INDUSTRIAL RENOVATION | Short MTB film

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This short project, for me at least, encapsulates the thing that keeps me coming back to filming mountain biking. It's not the hours spent planning or the feeling of coming up with a grand concept. It is the excitement of improvising at the trails, coming home to edit and seeing those note book notes become a film...


This started as a small strike of inspiration while Matt stripped the paint off his custom Rocky Mountain Altitude. I loved the idea of such an industrial, sharp edged bike flying through the bright green forests of Wellington, NZ. This really expands out to the city in general. If you have ever visited the capital of New Zealand, you will know that it is a city constantly at battle with nature. You may have heard it referred to as windy, well in fact it is the world's windiest city according to a brief internet search. Apart from this you may notice many houses lie on steep hills, Wind turbines stand in public parks and mountain bike trails run from the city center as far as you can see.

The filming took place over two days. A early morning shoot up at Roller Coaster in the Polhill reserve, followed by a short session on the trail Car Parts. This proved to be a great choice upon learning the meaning of it's name. The littered industrial car parts in the surrounding trees fit the theme like a glove. Not something you notice when trying to ride it at high speed. Me and Matt then took the middle of the day off to relax while the light was harsh. In the afternoon we headed up Mt Vic in the center of the city to wrap up the mountain biking portion of the film. We were moving fast, shooting mostly handheld with a couple gimbal shots in there as well. Due to how public these trails are we avoided shots with long setups or anything that would obstruct the trail, not that we saw a single other person riding anyway.

The second day was a trip out to the skate park. We picked this park in particular due to the awesome bowl and over hanging trees that looked rather scenic. The weather was temperamental and the wind fierce. Matt hadn't ridden his BMX in almost a year, so there was some warm up time involved and some incredibly sore arms and legs the next day. I also hadn't shot anything in a skate park for a long time. It did take some time to adapt and think about how to cover it...


There is nothing more freeing than creating an entire project without any outside influence. Doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be better, but it sure is fun. This film is 100% ours and I purposely avoided getting feedback on the edit until the final stages so I could really just go with my instinct.




It's interesting that despite going to film school and watching many films, I see a lot of my inspiration comes from mountain bike filmmakers.

We are lucky to enjoy such a cinematic sport...


This marks the start of an ongoing series of short films over New Zealand's summer months.
Hopefully they are all creatively relieving like this one.

Special thanks to Matt Campbell for his efforts on the bike.

Music licensed through Epidemic Sound:
Foggy Morning (Instrumental Version) - Particle House
South Is That Way - Lofive

Created by Finn Lloyd for the Blue Sky Boys