Category: Janapar

A little context — my brother is a journalist in Vancouver, and he conducted this interview with me for his blog. His questions provoked some interesting thoughts. Tell me about the development of the movie. Did you expect that it would become a fully fledged feature, rather than a simple documentary? The best way to understand this is to go back about five years to early 2007, when I was planning to cycle round the world. My best mate Andy and I had got a whole route round the planet mapped out, and we were absolutely dead set on doing… Continue reading →

It came as little surprise to receive the following email yesterday. Dear James, Continue reading →

The answer, I’m afraid, is “not quite yet”! I owe you a better explanation, though. Previous videos I’ve made have been quite simple — go adventuring, collect the footage, edit, edit some more, and upload to Vimeo. That’s how the Lapland, Mongolia and recent micro-adventure videos worked. Janapar is a bit different.  Continue reading →

Late on Saturday afternoon, James and I walked gingerly onstage in the Royal Geographical Society’s Ondaatje Theatre. Around 200 people sat in the audience — a handful of family, friends, fellow adventurers and cyclists, and a large proportion of the delegates from the RGS’ “Explore” annual seminar. I thanked those in attendance for coming. I made a little joke. People laughed. This itself was reassuring: I utterly hate public speaking. James introduced himself as the producer-director, introduced the film, and we made our escape before outstaying our welcome. Then the film began. Continue reading →

A word or two about this whole film thing, while it’s still a hot topic. (Warning — this post may contain ranting.) It was never my idea to video my bike trips. Andy gets full credit (blame?) for that. I was seriously unconvinced that it was worth the bother and stubbornly ignored his attempts to get me enthused. I was far more interested in photography and writing. Besides, I’d never used a video camera before. (This was early 2007 — four-and-a-half years ago now, which is enough time to leave sixth form and get a Masters’ degree, or to see… Continue reading →

…well, that’s the thing — I don’t think we’re quite there yet. So I’m extending the deadline as far as physically possible — this Friday. More than 60 70 80 90 100 comments have been posted in the discussion so far, an overwhelming amount of input and thought, for which I can’t thank you enough — it’s been a brilliant discussion. Below is my current shortlist — which do you prefer? [polldaddy poll=5514762]   (What’s Janapar? A common Armenian word meaning road/route/way/journey, oft found loitering in native songs/poems/compositions) The title will appear in this shot (ignore the low quality for now),… Continue reading →

UPDATE: For lack of a decisive title, I’ve extended this to Friday 23rd — after that, there’s really no going back. I’d like to ‘crowdsource’ a film and book title by Saturday, the 17th of September. This weekend. If you come up with the magic bullet, I’ll send you: an invitation to the U.K. premiere next year, a DVD copy of the film, a copy of the book, and we’ll put a special thank you in the film’s credits. Material incentives aside, you’d help me do justice to the culmination of five years of planning, adventuring, filming and writing, the result of which could hardly be more… Continue reading →

When you’re trying to record voice-overs for the film you’re making about an adventure cyclist who hates being put on the spot at the best of times, there are a few things you might try in order to get the results you need: Wake the adventure cyclist up at 5:30am Throw him in a lake and make him cycle fifteen miles Feed him a large cup of coffee and a biscuit Coax him into a small, hot, foam-lined sound booth and surreptitiously lock the door Continue reading →