I've mainly been using instrumental music for these teasers - but to be honest, I've always wanted to use music more in line with this teaser.
If I can help it, at least half of the soundtrack will be music you're used to hearing in these teasers, and the other half will be more... old, lonely, love-related. There's a good reason for that - but one I'll save for the film.
Until then - here's a shot of Larry pushing slowly back against the winds in ND... alone on the road with nothing left to do but think about everything his life has been, and everything he wants it to be.
Help us burn up the lat of our 9,735 HD embeds by posting this teaser on your own site. Just copy & paste the code below, or you can tweet this post to all your followers.
Maybe someone better with words could explain why it is abandoned houses always feel so fascinating when on the road.
I used to spend hours in them on my first bike trip... Tim and I would drag our bikes off the road, make lunch while sitting on a dirty, glass-covered floor. I would poke through old dressers, look for things that used to be important to someone. Baseball cards. Magazines with notes scribbled on the margins.
It was late when Larry came across this old farm-house - he stopped, took a few pictures, wandered around the back and peaked inside... but there wasn't enough light to really find your way around.
He was only there a few minutes, and then he was back on his bike... I wondered when I was filming this when the last time anyone payed any attention to this empty home.
So, people have been asking me to post a FToM teaser that had a little bit of dialog in it for a while now. And I don't really have an excuse as to what took me so long to actually picking one out.
But, I have to give Erica some credit here... I had yet *another* quiet biking shot picked out and ready to go and she strong-armed me into saving that for another time and picking out something "different".
This group was one of the first people Larry ran into after having to say goodbye to his best-friend Jay earlier this morning. I know it must have been hard on Larry to carry on as if nothing was wrong or out-of-place.
This was taken in Glacier Park Montana - it poured there for about two days.
At this point in the trip Larry didn't even own a tent, I'm not quite sure how he managed to sleep and stay dry. He used a tarp and a picnic table to create a kind of make-shift tent.
It's a strange thing to be so cold and so wet in weather like this - and not have a real roof over your head. Not only for just a few hours, but for days. When the sun finally comes out and hits your skin - it's an amazing feeling to be back on your bike.
This was taken around out 9th morning of our trip - we're either on the far end of Washington or just getting into Idaho.
In the background you can half see a group of female bicyclists that we ran into several times up until Montana. They had a pretty inspiring mindset about traveling - and one of the women would later email me on the memories from her ride, saying: "...It haunts me now like a dream that only exists in my head, separate from everything in my day to day 'real' life."
I thought that was one of the most perfect and beautiful ways I'd ever heard a person describe the after effects of their trip.
This was one of the rare days that the wind was to Larry's back - which also meant that I didn't have to fight the wind when working the crane.
Most days it felt like trying to steady a massive sail with a camera on the end of it - but this day, the wind kept perfect pace with us, and I could move the camera almost anywhere without any real resistance.
This shot is a snippet from the middle of a longer 360˚ that follows Larry. But if I posted the whole rotation, it would be about 2 min... and that's not much of a teaser.
This is almost a cut & paste right from the first 14 minutes of the feature film - I just decided to pull the music out because I'd like to keep that a secret... or something like that.
This is Larry watching the sunset on the Mississippi... he sat there and watched the sky for a long time on that bench. Tonight he sent me an email, and near the end of it, he reminded me of a few things from that night, he wrote:
"I remember watching that movie that was like Quiinosquatsi but callled something else [Baraka], in the van. And than I went and waded in the Mississippi and drank beers listening to Jeff Buckley and wishing he didn't drown in that river."
There's something about this clip that is heavily nostalgic for me. I can remember so clearly nights from my past bicycle trips, laying in my sleeping bag on the grass... hearing the bugs... watching the sun sink behind the horizon as I tried to finish writing in my journal about that day when I'm watching this.
I wish I had more shots like this... sadly the crane was snapped in half during the trip. But that's another story for another time. One that I'm sure will find it's way into an upcoming part of 64 Days.
I wanted to a) post our new teaser clip, since it's been two weeks (in case any of you are wondering when to expect new teasers, we post one every two weeks on sat or sun), and b) thank everyone for the help in using up the HD embeds we purchased (that I mentioned a few post ago here).
