rushed

I'll write about our 3rd day of scouting when I have more than 20 minutes to sit down at the computer. But quickly, I wanted to post a few links for the footage & pictures of the route.

If you click here - you'll be taken to a library of video clips that were generally taken at key points in the ACA maps. Most are not much to look at - but that's half the point, to know which areas can be skipped during the four days of filming the pilot episode.

And if you click here - you'll be taken to a crude looking directory of the 500+ digital pictures. I have not had the time to organize these yet in a geographical way, like I mentioned earlier, but feel free to look around.

Also, the HD footage I took with my actual camcorder is not yet on my computer. I'll try to get to that tonight.

quick comparison

Just to compare - a few post back I mentioned "digital scouting" and posted a screen shot from Google Earth of an area I thought would make a nice shot. Here is a quick comparison:







Okay. That's it - Amanda and I have to get back on the road... the current temperature is a toasty 37 degrees.

scouting / day 2

Looks like I'm starting to make a habit of this - "this" referring to my finding wi-fi access and writing a post when I'm about three hours past dead-tired.

Today was an interesting one - we didn't cover as much ground as we would have liked, but that was largely in part to getting stuck in a foot of snow for 40-some minutes... and then having to back track to East US 50... only to find that at 6,000+ feet it was snowing and foggy enough to white anything out further than two feet in-front of the car.

Also, to add to the "interestingness" our car has no heat - 95% of the time, not a problem when living in North Hollywood. When making your way through an altitude of 8,000 feet - it begins to become an issue. You can't defrost the windshield. You can't feel your toes. You can't remember why you didn't get the heat fixed before deciding to drive through the Sierra Mountains.


So Amanda and I - not ready to drive through more death-provoking fog in pitch-black - decided to crash at a hotel, as opposed to roughing it like the night before in the back of the car with a futon mattress (which is now covered in gas... but that's a whole different story all together).

scouting / day 1

It's only 11 o'clock at night - but if I didn't have a clock in front of me, I'd guess it was 3 or 4 in the morning based on how exhausted I felt. I've been in the car - behind the wheel - all day since 4:30 this morning. Amanda is passed out beside me at the moment, we are parked behind a public library in Vallejo, California.

I'm too 'blah' right now to write a real post - but I did want to say a special thanks to my Dad for saving the day... but I'll have to get into why later.

We took a ridiculous amount of pictures and video today. We were stopping about every 5 or 10 miles to take notes and break out the cameras. So far it's been almost all work and no play.

I've created a panoramio account to post the pictures in a way that I think makes the most sense: geographically. And at some point, maybe not before we get back into LA, I'll create a video channel for our route-footage. Until then... my eyes weight a ton each... so, more on our adventures tomorrow.

24th, 25th & 26th

These are the dates, coming up this Monday, that Amanda and I are going to drive the Western Express route. We only have the first 2 out of 3 maps - so we'll only be covering the first 900-some miles. Which is fine, I'm not sure we'll plan on travelling more than that during filming un June.

We'll be packing the camcorder, a digital camera and the ibook - so expect lots of updates from the road!

52 days left

Yes, if you've been keeping track of the days since I first started posting "x" days left - 52 doesn't match up... if I were still counting down to May 29th, then we would be at 45 days left. But the pilot isn't filming in May, it's filming June 5th. So mark your calendars.


So far the exact dates are: Tim & Olivier fly out [from Hawaii and Belgium] to LAX on June 1st, we prep for last minute details. Drive up to the San Francisco area on the 4th, and begin filming on the 5th until the 8th.

The cast I'm about 95% done on... there might be one tiny adjustment in the next few weeks.

The route I'm a bit hung-up on, we've decided where to travel, and we even know exactly what roads we are taking - down to every last turn - but Teri, the person I'm in touch with from Adventure Cycling, is out of town until the 19th, so I'm waiting on the last of the route planning until I can get the final batch of maps.

The loose story is proving to be the most work - I've been digging through my old journal entries from past bike trips to help me form a story that we can fall back on if nothing really happens during our four days. I'm also in the mood to put 'Amelie' and 'City of God' on repeat while I write... but I've lent both those movies out. Hmm. I need to get those back a.s.a.p.

digital scouting

One of the biggest undertakings for the pilot is planning out every last detail of the route. Having a number of options for camping sites each day, both for the cast of bicyclists as well as the crew members and their RV... having a long list of locations and landscapes to get on camera... etc.

