Episode One: From the beginning from mike ambs on Vimeo.

This vlog marks the beginning - the roots of Pedal's inspiration, and its upcoming monthly video-podcast. I treated this cut as if I were starting from scratch, I wanted to explain what this project means to me, what to expect during filming, as well as after, and what I hope to achieve in the end.

I'd love to hear your feedback, your questions, comments, confusions - they will greatly help me in shaping the next episode (and in not getting ahead of myself).

Labels: Blip.tv, Episode, Feedback, Pre-Production, Promo, Vlog

I mentioned recently that I pitched 'Pedal' to an advocate-project geared towards raising funds for shorts/vlogs.

In that "pitch", I wrote: The full project's budget is around $9,000 - but I wouldn't be shooting for the whole amount, I'm looking for starter funds, 2 or 3 grand, what ever amount is reasonable for the site, and then use this money to leave and hopefully raise enough attention and additional-funds through weekly vlogs, etc to finish the project.

One of the 1st responses I received asked a few questions (after visiting the site), some of you have been following 'Pedal' since day one, but many of you are probably new to the site and may not find it 100% clear as to it's current state. I'm going to do my best to address these questions on the site, making them more obvious on someone's first visit. In the time being, here's a short q & a:

What is the timeline on this? / When does that happen? The timeline (and "when") is June & July of '07 - on the grounds, of course, that we raise the starter funds and find a group of people already planning on crossing the country on bicycles who are willing to let us shadow them.

The detailed timeline will be broken down into many segments - for example: if the project raises 'x' amount of funds, the first leg of the trip will be how far those funds will get us. While we are still within the first leg, we'll be trying to raise additional funds to help us complete the next leg which will (most likely) be broken into 2 week segments/goals. This makes the project itself possibly unstable but hopefully compelling in a "will the riders make it / will the project make it" way.

I should stress though that if the project "doesn't make it", meaning we don't reach the financial goal to get us coast-to-coast, it will not be a complete waste of original funds. We would still be posting weekly vlogs and interviews for several weeks - the documentary won't happen unless we complete the trip.

Have you gone on the trip yet? The trip has not been filmed yet - we've done two smaller runs to test out things on the road. The biggest test we did was the pilot episode we filmed (when the project still had a producer), this was a 5 day shoot stretching from LA to San Francisco to Lake Tahoe and around into Death Valley.

Do you have a breakdown of a budget? Here's the budget draft. This is more of a over-all checklist of items. It will be redesigned, I guess is the right word, by breaking it apart into sections (instead of buying all the tapes at once we would buy the number of tapes we estimate we'd use in two weeks, etc).


If you have any of your own questions - please leave them in a comment, send me an email or skype me, I've been working on this project a long time now, and sometimes I overlook things that can be unclear to others.

tags: pre-production, projects, pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, coast-to-coast, community, funding, budgets

Labels: Pre-Production

I wanted to write about a great project that I've been following for a while now - actually, it's two projects that are kind of bundled together. The 1st is called Solo Ride, "a documentary of a 10,000 mile bicycle ride around the United States for children with learning differences and dyslexia". The 2nd is called 8 Wishes, which essentially takes the 1st project much further - raising more donations and media-attention.

Those 8 Wishes are: Raise $1 million dollars, 100 million views (for above video, click here to watch a much, much sharper DivX version), Be interviewed by Oprah, Interview Paul Orfelea, Interview Sir. Richard Branson, Interview Charles Schwab, Be on top 21 talk shows, All in 30 days (deadline: 1/10/07). You can read more about the details of the wishes and the project here. Go Paul!

Paul is exactly the kind of person I hope to run into during Pedal - of course, it wouldn't be ideal to only to run into to stories like Paul's, it's important to show that people have a wide-scope of reasons for doing their own trip. But what he is doing is very inspiring and needs to be shared.

tags: 8 wishes, solo ride, dyslexia, pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, community

Labels: Pre-Production

I've been getting geared up for a big push - financially speaking - with a promotional video-blogging community.

There's a 5+ minute promo that I've cut - which I will be posting here in conjunction with the other site (assuming they advocate the project).

Dig around - over the last few months, I've made a lot of little changes and updates to the site. Some of you might have noticed we now have an overview route, promotional tips, a more accurate project synopsis, et cetera.

tags: pedal, documentary, indie, vlog, blog, bicycle, coast-to-coast, community, funding

Labels: Pre-Production