Coming up with new ways to film one of the most filmed bike parks in the world isn’t easy. When the Anthill crew sat down to plan the Whistler segment for “Follow Me” we asked ourselves some simple questions.  The questions were simple but the answers took us in some new directions.

Q:  What is the Whistler Mountain Bike Park?

A:  A gathering place where chairlifts take you and your bike up a mountain that has lots of trails designed for you to ride down on your bike.

One of the most significant aspects of the Whistler Mountain Bike Park is its contribution to the cultural growth of mountain biking.  Specifically, the Park brings a social aspect to a sport that is mostly an individual pursuit.  In Whistler it is easy to do ten laps of a trail in one day.  And that means ten times going up the chairlift with up to three of your friends or perhaps people you have never met before.  The chairlift is almost always full with riders and bikes.  There are riders all over the trails. This is an extremely social environment as far as mountain biking is concerned.

The effect of the Bike Park on the culture of mountain biking is huge. Where else can you go and participate in your sport with your favorite professional athlete?  It is quite unlikely that you will be able to golf a round with Tiger Woods and yet it is quite possible that you could do a lap on A-Line with Brendan Fairclough and Thomas Vanderham and then get to talk about how much fun you just had as you ride back up the chairlift with them to the top of the trails.

Q:  What do you need to do to make a great bike park movie segment?

A:  Take the best riders in the world and find out what makes their ‘best day ever’ in the Whistler Bike Park.

A Whistler Mountain Bike Park segment is a challenging segment to film.  One of the main reasons is that we have filmed in the Park a lot during our time as filmmakers for The Collective.  The segments from ‘Roam’ and ‘Seasons’ already involved multiple riders riding together which is a central concept of ‘Follow Me’. Furthermore these segments made use of a lot of the best terrain in the Whistler Mountain Bike Park and we do not like to film parts of trails we have already done in previous movies. As a result of this, we were sitting around the creative table back in early spring 2009 during pre-production asking ourselves, ‘What are we going to do next in the Bike Park?’

We began by detailing what we wanted to achieve with the Bike Park for ‘Follow Me’ .  The concept had to be entertaining. And it had to motivate people who have never experienced the Park to check it out.  But by far the biggest challenge we faced was figuring out how to do this while coming up with something to impress the Whistler Mountain Bike Park locals at the same time.

The locals are riders who ride the Bike Park a lot.  These people easily put in over 90 days a season in the Bike Park every year.  These people know the trails well.  They know when changes are made to the trails.  They know when new lines are discovered on the trails.  They are usually the ones who discover the new lines.  The wooden bridge on the trail you ride on, these people figure out how to jump over it.

If we satisfy the first requirement of our ‘Follow Me’ Whistler segment and motivate someone new to come and experience the Bike Park then our segment will be good.  If we can achieve this and at the same time make the locals say, ‘Whoa, that was something new!’ then our Whistler Mountain Bike Park segment will be great.

So who do we film in the Bike Park? We film world cup downhill racer Brendan Fairclough of the UK with free riding superstar and Whistler bike park local Thomas Vanderham.   Why?  Because friends of ours like Matt Hunter say things like, “You guys have to shoot with Brendan Fairclough.” And for Thomas, he’s constantly discovering new lines and doing it with racers like Brendan is something that makes a great day for him in the Park.

When we asked Brendan what the Whistler Mountain Bike Park meant for him we knew we were on the right track. He said ‘…the bike park is about having fun on your bike.  The pressures of the racecourse and racing points are non-existent.  Riding down the trail I am having so much fun I don’t want the trail to end, so I get sideways as much as possible so that I can make the ride last as long as it can.’

Our concept for the Whistler Mountain Bike Park segment in Follow Me is based off of Thomas and Brendan’s best day in the Park.  This day actually happened during Crankworx 2009 – so this fall we revisited some of their lines from that day.  And now their best day ever in the Park may have happened on our shoot.  They had fun riding together while shooting the segment and having fun on your bike is what ‘Follow Me’ is all about.

Anthill Filmmaker

jonathan schramm

We’ve been lagging pretty bad on the Anthill blog lately, so it was awesome when Phil Brock – who as been helping the crew out on the side – offered to take a crack at at it.  Here’s a recap of his experience on a recent trip to Kamloops with Geoff  Gulevich, Kurt Sorge and Matt Hunter.  All photos from Sterling Lorence.

