Further travelling and numerous service stations but yesterday we completed the BMX Shoot! This shoot was challenging for everyone involved; it was hard on James as a Director because he had to juggle Directing and recording good sound. It was difficult for Tim and Michaela because they had to handle both the interior stadium environment and the outdoor tracks and my most important challenge was ensuring that we got everything we could out of the interviews and really made the most of the fantastic access we had been granted.
At the National Cycling Centre in Manchester it was brilliant to interview the five Academy riders because we were giving them more media exposure but they already had to some degree some interview exposure so they were pretty comfortable on camera and gave great answers so didn’t need a huge amount of guidance from me.
It was critical, however, during this two shoot that we did not interfere with any of the rider’s training including the training of Team GB’s two Olympic BMX riders this year Liam Phillips and Shaznaze Reade. James and myself were fortunately able to negotiate with Grant Whyte, the Head Coach, that we would be able to film and also that we could have consent for the BMX World Championship races we shot back in May so we’re really grateful to British Cycling, Grant and Marcus Bloomfield, the Academy coach for being so welcoming and supportive.
It was a great experience for James and Tim to have that additional day filming Marcus on his home track; a bit more time, natural light and space to film some really creative and more technical shots!
At Peckham race track, our contributors were equally obliging and although I had been worried that perhaps C .K. Flash, Peckham’s Head Coach and Quillan Isidore, the current under 16yr World BMX Champion would be reluctant to talk they weren’t; they were completely engaged, enthusiastic and I think natural in front of the cameras.
Our final contributors, Rob Reed and Flo Heft, as well as Flo’s Dad Andy also adapted to interview really well and this was surprising considering the lack of media experience that the three of them had. I did try as much as possible to make them at ease and ask the questions in a way that would allow them to answer naturally but perhaps with the benefit of hindsight it would have been great to have a little more time with these three particularly Flo because she has a lot of content to give.
On the whole, I think the BMX team adapted really well to the variety of situations and issues we had to deal with and I think that it has proved to me the benefit of capturing all and any interview you can in the time you have because you never know what might be needed in the edit.
