Category: Films

  • The Man Who Lived On His Bike [Video]

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    [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/35927275[/vimeo] This isn’t exactly a cycle-touring video, but I love it nonetheless. It’s just a masterful demonstration of the creative breadth of short film. As a filmmaker still very much learning the craft, I’m awed by the passion for the concept and the skill of the execution in this 3‑minute piece. No fancy visual bollocks, just jaw-droppingly clever storytelling. Practice, I suppose, makes perfect. Chapeau! (There’s a making-of video for it too.) Feel free to post links to your favourite short films here, even if they’re not exactly cycle-touring related… Continue reading →

  • UPDATE: Kickstarter Target Reached! [Safe-For-Work Video Version]

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    [vimeo 52935602 w=770&h=433] Continue reading →

  • Are Book-Writing And Film-Making The Same Thing?

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    Subjects are nouns, their actions are verbs, their appearances adjectives. A sentence is a single shot, while a paragraph is a sequence of them. Paragraphs are built into chapters, and sequences are built into stories. Then chapters are assembled into books; stories into films. The viewfinder is my vocabulary. The focus ring and exposure dial are my spelling and grammar. These are basic things that I’d better get right. And I need a good mixture of context and detail, otherwise my tale will become muddled and hard to understand. Continue reading →

  • 5 Of The Best World Cycling Videos, And An Interview With The Curator

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    Blanche, the Dutch founder of the World Cycle Videos group on the video sharing website Vimeo, contacted me to see if I’d showcase some of the group’s videos. I was skeptical. Cycle touring videos tend to appeal to the enthusiast, and vary wildly in quality. Most are quite boring (including plenty of my own), unless you already know the riders, or are researching that particular region. But there’s a huge breadth of material in Blanche’s group. More than a thousand videos have been posted to date, from practically every nation on Earth. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/1396719[/vimeo] This is a fantastic, classic video from Tibet. You… Continue reading →

  • Howies Microadventure Competition — The Winning Videos

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    Just got a note through to say that this video I made (with some of Andy’s camerawork) has been selected by Howies as one of the four winners of their micro-adventure competition! Yay! [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/28991462[/vimeo] What does this mean? Continue reading →

  • Microadventure: A Lap of Zone One in 24 Hours

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    [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/28991462[/vimeo] Recently, Howies* set up a microadventure competition, in which a grand’s worth of outdoor clothing was put up for grabs for the best told microadventure story. But the rules didn’t specify that the microadventure should take place in the countryside. The result was this incredibly fun urban adventure. Continue reading →

  • Video: Cycling The Scandinavian Arctic In Midwinter

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    I re-edited the short film I made of my little ice-biking excursion in Norway and Sweden to make it eligible for a documentary scholarship application run by WorldNomads. I was surprised and pleased to come in as the fourth-place runner up out of about 200 entries. It is a valuable thing for an aspiring film-maker to receive a bit of critical praise after a lot of hard work at honing a craft — just as valuable, maybe, as the first-place prize, which was to join a documentary-making expedition in the northern Australian outback. That would have been fun! It’s equally valuable to… Continue reading →

  • This Is What Travel Filmmaking Is Supposed To Look Like

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    My brother, who emigrated to Canada a few years back, has just introduced me to a Canadian TV series called Departures. Three old university friends, three round-the-world tickets and a video camera. If only anything I’d filmed on the road resembled the visual beauty of this. (The episodes themselves are even more stunning!) [youtube width=“720” height=“405”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkIdtzXmpYk[/youtube] Check out the show’s website. It’s such a shame that the series hasn’t yet made it to the UK. Continue reading →

  • Early Adventures — An Interview on Armenian TV

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    If for no other reason than to laugh at our ridiculous beards and mops, have a look at the short interview that Andy and I did for the Armenian TV network H2 back in 2008, after we’d pedalled through the wintry Caucasus on our way to Iran. I’m afraid there are no subtitles, which means you’ll be as baffled as we were… [vimeo width=“720” height=“576”]http://vimeo.com/25136492[/vimeo] Continue reading →

  • Arctic Cycle Video Goes To The Festival

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    The short movie from my winter cycling trip in Sweden and Norway was selected for presentation at the ‘One Shot’ International Short Film Festival in Yerevan, Armenia. In the unlikely event that you’re in Yerevan on Saturday, do pop down to the ACCEA at 15:00 to watch it on the big screen. The festival opens today and will run until the 24th of May. Judging by Vimeo’s ‘likes’ and ‘plays’ statistics, lots of people seem to have enjoyed this video, although a few sharp-eyed viewers noticed the missing stamp! Whoops! If you didn’t see the 90-second film the first time around, here… Continue reading →