Last month recap!

Wow, I've been really slacking with keeping this up to date. My bad. Anyway, here's a massive post of pretty much everything from the last month, or at least since National Champs.

First off, I'll start with the "Through the Lens" I've been doing for Pinkbike. Jordan from Pinkbike contacted me saying they wanted some interviews done for the main page with some top Photographers and Videographers and I jumped at the chance. First off, Jordan asked me to do one with Steve Lloyd, a photographer from Utah in American who won the Saint Deep Summer contest and won a chance to compete against the top photogs such as Sterling Lorence and Sven Martin at Crankworx.
Steve Lloyd Interview
After that one, I wanted to get one done with a videographer. I've always been a massive fan of the Yeti Podcasts ever since Clay started doing them a few years ago. So who better to contact then the current Yeti videographer, John Reynolds. John was really excited about doing it, but was real busy (understandably) with shooting World Cups, but he managed to fit in a few minutes to answer a few questions so I could get the blog out!
John Reynolds Interview

Now, some local pinners contacted me a while back asking if I wanted to make some promo vids for them for a competition in MBUK to win a place on the Steve Peat Syndicate. So I headed up to Triscombe and made a little video of each of them to send in. I'm fairly pleased with these, but the boys seem happy with them, so here they are!

Jay Williamson

Adam Lock

Tom Coles


Next up was the National at Moelfre in Wales. We headed up on the Friday night but a little later than we did for Llangollen as Dom had to finish work. It was Dom, Milky, my Dad and I in the car on the way up which obviously meant a few arguments, but we got there at around 10.30 and pitched up our tent in the main driveway between the pits. We were woken up on the Saturday from people asking us to move our tent so that we did.
Dom got out on the hill and so did Milky. I didn't want to go right up to the top straight away and I didn't really see much point in going out at all until a little later as no-one really gets up to speed straight away. I headed up at about 10am to the 4X jumps at the bottom. After about 10 minutes of being there the rain came, and it lashed down. The track turned into a river and I was soaked. Having looked at the weather beforehand I knew it was going to be cloudy but it didn't forecast any rain, so I didn't bother with any wet weather gear for either myself or my camera. Big mistake.
The rain continued until about 1, then eased off. I was getting a little worried now about the amount of shots I had. I headed up to the top, but with most people not bothering with many more runs as their clothes and bikes were caked in mud good shots and elite riders were very few and far between. I did get a few good shots as it became sunny later in the day, but I didn't worry too much as usually you're guaranteed at least 3 shots on the Sunday, from Elite practice, Seeding, and race runs.
Saturday night it kicked off with a high jump contest, big whip contest, and this weird gladiator setup! I took and early night wanted to get up early in the morning to get some shots.
In the morning I got up and went up the hill but not many riders were going up for runs. I wanted to do a stationary shot of the bottom berm through most of practice, but didn't get any good stuff, so I waited for Elite practice.
Unfortunately, some kid nailed himself up top, and a tractor turned over. Resulting in an air ambulance, and a course closure. This meant that all the Elite riders came down at once, meaning I could only get about half of them. Not to worry, still seeding and race runs.
I headed up to the bottom 4X jumps again ready to get some Elite seeding shots. I waited there for about 2 hours, only to find out that another kid nailed himself up top and had to be airlifted away. Thanks to the massive delay they had to cancel all seeing after Juniors. So no seeding shots of the Elites. Now I was getting real worried as I only had a couple shots max of the Elite riders and a few other good shots. Definitely not enough for a good 6 minute edit.
Finals came around and I positioned myself where I could get the longest shot possible. I managed to get the top guys, then I got some interview with Beaumont, Bryceland, and Peaty after their podiums.
We headed off and were home by 10 so the editing commenced. I was pretty annoyed with myself as I had been lazy all weekend, and didn't get as much good stuff as I wanted. I know now for the next race to be prepared, with wet gear even if they predict sun. I also know to get as many shots as you can and don't use the mindset of "that'll do" as it always results in a poor video in the end.
My video turned out pretty poor and I'm really not that happy with it. It didn't get run on Dirt and it's only had a handful of views in comparison to my Nat champs vid which has had over 20k now.

MPORA Action Sports >>

Now another cool bit of news is that Transition and UK imported Surf Sales have agreed to put their logo on my videos. It won't be long until the 5 second logo is replaced with a proper ad of a TR450. But it'll do for now.

Also, I saw that Pinkbike were doing a competition for a new film out called 'Life Cycles'. It's a recut competition where you download the raw footage, shot by the guys at Life Cycles, and edit it into your own form. I don't really need to talk much about this other than to say here's my entry!


Last weekend I went up to South West Extreme in Bideford in North Devon for the UK National 4X Champs. I'd never shot 4X before and it was really weird but nice, to be at an event where you didn't know anyone. It was hard to know who to shoot, but I figured it out through the day. I've now figured out some good settings for my camera to get good slow-mo and film qualities, thanks to Sean Anderson who brought out a sick trailer recently for a film called Sync. I've also figured out some really good exporting figures now so I can get good quality videos with a small file size!
Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with this video considering it's my first time shooting 4X!


I've also got a Facebook group on the go now for people to join. So go to:
http://www.facebook.com/southsideproductions