Video Winner

This entry is part 19 of 22 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #10

A year ago Adventure Rider Magazine had the bright idea of offering a prize for the best video received in 2014. Angus ‘Gus’ Holmes took the win with his blockbuster, Adventure Garage.

Just about anyone can make a bike video, but only some people are good at it.

Angus Holmes seems to have a feel and passion for good video. He scooped the pool at the glamorous Adventure Rider Magazine Video awards…well, ‘award’ really.

There was only one.

We all sat around talking about the videos while we waited for Toby Price to return our calls, texts and Facebook messages. But we were dripping with glamour at the time, and TF was showing a bit of cleavage, so it was like a big awards ceremony.

Anyhoo, Angus, 54, a champion fireman, picked up $500 to spend on adventure gear.

We stopped by Angus’ luxuriously appointed Cronulla AV studio – a garage, a Mac and a coffee machine – to find out a little more about the clip and the man himself.

Visionary

“I absolutely love watching videos,” frothed Angus, carefully easing the warm, bubbly milk into one of those sauve-o glass coffee cups with the bent-wire handles.

“I started shooting videos when I started adventure riding. I’d find myself in beautiful places, and I was either by myself or with some mates, and I’d arrive home and try to explain to the family how beautiful the sunset was, or how beautiful the river was, or how we’d come over a hill and there was a vast plain of grass flowing in the breeze. No description was going to nail it for them, so I thought I’d start videoing these scenes to share with them.”

Kicking off with an old Drift camera, Gus now carries a fair arsenal of snappers. His main shooter is a Sony NEX-6, and he backs it up with a couple of Drifts and a couple of GoPros.

He even has this crazy retractable lanyard arrangement so one of the GoPros is always ready to fire as he’s riding along. He can grab the camera, swish it around with one hand,and then let it snap back to his belt.

No dropping, and it’s always ready The fitting is designed for hunters to carry their range finders, by the way. Just in case you’d like to give the set-up a try.

Fix it later

Shooting the video – or ‘footage’ as we knowledgeable fillum types like to call it – is only part of the process. Editing the raw shoot to keep it interesting and in sensible order is a huge part of the process.

Believe it or not, Gus uses simple ol’iMovie 09 – an old version of the editing suite supplied free with all Macs.

“You never know. I shoot all this footage, then I come in to edit and think, ‘Where do I start?’”

Prepared earlier

Angus spotted the video competition when it was first announced and began thinking about how he might like to make a fun video. He’d been experimenting with running cameras along rails and shooting different angles, so he invited some mates over to make his mental vision into a digital reality.

“I wanted to do something a little bit different,” he pondered. “It’s really hard to do stuff differently with ride videos. You can get different scenery and you can get different riders and you can use different effects.

But at the end of the day it’ll just end up like the other ride videos I’ve done.

“I knew the guys I ride with wouldn’t take much convincing to come over and drink my beer and eat my food. The only thing I asked them to do was they had to ride over, because I wanted bikes out the front.

“I had an idea of what I wanted to do, and I knew I wanted to call it Adventure Garage, and I wanted it to be the One-down-four-up Adventures format.

I played around with it. I had the dart scene planned – we don’t play darts – and I’d filmed the darts hitting the board in good light some days before.

“The concept was the guys having a bit of a get-together in my garage talking motorbikes and reading motorbike magazines.”

With his mates on board – Goochy, Gatesy, Pooley, Blanchey and The Smirn – a mental plan and some good basic, equipment Angus produced the clip you can see at www.advridermag.com.au.

And not only does it show some very clever technical features and excellent planning and editing, we reckon it captures the spirit of riding with your mates.

And there’s not even any riding in it! It’s that good.

Check it out at www.advridermag.com.au.
And have a Captain Cook at Angus’ entire collection of video work at vimeo.com/channels/510865.

Gus’ tips for improving your video

• Make it interesting – any clip within a movie shouldn’t run more than about seven seconds
• Make connections between the vision and sound
• Don’t be frightened to edit. Don’t be frightened to cut material out
• Music! Picking the music is the hardest thing to do. Copyright can be an issue
• Don’t be afraid to direct your mates. Pull them up and ask them to do specific things for the camera

Series Navigation<< Reader’s PicAdventure Film Festival >>