This footage was originally posted around June 25th, of 2007. I’m wanted to repost it here because it made me smile to go back and watch these clips. Be sure to stick around for the last clip of Larry singing - it’s worth it. 

Source: ftomfilm

via Vimeo : Somewhere between Anacortes and Bar Harbor

I came across this clip while re-checking the mp4 footage taken during the filming of FToM - I have hundreds and hundreds of clips like this one, but, for whatever reason, this especially made me miss the crew and the road. I can’t remember where this was taken; I do know that Jef and I made some extremely messy grilled-cheese sandwiches on the park grill, also that two little kids kept trying to skateboard for our cameras and time after time fell like a bag of bricks on the cement floor. Anyway - I just thought I’d share. 

via FToM * Shop * Square 7x7 inches, Softcover, 198 pages * This production Book is a mesh of Michael Ambs and Amanda Walker’s days on the road, while filming their first feature length documentary For Thousands of Miles. The following is a collection of their twitters, flickr photos, polaroids and blog post.  A friend the other night sent me a personal video-letter - and at one point mentioned how much they enjoyed reading our Production Book. Which reminded me that it’s been quite some time since I’ve really mentioned here.  As much as I am inspired by the ability to share stories online - I have to say, it makes me incredibly happy knowing that something we made is out there finding a home on someone’s shelf or desk. I guess this Production Book is really the first thing I’ve ever made that makes me feel that way. 
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via FToM * Shop

* Square 7x7 inches, Softcover, 198 pages *

This production Book is a mesh of Michael Ambs and Amanda Walker’s days on the road, while filming their first feature length documentary For Thousands of Miles.

The following is a collection of their twitters, flickr photos, polaroids and blog post. 

A friend the other night sent me a personal video-letter - and at one point mentioned how much they enjoyed reading our Production Book. Which reminded me that it’s been quite some time since I’ve really mentioned here. 

As much as I am inspired by the ability to share stories online - I have to say, it makes me incredibly happy knowing that something we made is out there finding a home on someone’s shelf or desk. I guess this Production Book is really the first thing I’ve ever made that makes me feel that way. 

64 Days - Part 4, via Vimeo

It’s taken Amanda and I a long, long time to put out this episode – and in the last several months since we released 8, the script for 9 has gone through many changes. The last two weeks that we’ve been working on this has been exciting, I didn’t realize how much I miss posting new episodes.

I’m watching the progress bar on Vimeo slowly climb past 8% and it’s a little before 1 in the morning as I’m writing this. It’s gonna be a long night – but it’s worth it.

So – a brief introduction to this episode. This is the 9th episode overall that we’ve put out, and it’s the 4th chapter in the 64 Days series. It introduces in greater detail the three crew members: Olan, Olivier, and Jef. Who all flew out from Belgium to work on Pedal without any pay… at least yet, I hope I’ll be able to change that when the film is finished *fingers crossed*

Our time on the road with them taught us both so much. It was an experience I will never forget – and never really know how to properly put into words. Well, enough talk. I hope you enjoy it. Amanda and I worked very hard on it.

If you do enjoy it, as always we’d love to hear your comments and questions – but also, if you have a twitter account, we’d really be flattered if you send out a quick twitter about it. Which you can do all with one click here.

We’re also excited about being able to embed this episode on your own blog in beautiful HD – we purchased 10,000 HD embeds from Vimeo so you can see it in full resolution *anywhere* on the web – so please help us put those 10,000 embeds to good use!

And as I mentioned in my last post – here’s a link to the PDF of episode 9’s script. This was scanned in about two weeks ago, so you’ll notices some slight differences in what’s typed out and what ended up in the timeline. We tend to make small changes and rearrange the edit up until the last minute.

Thanks for being so patient with us – and thanks for all the support.