The night before I was supposed to leave Anthill Films producer Ian Dunn called me up and gave me some very rough directions to meet the crew who were already in Kamloops.  After quite a few wrong turns and confused conversations with the locals, I finally arrived at the location – “Brad’s Yard”.  That pretty much sums up what it is.  Much to the dismay of his wife, Kurt’s buddy Brad, has literally turned his backyard into the ultimate playground for mountain bikers.  Walking up to the yard, my first impression was one of amazement.  There were features and lines everywhere, and right in the middle I was confronted by the sight of two MASSIVE doubles.  To be honest, when I first set eyes on these things I thought they were for motos!  After soaking in the scene, I started to realize how much time and sweat Brad must have put into making his vision a reality.  The whole zone is perfectly manicured and I couldn’t believe the level of detail that he has put into every feature.

Watching the riders’ – Geoff Gulevich and Kurt Sorge – session the yard each day was equally impressive.  On the first day I was there, Gully had a huge scare on the two big doubles.  Launching himself into the stratosphere off the first booter he landed in a two-wheel drift.  Deciding he could still make the next double he got the bike back in-line and punched it off the next jump.  However, he didn’t have enough speed and double-cased the landing resulting in a heavy crash to the ground.  The next day, I watched in amazement as he threw down tricks like one-foot tables over the doubles, as if the previous day’s crash didn’t even faze him.  Meanwhile, Sorge boosted huge Superman’s and Superman seat-grabs, as well as Indian airs.  The whole session looked more like a freestyle moto-X event rather than two mountain bikers hitting a couple of dirt jumps.  The scale of the whole thing was just simply mind-blowing!

With enough footage in the can the crew called it a wrap at Brad’s place.  Our next stop would be Matt Hunter’s house in Kamloops.  Matt always has an open invitation to crash his pad, so with everything loaded we headed out.  Since Anthill’s last visit, Matt had been relentless in his search for more shooting locations in and around Kamloops.  So, once we arrived he was eager to get out in the field and begin filming.

The first day of shooting took us to a classic Kamloops area known as Jamieson.  The drive out was pretty typical until Matt’s truck got a flat.  The “Anger”, as Matt calls it, is a ’89 Ford Ranger that he bought from a friend and it has almost become an iconic fixture in the mountain bike world.  The “Anger” has appeared in countless photos and films over the years and despite looking as if it has seen better days, Matt’s dedication to the vehicle is as strong as ever.  Before long Matt had swapped out the flat with the spare and we continued our ascent up Jamieson.

After a bit of bushwhacking with the vehicles on an over-grown logging road, we arrived at the section of trail Matt wanted to film.  Sorge also came with us and before long the boys were shredding epic Jamieson singletrack through the fall woods.  With plenty of sweet shots in the bag we all headed back to Matt’s place for some well-deserved beers and pizza.

While sitting around that evening, I came to a realization…after years of watching mountain bike films of all types it is easy to start believing that all these guys (filmmakers and riders) live some kind of rock star lifestyle.  However, looking around Hunter’s living room that night I saw something entirely different.  To be honest, everyone just looked beat.  The early mornings, working past dark, trekking up and down trails had taken its toll.  Now, I’m sure there are nights when all of these guys can party with the best of them but it wasn’t going to be tonight.  Instead, our nights were spent with casual conversations over some beers, catching-up on e-mails, making personal phone calls to family & friends and watching Ricky Bobby run around thinking he is on fire.

The next morning was an early one…again.  It was still dark when I was awoken by my ruthless alarm clock.  The goal that morning was to capture Matt shredding a new line he had carved out near the Rio.  The crew was in a frantic race to get out to the location and get set-up before the sunrise.  Light, as I learned quickly on this trip, plays such a crucial role in filming.  The Anthill crew is in constant search for the “right” light.  “Right” light can be hard to find though.  Sometimes you have too much of it, sometimes not enough, and sometimes you don’t want much light at all.

Matt calls his new line the “Treeline” and it was easy to see why.  He starts on the drop-in for the Rio and after the first sweeping left-hander he makes a quick right-hander where he has to then carve under some tree branches.  After that it was a small but very tricky berm-to-berm jump over a shrub.  It was key to nail this in order to keep his momentum up for the next feature; a large double that sent Matt, basically, through a tree.  The jump was placed beside a large tree that had been pruned to allow him to jump over the lower branches and underneath the upper branches.  After a few tries, Matt nailed the line with style and flow.  Before the day was done Sorge would join us again for an epic evening shot on a piece of singletrack overlooking the Thompson River.

