and their long-form content focuses on sports, business, and lifestyle.
Just Hands: For the Love of Racing
This four-part documentary series shares Torsten Gross’s journey to compete amongst some of the best race car drivers on the planet. Torsten, who is paralyzed from the neck down, has spent most of his life in a wheelchair. But that hasn’t stopped him from pursuing his dreams.
“There are very few sports that make us equal to everybody,” says Torsten. “I’ll never compete against able-bodied people, but with car racing I can.”
In this series, we learn all about Torsten’s entry into motorsports after his wife surprised him with a track day for their wedding anniversary. After that, he was hooked, partly thanks to his adrenaline-loving nature as well as the sense of empowerment he felt behind the wheel.
That’s when he decided to share this newfound gift with the rest of his community, co-founding Just Hands Foundation, an organization that opens doors for disabled athletes to compete in motorsports with the rest of the world. Their main focus is performance driving and adaptive mountain biking through workshops, courses, and excursions.
The Just Hands docuseries tells Torsten’s story and his journey to the top, with the hope to inspire disabled athletes across the globe to compete on the world stage. “It’s about breaking barriers, exceeding limits, chasing after your dreams and the things that set your heart on fire,” says Michelle Delamore, executive producer on the show.
Artlist for TV production
When Sonic Gods joined forces with Amazon Prime to create the Just Hands documentary series, they turned to Artlist for the soundtrack. With storytelling this raw and real, sound design is essential, so every wheel skid, gear change, and brake squeal was crafted using sound effects from Artlist’s catalog, and the music was hand-picked to elevate emotion and amp up the energy.
High-quality SFX and music help set the mood, build tension, and bring high-energy scenes to life. Our catalog helps the audience connect with Torsten’s journey and bring the documentary visuals to life.
These days, TV production involves creating a massive range of content across multiple platforms. To promote one production, companies need to create content for streaming services, social media, behind-the-scenes clips, promos, and more. To keep up with such a fast-paced production line, companies need speed, consistency, high-quality output, and tools that help speed up workflow, all without compromising on creativity.
Artlist helps production houses take on these challenges thanks to our vast library of royalty-free music, sound effects, and video assets, ideal for sound designers. Editors can quickly find the right sound or visual with an easy search, meaning they can stay on schedule and maintain a cohesive tone across the board.
How Sonic Gods Studios utilized Artlist
The team at Sonic Gods Studios says that Artlist helped them every step of the way, from pre-production visualization to post-production finishing touches. They even used Artlist to create audio storyboards to help them set the mood and tone for each episode.
Pre-production
Ian Hotchkiss is the director of Just Hands: For the Love of Racing, and says their goal is to get their audience emotionally invested in the story they tell.
“We want to create the best TV shows possible, not just for our audience, but for ourselves,” Ian says. “You can capture these wonderful stories, and edit them together, and if you can’t get those last assets — the music and SFX that make a scene — then you don’t achieve what you want.”
Ian says that Artlist’s musical catalog came in handy to build the foundations for each scene. “Usually when constructing a scene, I like to find a song first,” he says. “In Just Hands, we kept to a similar genre for each episode, so I could easily source the perfect track to instantly bring a scene together.”
As the director, Ian was thinking about music from the beginning. “Music is definitely in talks at pre-production,” he says. “When we’re creating a series, we discuss the mood, the vibe, the tone we want to set. So we go on Artlist, create sonic art boards of the type of music we want for this piece, and start thinking about which songs will help us tell our story.”
Greg McKarus was the editor on this project, and says that Artlist saved him time every step of the way. “Artlist allowed us to focus on the narrative,” says Greg. “I love using their AI search, so I can find the exact mood or feeling or a certain instrument, and then have a plethora of options to choose from.”
This helped the team set themes for each episode, and guided the mood and flow of the series.
Post-production
Streamlining post-production was a high priority when making the Just Hands docuseries, because they were up against tight deadlines and had a huge amount of footage to sort through.
