The New Boredom

One of the inherent problems with any sports video is that the audience is so narrow that the filmmakers tend to cater to the demands of a very select few and end up alienating everyone else. In mountain biking there are sub-categories of audiences and most films in the past that have tried to tackle the various disciplines have fallen short resulting in some people saying “I loved the hucks but I hated the racer footage” while others cant stop saying “Not enough racing, way too much hucking.” The New World videos tend to have a big mix of riding and they serve as a sampler platter of what happened in mountain biking in the last year, even if that platter is a butt-rock cracker slathered with slow motion cheese. Even the earlier Collective films have fallen short of spanning the wide variety in modern mountain biking. Not since maybe Chainsmoke 2 has a mountain bike film so successfully stitched the seams of cycling as Seasons.

We start off with Winter and the prep work that the various riders have to do in their off season. It’s one of the only times that I can remember in which the concept of an “off-season” is shown to be a myth. These guys who ride professionally do not get time off if they want to stay at the top no matter what discipline they ride.

Spring shows us the start of the season where all the riders are primed, healthy, and excited for the summer ahead and eager to show off their stuff.

Summer is the main focus of the film where the riders take the main stage and showcase their talents. The racers racing, the huckers hucking, the jumpers jumping. All the footage in this section is the kind of stuff that all bike videos should aspire to. The level that all these guys ride at is a direct result of the hard work they have put in over the years and should make any bike rider envious.

The Fall section does what the Whistler section of Roam failed to do and brings all the riding back together into one cohesive session that walks the fine line between portraying the camaraderie that develops among the few riders that ever progress so far without turning into the dood-bro-fest that came from The Collective. No matter what the haters say, we’re all just riding bikes. We’re all just overgrown man-children that never decided to put down the toy bike that everyone traded out for a car long ago. This Fall section gets the point across well without being clumsy and ham-fisted.

The simple narrative structure of Seasons established by following 7 riders through a year of riding gives anyone not really familiar with mountain biking a story to hang on for the duration of the film but is not so simplistic that is violates the core audience. This is probably the most accessible mountain bike video to date.

But all is not well with Seasons though my beefs are overall pretty minor. The “300” effect is used too heavily with the swap from super-fast riding is changed out with super-slow motion footage in the same shot. It’s a gimmick at best and the novelty wears off for a film snob like me after I see it twice. These 7 guys are bike riders not public speakers and while they are all amazing bike riders, they are not always the best talking heads. This is probably expecting too much though and the older riders who have been in the game for a while tend to have a better grasp on camera presence. The commentary track left me disappointed. The filmmakers, like the riders are best at capturing images, not spouting profound philosophy. Some of the commentary gets pretty dull and obvious with esoteric stories withheld and the obvious overstated while the really insightful and interesting commentary is spread out a little thin. Some of the soundtrack leaves something to be desired. You certainly can’t please everyone when it comes to song choice but it seems like some short ends could have been sold off to license some better tunes. Overall though, these complaints are minor in comparison to the huge achievements of Seasons. Every avid mountain biker should attentively sit through this film and for once, the biker’s family will be able to do the same.

Joe Rich took a couple friends with him on a camping trip to Colorado. If you dont know who Joe Rich is then get yourself educated.

Anyway, he did a little write up on the trip for the Terrible One website here:

http://www.terribleone.com/mainpage3.htm#

I have to say that he’s a smart guy and that I feel pretty damn lucky to live in Colorado. I have the mountains 5 minutes away. If I were smarter I would wake my ass up and go enjoy them some more in a simple life that isn’t so cluttered up with all the worries and stresses. Just go be with good people in amazing spaces. I’m still asleep though because I’m getting up to go to my dead end job tomorrow so I can buy an iphone in a month…

Coming soon- a review of Seasons, bike checks MBA style, and finally more writers than me.

I dont know whether to laugh or cry or what… that Brooklyn Machine Works is supporting this:

but whatever. It’s better than scooters in skateparks.

The Teva Mountain Games were yesterday in Vail, Colorado. I got out there and had the same complaints as always but when I got home I thought it was still a better way to spend the day than at a real job.

The Fix had a jump jam today but it was windy in my back yard so I ended up taking a 4 hour nap instead of shooting the shred. Spomer might have something from it though at LitterMag.com

Here’s a preview of the games:

Tyler McCaul knows tailwhips. He kicks them and catches them every time, both directions. Other people were flailing them off sort of… Tyler was stomping them every try. The kid is fun to watch. (he’s still “going places” if you Old Boredom people know what I mean)

I’m sure people have already seen this, I posted it around before but just in case there were any stragglers out there, here it is again:

And just to beat the dead horse some more here’s some fond memories from the video:

-Wes P, John R, and myself throwing rocks at a hole in a tree stump from 50 feet back between (and honestly right through) semi-pro qualifiers and pro qualifiers at the Angelfire MSC a year ago. The course marshals and medics up the hill thought we were crazy. We were just bored. Mountain bike media is 95% dead time if not more.

-I love shooting stuff way out of focus. I do it all the time on expensive 16mm film. sometimes I wisht eh world looked like that all the time. Cole Bangert. Cole rocks, he’s one of the nicest and happiest people I know along with his parents. Expect great things from him if you dont already. Wildlife- see a lot of it while shooting bike vids in the mountains. No bears or mountain lions though thankfully.

-Camp and Reed and cleaning out an abandoned trail for over 4 hours of dead fall for like 7 clips that were all worth it. Also talking about computer chip limitations with Camp on the hike up and eating a huge gross deli sandwhich that I left in the car.

-Chris Boice and his family are pretty awesome. Played more Monopoly in those few days than any other time in my life. Also ate enough green chilies on that trip to throw off my scheduled daily dumps for a week after Igot home. It was so worth it.

-The Yeti crew showed up at The Fix one afternoon and I gave Clay Porter shit for doing his job for him by being there shooting video. I was kidding.

-Joey Schusler works pretty hard. Joey, don’t forget your roots. Those trails are literally 3 feet off the road up in the canyons around Boulder. I could never find them again if I tried.

-Chris Shewmake will get out of bed at 6 am to go shoot a trail that only yields 3 good shots and do it with a smile on his face. The kid is good people.

-Camp runs his brakes the right way (backwards) and will plow over anything you tell him to and get loose in every corner whether a camera is there to grab it or not.

-Chris Boice is a stud.