The thumbnail above was snapped on the 6th, so as I'm writing this we've actually pushed that number to 7,221 HD embed views left. Which means, since posting about helping us "burn through another 500 plays", we've actually used up 2,278 views! Again, that number is just counting HD embeds on blogs or sites *outside* of Vimeo. I can't say it enough; thanks so much to everyone who took a moment to write a post and embed our 64 Days shorts, it means a lot to us.
I thought since we still have several thousands HD embeds left - we might as well put them to good use. I really like the newest teaser, I wish I could just keep floating up, and up as Larry steadily climbs over the rolling hills. There's a lot of things about this shot that bring me back to the road in a very powerful, nostalgic way.
I updated the widget box above with the cut & paste code for teaser 008. So, if you like it too, feel free to pass it along.
This was still in Washington... probably only 3 or 4 days into the trip. It was a very beautiful area... big skies... endless evergreens... slow climbing hills.
I remember when logging and tagging this footage - just how much we captured here... I have tons and tons of wide open shots, tons of close ups of everything from Larry... to evergreens... to chipmunks :)
This was one of the rare days that the wind didn't blow directly into Larry's face... he could really fly when he wasn't the only object in the way of the wind ripping across miles of field...
I love this part of the country - the big sky, the endless green. It's all so flat and boring and unchanging... but something about it really eats away at you after a trip.
This day was a really long, slow climb for Larry - the hills just kept winding their way through the evergreens and after every turn, was another upward slope.
We pulled off the road after a while and walked around on a hill-side. Where we took this shot, and tons of other ones. We used all of our equipment on that hill: our Fx1 (with the 35kit), the Z1u, and Olivier's 16mm.
It was a beautiful spot - and I hope to go back and sit there one day... just take in the view.
I know this teaser has no bikes, and no Larry. But I wanted to use a shot that was more from Larry's POV. This was taken in Glacier Park, Montana by Olivier - Larry was coming down from Logan's pass and we & the crew pulled off the road just before Lake McDonald to lay in the sun.
Logan's pass was actually closed when we were here, if I remember right, snow had washed out the road and it would be another month before it was open to the public. But Larry, being the machine that he is, knowingly rode out of his way and up the west-half of the mountain range, just to turn back around at the top, and then back-track through Glacier. Took him the whole day. I miss this spot, I hope I get to go back soon.
I believe Olivier shot this with the SGPro 35 Kit and the crew's FX1... we had Amanda's 300 zoom lens mounted (which was a lot of fun to film with).
We waited at the highest switch-back in Cascades National Park for Larry to pass and ride down into the valley. We took a lot of footage from this ledge, it was a very beautiful spot to spend an hour.
Amanda was hoping our 2nd teaser would be a clip from an interview we just transcribed, but I had this as a backup, and she hadn't gotten a chance to come over and tell me which section she wanted.
On a side note, the title for this post: I miss everything about this shot - is just referring to all the little things I remember about standing on that cliff, the temperature, the smell that comes off snow-capped mountains and the mist from the waterfalls. I miss watching Larry pass by... I miss the crew. Just everything.
I know this post is short... perhaps a little *too* short. But I'm hoping to get some writing done tonight.
I recorded a weekly-update vlog two nights ago, but I literally don't have any USB ports left open right now, and all the drives are busy backing up at the moment, so I guess I'll have to wait till tomorrow to post it. Not that anyone is holding their breath I'm sure, but still.
I have the next five days off and I plan on shacking up in my room for most of it writing more of Episode 9, which Amanda and I are embarrassingly aware has taken way, way too long to release. I guess we lost the balance we had going for 6, 7 and 8 and shifted our energy onto the film. We *have* been meeting a lot to discus where all the remaining episodes are heading, as well as the film.
I mostly wanted to write this quick post to share our first official "teaser" of 'For Thousands of Miles', I have several timelines in Final Cut for the film, most of them are simply for SmoothCam preparation, others are for other things like clips that need to be trimmed up and re-exported for what-ever reason... I have a lot of random clips scattered around my extra timelines and we thought it would be fun to share them.
So we're hoping every two weeks to post another clip - it's Amanda's turn to pick the next clip, and she's leaning towards something funny, so we'll see. The clip above is very short, I wanted it longer, but Amanda talked me down on the time. So... it's very much a teaser. Let us know what you're interested in seeing and we'll post those clips first.
