When Lisa and I began shooting Beyond Naked last year, we wondered if anything was happening at the exact opposite celestial time of year from that other Solstice, which would become the climax of our film. We got wind of a strange bunch of people who ride all night long on that darkest of evenings, and we knew we had to meet them.
Ride organizer Joe Platzner graciously allowed us to follow him and his posse though the night. It was a great adventure, and we met some amazing people. Two of them, Greg Cox and Andy Speier, later joined our filmmaking team on June 18 and made a big contribution to our successful event coverage. Some of the footage we shot during this ride will likely also appear in the film, which we’re currently editing.
I cut this video to help promote this year’s ride (although I can’t imagine why they’d have any trouble finding people to join them!) If you’re interested in learning more, check out their site at http://www.seattlerandonneur.org.
Hi Greg- fantastic piece! I’m lucky to know Joe, and I wish I could make this year’s edition of the Solstice Ride.
I’m a video producer and curious- what did you use to stabilize your long shots?
Thanks in advance, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Hi Branson,
I rented a single Kenyon Gyro stabilizer, KS-6, which used alone like that is really designed for still photo applications rather than video (with video you need two of them rigged in opposition to each other). As a result, it didn’t quite do the job of fully stabilizing my shots, but by shooting a lot I was able to get enough good takes to make the edit. Since then I’ve had much better luck using two KS-8 stabilizers for video work.
Dan,
Thanks for that. I especially liked to snow flurries. Just enough light.
Plus it’s nice to know there are others out there making the same “bad decisions” when it comes to long night rides.
Hi Roger,
The flurries under the lamp are real, and there were indeed flurries happening at times that night along the route. But you couldn’t see them in my footage. So I had to help nature along by adding flurries composited in post. In this case, the flurries are actually out-of-focus particles of flour, shot against a black background, in slow motion.
Dan- thanks for your kind reply, and my deepest apologies for calling you Greg in my first post.
No worries!