Those following the Loamlife Media social accounts or anyone subscribed to the YouTube channel will be aware that the majority of our work this year has taken place in Portugal as official media partners of Jack Reading's Gravity School race team and coaching school. The team camps in Agueda have been phenomenal as a means of getting to grips with the industry, learning the in's and outs of creating excellent mountain bike content and understanding the challenges of turning around 20+ minute episodes back to back. Check out Finding Speed here
Ahead of the final camp of the season, we followed the team to IXS Dirtmasters in Winterberg, Germany as they prepared for a weekend of Downhill Racing and support for SR Suntour in the Tech Booth. See the full episode here
IXS Dirtmaster - Downhill
The Journey
The Dirtmasters Festival, Winterberg was a refreshing change of scenery whilst filming for the Gravity School Team. We drove out on the Friday, leaving from Jack's in the T6 and made the channel crossing before evening. It was nice to not have to worry about strategically packing gear for a flight, but given that a lot of gear was already out in Portugal there was some thought around making sure that I was well equipped for a fast pace weekend of run and gun filming.
By the time we had passed through France and Belgium and arrived at our accomodation, there was no key code for the box, and no reply from the owner. After a few hours of attempting to solve the problem we finally gave up around 4am and settled back down in the T6 for what little sleep we could manage!
After a freshen up at Tom's accomodation a few hours later, it was off to the event to set up the pits. I had a rough idea of what to expect going into the event but I hadn't expected to enjoy the atmosphere quite so much. It was tough to not be distracted by the rest of the events and activities going on at first. Credit to the event organisers who did a great job segregating each event throughout the festival. Once the action started it was easy to forget that here was even anything happening outside the downhill race, but there certainly was!
Track Walk
Representing the team for the race was Jack Reading, Rueben Taylor, and Tom Westgate, with Gravity School Coaching student Marcus also joining for the race. Once the pits were up, later than planned, we set off to walk the track.
Finally I could stretch the legs on the new camera, having picked up a new Canon R6 MkII prior to the trip. After upgrading from my initial R50, it was a pleasure to use the R6 for the first time. Don't get me wrong the 4k footage, autofocus capability and battery life of the R50 have been great throghout the trips so far, but the R6 MkII was incredibly efficient and produced some exceptionally great footage for the trip. Shooting in CLog for the first time was a treat as well when it came to correcting and grading the footage to impart my own style on the finished edit.
Practice
Next up was bikes on track, which meant I could really make use of the time to familiarise myself with a slightly different yet more ergonomical button layout, as well as program the custom dials on the camera. I use the following settings on the custom presets, and paired with a 24-105 variable aperture zoom lens, these were all set to the widest available aperture, and shutter speed adjusted accordingly.
Setting | FPS | Resolution | ISO |
C1 | 25 | 4K | Base (800) |
C2 | 50 | 4K | Base (800) |
C3 | 150 | FHD | Base (800) |
Predominantly I used the C1 setting for on track action, interview and b-roll shots, whilst C2 was good for some cinematic shots of riders in the pits and mechanics working on the bikes. C3 was reserved for specific slow motion shots of high intensity action, but used sparingly due to the drop in quality from 4k down to 1080p.
Quali and Race Runs
Qualifying (or seeding runs in this case) and Race Day filming are unique, in that I don't have the luxury of moving from place to place, finding the best spots to film from. With just one run each rider, It's time to use my track walk knowledge from the start of the trip to figure out a good place to catch the action.
If possible I like to have a second camera on a basic point and shoot setting in the hands of someone else travelling with the team. Having a second cam lets me switch from getting start gate shots and finish line shots during timed conditions which can be used for story telling purposes in the finished episode.
I tend to find myself searching for places on track that are most likely to cause disruptions to a timed run, or somewhere with a good view of the track to capture some dynamic action.
To find out how the team got on please have a look at the episode below:
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