After five straight days of working with Anthill, I came to learn a few things.  First, these guys work as a team.  They constantly bounce ideas off one another and listen to the input and perspective from the riders.  They don’t live “rock star” lives.  Instead, they sacrifice everything to document mountain biking in an artistic and meaningful way.  It means being on the road away from family and friends.  It means early mornings followed by hours of lugging gear around in the bush and then early nights to regain strength for the next day.  The riders work their ass’s off to get the right shot and sometimes have to put life & limb on the line to make it happen.  Lastly, I learned that there are some truly passionate people out there in the mountain biking world that rarely get any attention for what they just love to do.  Brad is without a doubt one of these guys – just a regular guy casually building and hitting 34-foot monster gaps in his backyard with no one around.  Only one word comes to mind when I look back at the trip… DEDICATION.

Thanks to Brad and his wife for their hospitality and Matt Hunter for allowing us to crash his pad.  I would personally like to thank Ian, Darcy, CJ, Schramm, Dzogg, Sterling, Gully, Kurt, and Matt for allowing me to tag along and see what goes down behind the scenes.  Until next time…

-Phil Brock on behalf of Anthill Films

As if BC didn’t have enough sick riding already, we’re blessed with a network of heavy-hitting bike parks to give us all the descending we can handle. For this film we’re lucky enough to have Bike Parks of BC supporting our cause, which means we get to hit the best bike parks in our province.

Now one of the things that separates us from the animals is our ability to use tools. Some tools are for work, others are for are for fun. You could say bikes are tools to travel over terrain at high speeds, and chairlifts are tools for getting us on top of mountains. Put these tools together and you basically have the best thing life offers, unlimited descending. An all you can eat buffet of downhill euphoria. It’s almost too good to be true.

Right now we’re halfway through our tour of the parks, we hit Sun Peaks a couple weeks ago with Hunter and Vanderham for some high speed wide open ripping and we just finished shooting in Silver Star with Sorge, Gully, and Semenuk. Silver Star embodies the “all you can eat” mantra – there are so many perfect berms on that mountain… it is truly out of control.

Trying to capture a park with that much goodness on film is a huge challenge.  What makes it so good is that it just keeps coming at you, there’s just so much of it. We couldn’t have done it without the help from Cam Sorensen and the Silver Star trail crew. We were blown away to hear that only 5 guys build and maintain the park. How they do it I don’t know but the fact that they’re on the hill everyday at 5:30 shows the level of dedication they put into their craft. We had to do their trails justice on film.

One of the techniques we’re using to try and capture the feeling you get when you’re there is through helmet cams and just watching the boys shred corner after corner. For this movie we purchased a Super 16mm POV camera. Our buddy Tim customized an old snowmobile helmet to mount the beast and tried to cut back on the weight as much as possible. The riders LOVE wearing this thing. One of the cool things of still shooting a bit of 16mm film is the excitement if getting shots back long after a shoot is done.  As I’m writing this Darren is at the lab developing the shots and I’m on the ferry to meet up with the Claw, McCaul and the rest of the Anthill crew to hit up Mount Washington. Stoked to see what the Claw has cooking.

Darcy

The idea behind the “Follow Me” mantra is a positive one – it’s all about leading the charge down a new trail, sharing what you know, getting a posse of riders fired up to drop in.

Well life is full of surprises… Yesterday, while filming our second session of the Matt Hunter – Kurt Sorge segment in Kamloops, we were introduced to a different take on the idea of “Follow Me”.

We began the day by loading up the Anthill crew cab, piloted by Darcy Wittenburg, and headed out from Kamloops in the direction of Merritt.  The truck was loaded with camera bags, riding gear, the six of us (Kurt Sorge, Colin Jones, Darcy Wittenburg, Darren McCullough, myself and Matt Hunter) and Hunter’s ATV with a customized rack and the two bikes secured to it.

Just as we passed the turn off for highway 97 to Chase, Darcy yells “Bike down!” – we had just lost one of the bikes off the rack and it was now sliding down the middle of the highway.

This stretch of highway is pretty busy with traffic especially tractor-trailers so we couldn’t turn around right away.  Two and half minutes later, after finding a place to turn around just up the road, we were back at the site of the bike drop.  We were cautious of traffic and on the look out for a place to pull over so that someone could cross the highway and retrieve the bike.

But…

Where the bike should have been there is now no bike.  There is, however, a green pickup stopped on the side of the road with what looks like a bike in the back of it.  We’re wondering what the people in the pickup will do next and the answer to our question comes in the form of a puff of black diesel smoke as the driver of the pickup accelerates back on to the highway.

