Category: Films
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Some thoughts, as the Beer Can Stove video goes viral
At the time of writing, the video above has been played 1,311,131 times. Needless to say, when Armen and I popped out to buy a couple of cans of Kozel for this film, we were not expecting this to happen. It’s been fun to watch the statistics over the last few days. It’s also been interesting to ruminate on why content ‘goes viral’ — internet shorthand for a shedload of people seeing something online in a short space of time. What it boils down to, I think, is simple, resonant ideas put into easily shareable form, plus a dice-roll. The dice… Continue reading →
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The Cycle Traveller Who’s Going Nowhere (Plus, Upcoming Screening Events)
You know what I love most about this fantastic little film? (Do watch it.) It’s the fact that what our protagonist has unwittingly done is exactly the same as embarking upon a really long bike trip. The only difference is that he never leaves his home city. (But then if life on the road is less about leaving home and more about feeling at home anywhere — is there really any difference at all?) * * * Speaking of films, we’re about to kick off a new round of Janapar events in the UK (and a few elsewhere too). If you’re in or near… Continue reading →
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How This 2‑Minute Clip Won The ACA’s Bicycle Travel Video Contest
This year I was asked to be a judge for the Adventure Cycling Association of America’s first Bicycle Travel Video Contest. Like many of the other judges (whose number included Dom, Alastair, Friedel & Andrew, Russ & Laura, Michelle, and Ryan), I watched a lot of videos that were kind of OK. I watched a few that were quite terrible. I watched a handful that were really good. But Stefan’s winning 158-second clip was far ahead of the pack. Watch it and see why. What was it about this video that I found so compelling? Continue reading →
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Highly Embarrassing Outtakes/Bloopers From Janapar
If you’ve enjoyed the Janapar deleted scenes series I’ve been running over the last couple of weeks (here’s the first one, in which I faceplant into some concrete), I’ve got a little bonus for you — a comedy “outtakes reel” of the most embarassing footage I wish I’d never given to the editor in the first place. (Oh, the humiliation!) Now! Next week is going to be rather exciting, as I’ll be publishing the first in a series of articles I’ve been working on for almost a full year. If I’m right, it’s going to cause a bit of a stir, and so… Continue reading →
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From The Cutting Room Floor #4: Cycling from Aswan, Egypt, to Wadi Halfa, Sudan
This scene recounts all the chaos of a classic experience which all who head down Africa’s east route will negotiate: the weekly ferry crossing of Lake Nasser, from Aswan (of Dam fame) in the south of Egypt to the tiny port of Wadi Halfa in northern Sudan. Deep within the historic region of Nubia, this is the only overland route between the two nations, who are still unable to agree on who actually owns the inhospitable tract of empty desert in between. The ferry sails just once a week, and tickets can only be procured by visiting the agency in… Continue reading →
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From The Cutting Room Floor #3: Life On The Road (in 01:52) [VIDEO]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/57023486[/vimeo] The funny thing about this, the third in the series of deleted scenes (#1 and #2), is that it encapsulates better than anything else the day-to-day camaraderie that occurs between bicycle travellers and the people with whom they come into contact. Demonstrating this today is the inimitable Andy and a group of Georgian fishermen selling their wares on the roadside. Continue reading →
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From The Cutting Room Floor #2: Quite Interesting Sleeping Arrangements
The second in this series of Janapar bonus video clips will raise a smile with many cycle-tourists. For some of the best two-wheeled travel tales derive from overnighting under the most unlikely of circumstances. On this particular evening, Andy and I found ourselves kindly gifted the use of a small-town football field changing room somewhere in rural Turkey, in which I had the chance to demonstrate my highly sophisticated sleeping system to the camera. This scene didn’t make the final cut for a similar reason to the first clip: there was a limited opportunity to encapsulate the six months for… Continue reading →
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From The Cutting Room Floor #1: The One Where Tom Puts A Hole In His Face
One of the tragedies of art is how much perfectly decent stuff is chucked away. The 300 hours of footage I shot for Janapar is a case in point. The finished film is 79 minutes long, so for every minute of footage I shot, another four hours were binned. (Admittedly, plenty of it was shite, but a lot of it wasn’t.) Beginning today, then, I’ll be bringing the best of this extra material back to life. For those who’ve seen Janapar, these clips will explain a few things glossed over in the main feature. For those who haven’t seen it, they’ll… Continue reading →
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How To Make An Award-Winning Adventure Documentary [VIDEO]
A lot’s happened since Janapar’s premiere at Raindance last year, but one of the nicest moments was winning one of the top awards at Sheffield Adventure Film Festival, one of the UK’s main fixtures in the adventure & outdoor festival calendar. It was particularly rewarding given the ridiculous amount of work that had gone into putting it together — four years of shooting, two years of production and 6 months of distribution so far, unpaid, and the ongoing storytelling project still occupies a large chunk of my time. I learned a huge amount during the production process — as did James,… Continue reading →
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Microadventure: Swim to an island. Sleep on it.
I’m on a train, speeding north from London for an event tonight in Kendal. It’s the fourth in a run of film screenings I’m doing over the next two weeks. I’m knackered. My body-clock is trashed. And I’m wearing the same clothes I was wearing in my sleeping bag last week on an island in the English Lakes that I swam to with two friends, Al and Ferg. It was a foolhardy plan, concocted by three blokes desperate to justify why they weren’t spending Valentine’s Eve with their other halves. At least the plan was a simple one: swim to… Continue reading →