The New Boredom

Here’s the first real section of the video. It’s Rudy Unrau and Joey Schusler as little junior racers. They have put in some hard work and both are currently riding for Yeti’s national squad as far as I know.

Rudy doesnt blink but maybe once in the whole interview process and that’s creepy as hell. Joey slurs a little when he starts talking and said “uhm” at the beginning of everything he said and then immediate went into the answer for the interview. So I had to cut those out and that’s why his interview doesnt have very good flow.

Rudy forgot his jersey when we shot at one spot and had to drive an hour round trip to go home and get it. This was right after an epic Colorado summer thunderstorm that poured rain on the trails but they were so dry and they ended up being perfect for the shoot. Joey has a line in Left Hand Canyon that he does twice that I jokingly told him to blast down. The first time he blows his foot off the pedal in the exit and plowed over a loose rock as big as his chest. Second time was pretty dialed.

Mud Otter was so terrible that year. It was sunny but that part of Cali had just gone through some record rainfall that spring and even though the sun was out basically the entire time, the hill was a bottomless sponge that kept springing up water everywhere. they tried to dig drainage and everything but by race day everything had formed a gnarly crust on top and people who crashed did so really damn hard. Nico Vinc is amazing to watch in practice because he does stuff that looks fake or tries things that no one else would even see or bother doing in a death or glory race run- and yet that’s how he rides full time. He’s a badass. The Chads at the end offer Peat a beer mid sprint. I thought that was nice of them to try and include Steve in the bro-stivities.

next section probably wont be up until after this weekend as I will be shooting the Sol Vista G3 event.

There really isnt much to say about this section. It’s just clips taken from all the sections and then tossed together to make the intro sequence. the titles should have been cooler but they apartently just got left out in this export. I have no idea why- my mac is getting old and it’s having issues in the last week since it just went through yet another move to a new apartment. I think something may have been thrown on the ground at some point…

anyways- I guess I should blather on about something here. the music is off the most bizzare MM album. all the tracks are short and many of them (I think) kind of suck honestly. This one was supposed to be used for a crash section but I didnt get enough juicy crashes to do one of those so it ended up in the intro.

memorable stuff- I almost smashed Rudy in the face with my fisheye on every take for that one shot. His visor is literally within an inch of the lens. Joey unclipped too early for the drift but then made up for it with a bananas line that I was joking when I told him to go ride it. Fisher throws a little mud clod at the microphone of my camera in the hip-table shot, you can hear it if you listen close and you can definitely see it. The Winter Park “photographer” managed to stand in at least half of the shots of Cody and Nate. TJ almost kills me and then almost closelines himself in back to back shots. Then says hi to Bambi. Steve’s nose bonk goes unnoticed by virtually all and then shows us how Brian Lopes dirt jumps by taking off his shirt at old hidden valley. Camp is a god damn stud muffin but he left his lift ticket on his bars for that whole day of shooting. I guess it flapping around at 500 mph is a sign of how fast he’s going (and no, not sped up). Johnny C crashed in front of me 3 times in that same section at durr varrey. Te rock garden at Brian Head is gnarly and the only good thing on that track that I can remember. The other good thing about that place is 3 man water balloon launchers and being within 100 feet of the road. Fairclough riding in person is amazing to watch.

uh. that’s it. enjoy the video. more to come maybe after the weekend, I will be busy working for free the whole time.

So my DVD project is now officially dead. I’m tired of sitting on a jillion copies of it so I’m just donating what’s left to the local race series or something. But the riders in the video put in a lot of hard work hiking sections over and over for me and helping me out when it came time to find couches and floorspace to sleep on at the races. They are also all my friends and I am so lucky to have spent the summer of 2006 with them.

This is the only part of the video that I can really watch anymore (I think between shooting, capturing footage, editing, dvd quality checks, premiers, family get togethers, shop loops and all that crap I’ve seen the video several hundred times). I think just because I’m a nostalgic film nerd, this part never gets old. So I’m starting with the last bit first: Credits montage for Polyester Fashion

That was all shot in super-8mm and then left in hot cars all summer to rot and get heat flashed. when i finally processed all that junk in the winter I was shocked to see that anything at all had come out but it worked out great- it was a nice little time capsule of the summer. The color footage is Kodachrome (rip) that was shot for various school and personal projects.

Check back soon for the rest of Polyester Fashion in it’s chronological order.

A few month’s ago I saw this huge record collection up for sale on Ebay. The reserve was like 2.8 million dollars and the current bid on it was only 1.2 million. I guess it didnt sell and that’s really a shame. I truly hope that a museum or record company or even just some extravagant Howard Hughes type person steps up to the plate and keeps this collection together and safe. It would be a real shame to lose this collection and it’s history to the wind simply because no one gives a damn.

When I saw that auction I though about how it could be an amazing subject for a documentary but I’m a coward and I didnt have the guts to drop everything I was doing and go make it. Luckily someone did and they did it in a really nice way. Using the web video format, the very thing that is perhaps causing this collection to fade away to expose and spread the word about it is pretty clever. Not to mention it’s really well shot and paced.

Please take a few minutes to watch this very worthwhile little short:

Also a big thanks goes to the Defgrip crew for posting this. I saw it there before I saw it anywhere else. They keep stuff fresh and interesting there. Every time I seriously consider throwing away my computers and going off to live in the woods- something like this comes up on Defgrip and I realize there is some good out there.

I finally got back to my roots and went for a ride that was without a point. There was nothing to shoot for, nothing crazy going down, no goals, no objectives, no destinations. The point was just to catch up with old friends and enjoy their company while getting in a few pedals.
I took my long lens and my fisheye. I wasnt happy with a single thing my fisheye was getting so I tried something different behind the lens and took a step back, and tried to shoot something that wasn’t riding action. I got 4 shots that I was pretty pleased with for various reasons.

This is what riding is mostly comprised of: not riding. bikes on the ground, people hanging out near by.

real.

I do a lot fo stuff with negative space when I shoot in film but I never seem to when I’m shooting digital. It’s like I have made up some rule for myself that the whole frame needs to be action packed to keep you on the edge of your office chair. Well, eff that. Here’s something playing with the edges:

skinny.

This I like because it shows priorities. All the fancy new crap doesnt mean much to me and I never notice any of it. But a pair of haggard grips I notice right away and it tells me that you ride. A lot.

hmmm grippy.

I spent all day trying to get a shot that said “Bros…” and they all came out like crap. Then this happened almost on accident and reminded me that I shouldn’t force anything in life, shots, plans, whatever. It will happen if and when it was meant to and that I should relax and let the world happen around me more than forcing myself upon it.

bro-mantic.

So that’s my story. It was an epic day. I want more of those this fall. I’m really looking forward to re-prioritizing my life and putting emphasis on the more important stuff. Sorting the wheat from the chaff. All that stuff.