The actions of the pickup do not seem to be the ones of a Good Samaritan.  We realize the pickup had no intention of stopping so Darcy hits the gas and in a short period of time we’re along side.  I was riding shotgun and could clearly see Kurt’s bike in the back of the truck.  As we pulled even with the driver I’m signaling to him that he has our bike in the back of his truck and to pull over but the response I get back is the guy rubbing his fingers together as he says “How much are you going to pay me for it?”

The chase is on….

Now we are side by side going over 100 kph towards Kamloops chasing the guy who has grabbed our bike after it fell off of our truck and is insisting that we pay him to get it back. So much for the shoot, time for a different take on “Follow Me”…

What happens next felt like an episode of “COPS”… we’re in close pursuit, taking photos of the truck with the license plate and the bike clearly visible, while Hunter’s on the phone with dispatch (RCMP) giving them a play by play as we track the “Bike Pirate”.

The Bike Pirate’s next move is to turn off the highway – he wants to negotiate the release of the bike.  He stops and tells us it should be worth $50 to us to pay him a “reward” for grabbing our bike off of the highway.  I get out of our truck and tell ‘no thanks’ and that we will just be taking our bike back.  As I approach the truck to grab the bike out of the back, the Bike Pirate hits the gas again and takes off.  Darcy yells to me to get in the truck and the chase is back on.

Now we’re following the Bike Pirate through the streets on the outskirts of Kamloops and we are headed towards an overpass.  As we come up on a stop sign, bike pirate is getting more desperate.  He sticks his head out the window of his truck yelling, “This bike must be worth $50 to you!”  To which Darcy replies, “Dude you have officially stolen our bike and the cops are on their way!”  Just as this is going down, we roll past a pedestrian walking with a slurpee, who looks up and says to us “Dude are you serious?”  Crazy days.

Bringing down humanity…

We track the Bike Pirate through the intersection and follow him into a gas station parking lot that’s on the overpass with the highway below.  The Bike Pirate pulls to edge of the parking lot, parks and gets out of his truck.  He grabs the bike out of his truck and threatens to toss it over the edge of the parking lot down to the highway 50 feet below.  I get out of the truck and tell him to give us the bike back because the police are going to be here any minute.  He hesitates for a second and we grab the bike back from him while he’s yelling at us “Show me a bill of sale that proves this bike is yours.”  To which we reply “The bike has Kurt’s name on it and it is a factory prototype.”

At this time I proceeded to snap a couple of photos of the bike pirate and suggest that he is a general bring down on humanity.

In the end we got the bike back and we have a nice story and photos to share.  We have also included a detailed map by cartographer Colin Jones. Please be on the look out for bike pirates.  They are lame.  If there is some good to come out of this experience it would be that this is a clear example of how not to interpret our film concept for “Follow Me”.

jonathan schramm

Anthill Filmaker

The Sunshine Coast of BC is a 40-minute ferry ride away from Vancouver.  The abundance of coastline and boats gives the place an island-like vibe (even though it’s actually part of the mainland). We are shooting with Brandon Semenuk and Stevie Smith plus the Coastal crew (Kyle Norbraten, Curtis Robinson and Dylan Dunkerton) who are doing the building for the segment.  Not only are the Coast Crew some of the best trail builders around right now but they are also kickass riders.  Brandon and the guys ride a lot together in their spare time and Stevie and Brandon are friends going back to their days racing junior together.  Even though everyone worked crazy hard, the shoot had a nice laid back feel – must’ve been the ocean air.

We’ve been looking forward to this segment because it puts two young riders together who represent two dramatically different sides of the sport.  These guys are both at the top of their respective fields right now and we knew that having them ride together would yield some good footage.  What we did not know is exactly what it takes to be a top level downhiller and slopebike rider in 2009.  Having these two guys ride together made it quite clear what some of the differences are.

Brandon…

The Coastal crew built Brandon some custom lines.  I am not going to try and describe them in detail – let’s just say you will enjoy them visually in HD all in due time.  Brandon was attempting tricks he had not done before while riding with another rider.  Bottom line there was a lot of spinning… to the left and to the right…  off one drop and then seconds later off another drop.

Let tell you what I learned about 360ing off a drop.  To begin with the tough thing about 360ing off drop is that you will accelerate on landing.  So when you land you take the impact of the landing and accelerate into whatever lies ahead on the trail (in this case another drop). When you watch a rider 360 a drop next time think of the entire line he is riding and consider the consequences – it is not as easy as they make it look.  The other thing about 360s is that you will naturally be more comfortable spinning your bike either to the left or the right – a lot of guys only spin to their strong side.