I spent all day yesterday and most of this morning editing episode 9. As I’m writing this, it’s about 99% done, there’s one shot I still need to take after I shower, but the rest is pretty locked down. Amanda will be coming over later today to watch and re-watch it, taking notes, tightening things up. Short of some disaster, I should be hitting export around 10 o’clock. If you’re not subscribed already, you can subscribe to our RSS feed here, and be notified immediately when we post the new episode. There’s a lot of work still left to do this weekend: I need to write up a newsletter, prepare the PDF of episode nine’s script (I decided it would be fun to include that, show people how we work), and it’s always tough uploading such a large HD file to several sites… this time we’ll be doing it twice (with a newly edited 8, along with 9). This was a difficult episode to write – it introduces the crew members – Olivier, Olan, and Jef – and we tried to really share what their personalities were like, and how being on the road with them shaped the film and Amanda and I. I’m sure we fell short of doing them justice, but I hope we made it clear that they are three amazing, talented, complex, and engaging individuals. Okay. I have a lot of work to do. Thanks for all the support, everyone.
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I spent all day yesterday and most of this morning editing episode 9. As I’m writing this, it’s about 99% done, there’s one shot I still need to take after I shower, but the rest is pretty locked down. Amanda will be coming over later today to watch and re-watch it, taking notes, tightening things up. Short of some disaster, I should be hitting export around 10 o’clock.

If you’re not subscribed already, you can subscribe to our RSS feed here, and be notified immediately when we post the new episode. There’s a lot of work still left to do this weekend: I need to write up a newsletter, prepare the PDF of episode nine’s script (I decided it would be fun to include that, show people how we work), and it’s always tough uploading such a large HD file to several sites… this time we’ll be doing it twice (with a newly edited 8, along with 9).

This was a difficult episode to write – it introduces the crew members – Olivier, Olan, and Jef – and we tried to really share what their personalities were like, and how being on the road with them shaped the film and Amanda and I. I’m sure we fell short of doing them justice, but I hope we made it clear that they are three amazing, talented, complex, and engaging individuals.

Okay. I have a lot of work to do. Thanks for all the support, everyone.

Archives : Originally posted July 12th, 2007

We just got a text message from Larry to come meet him in La Crescent, Minnesota, because he met Ted, and “Ted is awesome”.

Unfortunately we were sitting in a parking lot behind the train-tracks that run through New Albin, Iowa, 24 miles south-east when we heard - hopefully we make it back in time (Ted is apparently heading towards Chicago, which means I have no idea what route he is taking).

I’m not sure what is going on due to having absolutely no cell phone service.

Ted will be the first person (on a trip of any kind) that we’ve met in two weeks - not sure where the hell everyone went, but, I’ll admit, it’s been making me a bit freaked-out.

Today is “one of those days”. There are moments when all the “little things” involved in making a documentary are somewhat frustrating and time-consuming. All the errands and back-tracking and blah, that don’t actually get anything on tape - just slow us down.

I have moments of extreme jealously - watching Larry ride. I’m in desperate need of another long, long-distant bicycle trip.

Today, while brushing my teeth, I started thinking about my 10 year reunion for Onsted, MI, if I wanted to go or not. See, I have a real problem telling people what I’m up to. It makes me uncomfortable and awkward - reunions seem like one big “what-are-you-doing fest”. But I had the thought of riding a bicycle from my apartment in North Hollywood, up the coast to San Francisco, zig-zagging my way towards Glacier and heading east back to Onsted in time to catch the reunion… I think that could clear my head enough and actually enjoy it that way.

Not that any of this has much to do with making Pedal.

Moving on: a lot has been happening out here on the road that I’ve yet to mention on the blog. Sometimes things unfold slowly and you have be cautious about opening your mouth too soon.

Two things. First: a couple of weeks ago the crew took a train back to Los Angeles. Second: the person who was going to help us with $8,000 we needed, no longer is.

And… end post. Just kidding - I guess these things need some explaining, eh? Let’s talk about the latter first.

Everything sounded promising at first, but once we read the fine print of the, I’m sure, typical Hollywood contract, we felt it wasn’t for us. At all. We were giving up a little too much… 35% of profits is a lot to hand out for only 8 grand, especially considering how tiny of a percentage that is compared to the overall budget.

