to explain

Earlier today it dawned on me how misleading the synopsis reads compared to what I actually have in mind for the documentary. It implies that it’s a film about “our” 4,000 mile cross country bike trip, with a few “cameos” by random encountered travelers – and that’s really not the case at all, actually it’s almost the complete opposite. But, having said that, I still find it difficult to “sum-up” the real ideas behind Project Pedal… mostly because the many layers I want in the film – but there is a fine line between “layers” and just watering down the point of your movie, so I have a hard time covering the gist while not ignoring the subtle things. But I figured it was time I sat down and tried to clear things up:

The main idea behind Project Pedal is that “our” trip is merely “background” [okay, I’m getting a little carried away with the quotations] – in other words, we won’t verbally tell our story, but the travelers we meet a long the way will tell their stories and it will, in a symbolic and reminiscent kind of way, tell ours.

So, hypothetically speaking, we’ll talk with rider ‘A’ – who is a young first timer, making his way alone across the country from Detroit to Washington to catch a game of ultimate-Frisbee. And then we’ll have rider ‘B’ – a 65 year old man who is at the half-way point of his sixth cross country bike trip throughout his lifetime, biking this time to raise money for breast cancer, which took his mother’s life several years ago. And these two riders, ‘A’ and ‘B’, will, through their own experiences and point of views, set an overall mood – of course there will be more then two hypothetical riders, but you get the idea.


Now this next part is a fairly new idea [so I would love to hear your feedback on it]: I’m hoping to get through 95% of the film without ever using any original audio from just “our” footage – to clarify, only the footage with only us [Amanda, Nick and myself] will have the audio removed – any other footage does not apply to this rule, almost as if “our” trip was filmed with old-super8 – and everything else was captured using the ‘normal equipment’. Why would I want to do this? What’s the point? People “look” at film differently depending on whether or not it has sound.

When you watch an old VHS of someone’s birthday party from eleven years ago – and you can hear the kids laughing and shouting, and you hear a parent asking so-and-so to stop running, then the person holding the camera is mumbling to a someone off screen about the cake, etc… it’s a completely different emotion from watching old super8 of someone playing in their front yard twenty-some years ago, when there’s no sound, just them, running in circles, smiling, and falling down from dizziness. The first almost leaves the viewer waiting for the ‘punch line’, when there is none. With the first example you're watching a moment, with the ladder, a part of you realizes your watching a memory. Remove the audio from the birthday party home-movie and you start to break apart the body-language, even on a sub-conscious level, it forces you to look closer.

This isn’t to say that the bulk of the documentary will be silent – not at all – instead it will be layered with other’s narratives and/ or music. Hopefully, I did a decent job of explaining that, I’ve only ran it past two people and one of them loved it and the other just said they had no idea what I was talking about.


Okay, now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go listen to “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (pt.1)” by ‘The Flaming Lips’… don’t ask why, I’ve just had it stuck in my head the past few days and I can't get it out.