At the end of the day if you want to be one of the best slopebike riders in 2009 the minimum requirements are:  Be able to 360 a drop on a trail that accelerates you towards another drop on the trail where you will need to 360 in the opposite direction.  Be able to do this over and over again because the film crew needs multiple takes to capture multiple angles.  Don’t hurt yourself or the shoot is over.  If you have never attempted spinning your opposite direction than be prepared to do so successfully for the first time out on the shoot.  And do it all while following within a few feet of the guy in front of you.  No problem!

Stevie…

Due to weather difficulties we were not able to work with Stevie on terrain that did justice to the full extent of his abilities – that will have to come later this fall.  This was more of a negative for Stevie then for us because we would enjoy filming him riding down a sidewalk.  This guy is driven.  He is learning the game of World cup racing. He is fast and he is strong.

What did I learned about DH racing?  For starters ride through berms instead of in them.  The Anthill crew enjoys documenting the fundamental moments of mountain biking in epic settings in epic light. This situation presented itself on the Sunshine Coast shoot and there was excitement in the air.  We had a beautiful deep-dished berm with a nice layer of loose dirt all over it.  There was more then enough speed leading into it and the berm had lush green vegetation all around it.  The evening light was firing right into it.  Things were looking so good that I could have just kicked dirt over the edge of the berm and as the light hit the dust cloud Sterling could have snapped a cover shot for one of the fine print media publications out there.  But why not let Stevie Smith hit the berm and make it all happen?

Why not?  Well because he can’t.  To do so is not the fastest line through that section of trail.  And to not hit the fastest line does not make sense in Stevie Smiths’ world.  I’m not making sense you say?  Why not just brake a little bit, set up for the berm and slash it?  The answer is that that is not what a World cup DH racer does.  DH racers never take the slower line.  That is irrational.  Not logical.  That is SLOW!

So how does Stevie Smith ride a berm?  He goes straight through it.  He works his front wheel up and over the end of the berm and then slams his rear wheel into it and carries on down the trail.  When you ask him to try it again but this time SLASH the berm.  He hikes back up the trail, sprints to get up to speed and rides right through the berm again… but even faster this time.  Then he apologizes because he knows he did not deliver what we were looking for.  But ultimately that’s our problem.  We have to learn to shoot him differently.  He rides differently and it is our job to document what he does best.

Last thoughts.

We had a great first shoot on the Sunshine coast.  There was a bit of drama with the weather and schedules and float planes to Europe but you will have to wait for the making of ‘FOLLOW ME…’ to get the full details.

Having the crew together to begin to build the vibe for the segment while knowing that we will be back to the location for a second shoot is a very effective way to make an action sports film with a story to it.  The riders are enjoying riding together and are sharing experiences with their friends back in the contest scene or out on the race circuit. Thanks for following us.

jonathan schramm

Anthill Filmmaker

Good dirt, epic people, sick trails and sunshine – Kamloops always calls us back for more. What better way to start our new film than with one of our best buds Matt Hunter and a new addition to the crew Kurt Sorge. We almost said no to this location early on – we’ve filmed in Kamloops a lot before with Hunter and thought we couldn’t do it again… but damn it’s just so good! And with the fresh approach of seeing Hunter and Sorge riding together under the “no one rides alone” mantra and with so many progressive lines built we were on our way.

Minutes into our first evening shoot I knew it was on when (Jonathan) Schramm was flipping out after reviewing the first bagged shot of the film… “that was the most f’d up shot I’ve ever seen!”  With light firing, the crew wasted no time and sessioned variations of the shot until the light faded. Here’s a bit of back story on the first shot for FOLLOW ME…

The Vision – build a sick piece of trail leading into a 40ft booter on the side of a road for a long sustained “truck shot” with a bit of woo tang.

The Build – Hunter and Sorge and a case of beer, some truck headlights that stayed on until 1am. Nice work boys.

The Shot – truck shots are hard enough to nail let alone with 2 riders in the frame going all out so they have enough speed to clear the 40 footer. After a couple solo shots of each guy by themselves, Sorge suggests “I think we’re ready to train it”. So with Schramm and I manning the truck-camera combo, CJ in the woods somewhere nailing the super slow-mo, a safety angle just below the road and Sterling cammo’d somewhere in the mix we call drop in and proceed to drift the truck down the gravel road around a blind corner all while tracking the boys.

Man it sure feels good to be back in the field again!

A big thanks to the Kamloops crew for all the support – Nikki Sorenson thanks for epic meals, Mitch Cheek master line builder, and Al thanks for letting us take over your home. Stoked to head back there for more good times in a few weeks.

~ Darcy