That’s that in a nutshell - perhaps more details will be included in a future episode. So we found most of what the film needed through family and friends - we are still a bit short, but we are also still talking to other people. We came pretty close though to signing a lot away.

Now for the crew: I should make it clear that there was no falling out, that we are all still on good grounds, and that the Black Sheep are still a big part of Pedal. But… one morning the three of them sat me down and said, basically, that there were too many people working on this project. They felt that they hurt more than they helped - and although they brought a lot to the table (this is me speaking here, not their words), I can see now that they had a point

It was a hard goodbye, everyone had a bit of something in their eye. Amanda and I were blank-faced when their train pulled away, we went and watched ‘Knocked Up’ at the local theater, and had a good time. It helped relax us a bit - take our minds out of the “what the hell are we going to do now” mentality.

Things since have been a much lighter, faster production. It’s not the same without the three of them, they are missed. I still laugh at the craziness that went down in the short time that they were here. They left a good deal of their equipment with us, to make sure the transition behind the scenes didn’t effect the film in any way. I feel it’s gone good.

[…]

Having said that. We just finished an interview with Ted behind the subway. Footage of that soon - he was a really cool guy, I like the way he’s doing his trip - he buys a gas station map and marks down places he wants to check out, and off he goes. Tim and I did a bit of that after Glacier on our way to the coast, but nothing like what he’s doing.

Don’t forget to watch the latest JETSET episode - I recorded a quick update for Steve & Zadi and they were awesome enough to include it in their show.

Archives : Originally posted June 25th, 2007

This will have to be somewhat short today, we all slept in today because none of us fell asleep till 4 in the morning due to a massive thunder storm. The wind kept pushing the tent down on our heads - I was hit in the face by the tent-poles several times. It was craziness. 

We’re in “the bread-basket of America”, as Larry would say, and things are going good. I have a few interviews imported that I just need trim and export, hopefully they will make up for the lack of interview-footage I’ve posted so far. 

In the meantime, here’s a bunch of Mp4 clips that I thought I’d share. 

Be sure to stick around for the last clip of Larry singing - it’s worth it. 

Archives : Originally posted June 9th, 2007

No EVDO connection. No cell phone single. We’ve set up camp where the Skagit River runs into the Cascade River, surrounded on all sides by mountains ranging from 4,000 to 8,900 feet in elevation. It’s very beautiful. People in town (Marblemount) say that we are “in for a treat” tomorrow - I’m looking forward to it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself - I mentioned in my last post I was excited about uploading the first few “official” shots (I say “official” because we’ve been capturing tons with the two mp4 cameras and our Nokia), yesterday we stopped at a laundry mat in Concrete where I managed to import a few minutes here and there, and export them straight to quicktime-movies.

This 1st clip is one of the many takes we captured with the sun setting behind the camp-site. It was very cloudy and grey all day but around 8:30 the sun came down under the clouds enough to just light everything up.

I’m so happy with this 2nd clip - we had set up in the morning to get their “taking off” moment, and on the 35 kit (HDV35), the guys had their zoom-lens (200). But Amanda had packed her SLR camera and one of the lens she has for it is a very long lens (a 300), we swapped it out and it looks just amazing.

Unbelievably sharp depth of field. We stopped by a field yesterday to shoot some tall grass with the mountains in the background - and I couldn’t believe how many “layers” of field we could shift through.

The great news is it’s turned out to be much, much easier to film on-the-fly with the 35 kit mounted to the FX1. At first we were planning to only break it out for interviews. But Olivier is finding it very simple to focus and move at the same time - which I love, it’s just one more “look” we can play with for the film.

I also can’t believe how much I’m loving the mp4 and Nokia footage, it gives a less “cinematic / grandiose” feel to the shot and makes it more personal, I uploaded some of it here. We’ve been slowly and carefully breaking out our 16mm, we only have 30 minutes of stock for the entire two months (if anyone has any 100 foot daylight spools they’d like to donate, please let me know, we could use it).

