There is no denying that cycling comes with a certain magic quality. With the release of our video, “Magic Feeling”, we freed our imagination to create something truly special. But unlike magicians, we’re about to tell you exactly how it’s done.
Superman
For the most iconic shot of the video, the Superman, we had to start from scratch. Scouting the perfect location to build a jump big enough while having enough space to choose the best angle with a scenic backdrop. This shot wasn’t going to be too complicated to pull off. In theory.
The first shot before building the line and then a shot riding it. Things didn’t turn out as simple as it seemed, leaving us with two important challenges.
First, building the line was going to take quite a bit of time, so how were we going to get the same light for both shots?
There wasn’t much we could do to solve this problem. But we got lucky with steady weather for a few days. By shooting at the same time of the day, we managed to get almost identical lighting.
The second challenge was to get a perfect replica of the shot. We knew a drone wasn’t going to cut it.
We had one solution: creating a cable cam. The problem: we had no tree to tie the rope to. To solve this, we had to come up with a system that allowed us to build a cable cam out in the open. We used some custom wooden poles to hold the line up. This turned out to work perfectly! Thanks again to the Rob family for letting us build this.
Ridge line jumps
Next, we wanted to tackle the scenic ridge line above Queenstown. We couldn’t just build a jump line on that ridge. The authorization would have taken too long. Let alone the time it’d take to build the jumps by hand.
Luckily, we got help from MTB Hopper, who provided us with foldable kickers. We took a few of those bad-boys to the top, saving us countless man-hours – not to mention the blood, sweat and tears!
To get there, we first took Skyline’s Queenstown Gondola, strapped our MTB Hoppers kickers to our backs and pedaled all the way to the top of the ridgeline.
We used the kickers as a single jump and landing to create a fake tabletop. In post-production, we covered the kickers with fake dirt to give them that dirt jump feel. This meant that we could ride the jump line while enjoying one of the most beautiful views in the world!
Branches
The branch effect was primarily created in real life – without relying on all that many special effects.
We wanted to add a section riding through the woods with the effect of a trail appearing in front of you as the branches were moving. For the wide shot, we needed all hands on deck.
Basically, each branch was attached to a fishing line that was brought down as soon as the riders were coming. There were probably 30 or more branches that had to be dropped at the same time along the trail. That’s a lot of fishing line to tackle.
If you ask Sam, he’ll probably tell you that this was the most terrifying part of the video to ride. It had us jumping into a trail full of branches, hoping they would magically get out of the way on time. It took a couple of tries to get the timing right and only a few minor crashes!
Bridge
The bridge was the most challenging and time-consuming build we’ve had to do for this project. Obviously, building the bridge itself wasn’t that complicated. But to make it look like each plank of the bridge appeared in front of the rider, that was a different story.
We had to attach four pieces of fishing line to each plank and then connect the lines to another log above that would allow us to pull all the lines at the same time.
One of the trickiest parts was to get the planks to land in the right place. In the end it took us around ten tries to make it work. After that, we deleted the fishing lines in post-production and created the main log of the bridge that you can see in the video.
Leaves
When we wrote the script, we wanted to include as many elements as possible. Luckily, the UK had no shortage of leaves!
The idea here was to get Sam to ride some leaf-covered berms so we would see the leaves as they flew up in front of him. We put a lot of thought into making this as realistic as possible. First, we wanted to throw leaves by hand. But then we came up with another simple, but elegant solution: using a leaf blower!
We had someone running next to Sam with a leaf blower as he was riding. He blew leaves just in front of him in the tight shots. For the wide shots we captured the person with the leaf blower running on the trail. Finally, we focused on Sam riding on the “clean” trail and merged all the elements together in post-production. It was a really fun section to create.
Drawbridge
When it came to the take-off, we wanted a road gap to appear from the ground and then close like a drawbridge. But when we started building the bridge, we realized how much of a challenge this was going to be. The structure was extremely heavy and we had no way to make it do a full 180-degree turn.
We decided to shoot it in two sections. The first one when the ladder would leave the ground and rise. The second one when it would land on its feet, just before Sam would ride it.
We used a system of pulleys and ropes with three people operating it. We also added movement for the 2 small legs – which took us a whole day to pull off. But it was definitely worth it!
Music
Finally, every special video needs a special song and we went all-out for this one. Which means we produced our own track.
From the melody to the lyrics, we worked with Orage Musique on a rock-opera riding song. We wanted something positive. Something that would put a smile on your face. And of course we wanted to evoke the magic feeling of riding.
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