Michelle Delamor can attest to this. As the co-founder of Sonic Gods and the executive producer on Just Hands, she says Artlist helps navigate huge workloads. “We create so much content,” she explains. “There’s the show itself, then all of the promotional assets, and trailers. There’s a high volume, so we must maintain the quality. Having a tool like Artlist allows us to do that; there’s so much high-quality music at our fingertips that allows us to move with speed while maintaining the integrity of the project.”
Michelle says that when it comes to filming TV, efficiency is everything, so having Artlist to streamline post-production was a game-changer for the team.
Music
“Music is such an important part of creating an emotional connection with the audience,” Ian says. “We use music and sound design to bring our scenes to life.”
Tracks like Jameson Nathan Jones’ “Grounded” helped create that cinematic, big-screen energy in the high-pressure moments, while Amir Marcus and Stephan Fischer’s piano-led track “Awaken” helps share the freedom Torsten feels when he’s racing.
Every episode has a theme and a genre. For example, the team built tension in episode two through orchestral cinematic music, and when they filmed at night in Daytona on episode 3, they leaned into synthy, atmospheric tracks.
“Before Artlist, finding those high-quality assets was very challenging,” says Ian. “You’d have to source through a lot of different types of media libraries, which took a lot of time, and maybe you don’t find the asset you want, so you settle.”
Greg says that Artlist’s music library didn’t just save time and streamline post-production, but elevated all the content they created.
“Music was very important to Just Hands because each episode had a theme,” he says. “We used a lot of orchestra and strings to accentuate the high quality of the cars. So a lot of the music we used through Artlist’s library was designed to immerse the audience in Torsten’s world.”
Ultimately, Artlist’s musical catalog saved Greg dozens of editing hours. “It allowed us to create a special and unique show that will affect millions of lives,” he says. “I feel proud of the show.”
SFX
Ian says that to cut through the noise, you need to have a story that’s engaging, entertaining, and emotive, and sound effects are one of the best ways to capture an audience and keep them hooked. While Ian was filming with Torsten, he found that every race, every track, and every behind-the-scenes clip had a different energy, and the best way to convey that on the screen was through sound effects.
The team used Artboards to build their design template, referring back to it throughout the project to ensure consistency and streamline the process.
“We wanted the audience to go into each episode feeling like they were watching something they’d never seen before,” Ian explains. “So we leaned into creating these soundscapes through music and sound effects to allow the audience to follow along with Torsten’s journey.”
Episode 1, for example, is full of tension; it’s Torsten’s first time competing, and the viewer can feel it as he gets into his car and sees his competitors for the first time. “There’s sections where we don’t use music, we just use sound design,” Ian explains. We want the audience to experience what it’s like to be in a race car, so it’s the sound of the motors as the cars pass, the sound of these wrecks that happen when you’re competing.”
Why production houses and TV shows use Artlist
From mood boards to post-production, Artlist helped shape Just Hands’ emotional and cinematic impact. The music and SFX set the tone, guided editing choices, and ensured the story flowed seamlessly, bringing this team’s vision to life within tight timelines.
“With Artlist, we had all the high-quality digital assets we needed in one place,” Ian says. “High-quality sound effects, music, and even graphic templates for the promotional content we do around our shows.”
Michelle says that partnering with Artlist helped the team create a sonic landscape for the project. “Artlist gives us high-quality music, sound design, and all the elements that bring the story to life in an impactful way,” Michelle says. “There’s a lot of layers to storytelling, and sound is one of the most important ones. It’s what creates an immersive experience, brings people into the story, and it’s what makes a project feel cinematic and premium.”
Ultimately, Michelle hopes people will feel so inspired by Just Hands so they’ll jump off the couch and go chase after their dreams. “That’s really what this show is designed to do,” she says. “We tell stories around the pursuit of greatness. That moment when people go from ordinary to extraordinary.”
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Dive into the full collection featured in the docuseries, including every track in the series, exclusively on Artlist.
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