But… *deep breath* I do have some bad news. It was news that, I could tell, was very hard for Jay to come talk to us about. Amanda was curled up in her tent, and the four of us guys were at the picnic table looking at rushes and talking about whatever, when Jay let us know the situation with his knee. I’ve never actually talked about it here on the site, so this will require a quick catch-up: Jay is a snowboarder, actually a very good one.

In the 2005 he took the bronze in the world championship. Yea, I know, he’s good. But he’s had knee trouble for years, gone through 5 major surgeries, and at the moment is actually completely missing his ACL.

Both Larry & Jay have been training, in the mountains, a great deal - so it’s hard to say if it’s the added weight to the bike that caused the problem, or if it just finally caught up with him. But only 10 miles into the ride this morning and his knee almost brought him to tears, and Jay’s a tough enough guy to know that’s a problem… especially on a flat day like they had this morning. So, Jay is going to stay behind - Larry is pressing on… alone. He’s, understandably, a bit terrified about the following 4,200 miles - but he’s also a bit excited about the solitude. It changes things for us, not in a bad way, but we’ll adapt with it.

As a crew we are still trying to find the best balance for what we are doing - I know it will take some time in this kind of on-the-move environment. For example, Jeff and I had a hell of time today with a simple crane shot - not too sure if any of that footage actually worked out.

But I am very sad to see Jay go - I know he was very excited and ready for this ride, I know he’s sad to watch Larry ride on without him. But I understand and encourage him not to push himself to the point of ruining his snowboarding career, or even just simply ruining his knee.

It’s going to be a hard good bye tomorrow morning. Well, it’s after midnight, I need to get some sleep. Goodnight for now.

We pulled into camp last night around 1 in the morning – overall, I think we drove a total of 14 hours from Leggett to Anacortes. We watched the sun set as Jef played us songs in French. 

Amanda and I woke up around 8 to head back to Seattle to pick up Larry and Jay from the airport. We expected it to take us around an hour and twenty minutes to head back into town – it took over two and a half hours, the whole time the crew is waiting here at camp with no way of knowing what is taking us so long. 

There’s plenty more to share – but that will have to do for now. It’s midnight and everyone is planning to get up around 5 to head out. We shot our first “official” shots for Pedal today – I can’t wait to upload them to the blog. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. 

Source: blog.projectpedal.com

We’re heading north on the 101 – 30 miles south of Crescent City. It’s half raining, half misting in the mountains. We are way behind schedule, which, sadly, is all my fault; I wanted to take “the scenic route” along Hwy 1 and it was so back-and-forth and up-and-down that it made us terribly car sick. It took us two hours to get back to the 101. We were supposed to be able to meet up with Mike Hedge in Seattle as he takes off on his Live Earth tour – instead we are trying to pin point where we’ll cross paths at an Amtrak station. Which is difficult to do without a connection for my cell-phone or EV-DO card. I’m nervous though about our being behind – we need to be in Anacortes with enough time to set up a decent camp-site for the crew, Amanda and I have to wake up early tomorrow morning and head 80 miles east into Seattle to pick up Larry & Jay from the airport, and then bring them back. On top of this it looks like it’s going to be raining for the next few days… everywhere.
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We’re heading north on the 101 – 30 miles south of Crescent City. It’s half raining, half misting in the mountains. We are way behind schedule, which, sadly, is all my fault; I wanted to take “the scenic route” along Hwy 1 and it was so back-and-forth and up-and-down that it made us terribly car sick. It took us two hours to get back to the 101.

We were supposed to be able to meet up with Mike Hedge in Seattle as he takes off on his Live Earth tour – instead we are trying to pin point where we’ll cross paths at an Amtrak station. Which is difficult to do without a connection for my cell-phone or EV-DO card.

I’m nervous though about our being behind – we need to be in Anacortes with enough time to set up a decent camp-site for the crew, Amanda and I have to wake up early tomorrow morning and head 80 miles east into Seattle to pick up Larry & Jay from the airport, and then bring them back.

