Clockin' Footy with Freeride Entertainment

Can you list all the hardware you've got here at Red Bull Rampage?
We've got a dream team of cinematographers and filmers out here; we brought out all the best filmmakers from the mountain bike industry. Freeride is kind of the parent production company; we've done a lot of this kind of shooting and we were back at Rampage when it started in 2001. We've got a full HD production crew with five big HD cameras and some really good lensmen behind them. We've got two Super 16mm cameras and the new Red camera, and we have a couple of smaller, mobile HD cameras. We've got the first high-def POV set-up for helmet cams and bike-mount cameras; it's a system that hasn't even been used in action sports yet. We have a helicopter with a Gyron and an operator who's one of the best Hollywood-type helicopter pilots - he shoots all of the CSI: Las Vegas aerial shots. The Gyron is the lastest and greatest of heli-mounts, shooting HD as well; it's basically a big eyeball on the front of the helicopter. It can shoot full-frame on someone's tire from a mile away in the sky. We've got a really good set-up, a good group of guys, and all of our cameramen know all the riders, so it's a good friendly vibe. That's the way we like Red Bull Rampage to be.

How many people do you have here?
We have ten camera operators, plus one doing just the helmet cams. We'll have ten or twelve cameras going at all times.

How many hours of footage do you think you'll end up with?
We'll probably get somewhere in the range of 40-50 hours that we'll condense into what will probably be a 45-minute video, a 15-minute television segment, and hopefully another television feature that'll be a big longer. The home video will probably be available around November 7th.

Freeride has been here since the beginning of Red Bull Rampage...
Yep, we started our company in 1997, which was kind of the kickoff to the whole freeriding movement, and Red Bull Rampage came along less than five years later and changed the sport forever. When this event took a few years off, it left a lot of these riders that you see here today in hiatus; they didn't have a venue that they could ride big mountain on. The whole mountain bike industry kind of went to slopestyle, ski hills, and big dirt-jumping contests. This is getting back to the roots; this is getting back to what mountain biking is really all about. All these guys are so psyched to be back and have this. This represents a lot of people's hard work over a long time. We went all over the world looking for a new venue: Israel, the Gobi desert, the Dead Sea, Morocco, Mexico... Now we're ten miles as the crow flies from the last venue, so it was right under our noses. Everybody's really excited to have it back here, because it really feels like home for a lot of these guys, it's a really good vibe. There's not a lot of ego going around out here; everybody's just trying to be safe, get down alive, and ride hard, you know? It's a pretty good scene.

You're obviously used to putting together big productions; has there been anything about this event that gave you more of a challenge?
We've been doing this event for so long that it feels like we know it pretty well. I think the challenge this year was more with the course than it was with the actual filming of it. Just getting some unique things going that were going to make this event new and evolved and making sure it didn't just turn into a dirt-jumping best trick contest. That's where I think a lot of everybody's energy went, getting the course dialed and making the riders happy. We've done a lot of production, so this is just another day at the office for us.