On top of this it looks like it’s going to be raining for the next few days… everywhere.

Archives : Originally posted May 31st, 2007

It’s all so surreal. Four years ago, I watched a short film called ‘Marla’, made by a team of Belgians (who, at that time, called themselves “Another State of Mind”) on a shoe-string budget. Using a homemade rig involving a GL2 and an old SLR Nikon they bought off eBay for cheap, they created a “mini35” (MiniDV meets 35mm film) look that was very impressive and different. I was an instant fan.

Fast forward to last night - driving in the rented mini van with Amanda down the 405, on our way to pick up Olivier (co-founder of ASOM) and Jeff from LAX.

We were late - because I didn’t finish installing the rack on the van’s roof soon enough - and not to mention traffic was backed up on a Tuesday night at 6:30. Add to this I only wrote on the back of my hand the flight number, and not the actual airline… yea, we were having issues.

First we park the van, run into terminal 2 looking at US Airlines and Delta - Amanda is on the phone with her sister trying to look up the airline, I’m at the baggage claim begging some guy to punch it in on his computer. They’ve been on the ground for 30 minutes. We find out it’s in terminal 6 - which just happens to be about as far away from 2 as possible.

We run back to the parked van, go through the long exit line, do a loop to the other side, miss the parking structure for 6, drive another 400 feet to garage 7. Get out, race to terminal 6, realize that international flights get dumped off at 7. Turn back around, race to 7, at this point it’s been 45 minutes since their flight has landed. The pick-up area is packed, I don’t actually know what Olivier or Jeff look like… we forgot to make a “Black Sheep” sign.

I’m basically looking for two people who look like they are looking for people looking for them. When a tall guy to my left casually asked me, with a bit of a grin on his face, “are you looking for someone?”. It was perfect.

And luckily, they had just picked up their bags moments before, so we didn’t look like total assholes.

They are great - I couldn’t be happier with things right now. It’s all happening. Tomorrow we are going to be prepping the van, loading the equipment, finishing the rack on the roof, picking up the last of the camping gear, and 20 other little things. Friday night we pick up Olan, and Saturday morning we leave.

Episode 4 of 5

The idea of Project Pedal FToM came about, thanks to Amanda, almost exactly four years ago – and for the last three years, I’ve been pouring myself into it with my fair share of difficulties along the way.

But thanks to the encouragement of close friends, family and the readers/viewers of this site – I’ve always picked myself up and kept trying when things dead-ended.

I can’t imagine where I would be without this site and without everything it has directly been instrumental in sending my way. My amazing crew, the Black Sheep… the professional advice and support of Matt… the much needed and much appreciated relationships with total strangers who’ve stumbled onto this site in there own ways.

I’ve learned so much in the last three years, and if I had any advice to pass on to people reading – it would be, whatever your passion or personal project may be, don’t go it alone. Start a blog, and be as transparent and inclusive as possible.

I’m excited about these last two months and the two that will follow – I can’t wait for the trip to come. I’m nervous. I’m excited. “Breath in pink, exhale blue”. There’s a lot of details to get into place – but… this is it, two months left. Here we go.

Source: vimeo.com

big news & the black sheep

A part of me worries that the “big news” has built up for too long, and now that I can finally share it with you, it’s not going to live up to it’s anticipation, but all the same: there are two producers “highly” interested in executively producing the film.

Now, whether or not, in the end, this actually plays out is one thing, but what I find most flattering is the consideration. To explain: I live in a town that is overflowing with talent and for every one “nobody” that gets an opportunity to prove themselves, there are a thousand who don’t. And when I think about this film’s very humble beginnings and how it’s taken, almost without notice, huge leaps and bounds in a direction that would have – in the beginning – seemed completely unattainable… it’s just amazing and very, very flattering to receive this professional-level of attention and it’s a great compliment to the film.

Also, some other very big news, the crew has their new website up & running: “The Black Sheep”, which has their new music video they just finished shooting with the new HDV35-kit that we’ll be using for the documentary. It looks amazing.

Source: blog.projectpedal.com