This "to-do" is made much easier thanks to a few things: first off, the 'Adventure Cycling' maps that have been donated give us a detailed, bike-friendly, scenic route that is heavily travelled by other riders. But knowing exactly what roads we'll be using is only half the problem, I've never been on any of these roads, and granted, I will be personally driving the route before we begin filming in June. But thanks to Google Earth, I'll have a very good idea of what to expect before hand.



I've scanned each map section of the Western Express route and created image overlays to help me see exactly where the maps take us. Doing this allows to me to plan out shots from home that I can double-check later while doing the actual drive. For example:



Above is a fairly close-up shot of Cabrillo Hwy south of San Francisco, looking at this shot from a birds-eye angle I can tell this spot would make a great wideshot - having the bicyclists ride north-west on Cabrillo, while the crew, using a wide-lens and possibly a small crane, drives parallel with us from the parking lot at the bottom of the above picture. This would give us a great shot of the field directly behind us, the lines of crop stretching out into the high mountains in the background.


As I plan out the route in greater detail and also make more notes for possible shots, I'll create a network link that will allow readers of this site to eventually track our progress live during filming.

to-do

I was talking to Amanda the other day about the strange sort-of sub-emotion in knowing the pilot for 'Pedal' is 100%... short of some disaster.

There is the obvious excitement, anticipation, nervousness, etc - but there is another reality that reminds me much of the last days before my first bike trip, which is: I have the money I think I need, I have the equipment I think I need, I know the route I'm taking, there are no more obstacles for me to work around... it's finally time for me to "walk the walk", for the lack of a better analogy.


And I think there is an inherent fear in that kind of situation - it's always easier for a person to be "that close" to their goals, but some unforeseeable [or even easily foreseeable] obstacle kept them from getting their chance. It's when there is nothing standing in your way... and you don't reach your goal - that there is nowhere to shift the blame, and that's a hard failure to face.


Having said that: I told myself I would try to focus on the "to-do" list today, I'm sure things will be added as the project gets closer to June, and I'll do my best to keep you posted. Also, I won't go into details on each point - that would make for a very long and very boring post, I'll simply write down the rough-list and then dedicate individual post to each "to-do".

The route & crew "pit-stops" / camping sites
The equipment [which is actually not entirely up to me]
The exact dates
The loose story [yes 'Pedal' is a documentary, but for purposes of the pilot, we are staging a few details]
The cast
The music ["bike trip wish mix"]

Lower-ranking "to-do's":
The PR
Some website re-arangments / preparations

Stay tuned.

sporadic

It sounds like we'll be shooting the pilot-episode for 'Pedal' in early June - which is coming up fast.

In the next few days I'd like to post a detailed "to-do" list on the site and keep people updated on where each task stands.

Lately, I've been pouring over my stack of 'Adventure Cycling' maps, trying to narrow down a route that would give us the most background in 4 days time.

Yes, I realize this post is extremely scattered - tomorrow I'll specify more...

80 %

It's 1 in the morning and I've been listening to 'Today I spoke to a Girl' by KingFisherG on repeat for the last 15 minutes... I seem hellbent on playing this song out.

This morning, well, technically yesterday morning (the 2nd) I drove Tim to LAX around 5:30 and said "goodbye". It was a lot of fun seeing him, and I wish he could have stayed longer, the weekend seemed to fly by. We spent the entire saturday hiking the Santa Monica Mountains and then climbing the face of a massive cliff alongside a 150+ foot waterfall... needless to say, a few muscles on my body are on the tight side.


Friday afternoon we met with Matt, the producer, in Pasadena for a late-lunch - looks like the pilot-episode for 'Pedal' is going to be shot as soon as I get a date & cast set up. Basically my to-do list for the next two months consist of: the new route, finding a time when all four of the cast & the crew can leave for 4 or 5 days, rounding up equipment, scouting locations, etc. After I get the first 80% of the planning under control, I take it to Matt and together we prepare the last 20%. I'm very excited.


The project has come along way in the past two years, and it still has a long road ahead of it... I think I was going somewhere with that sentence, but I'm too tired to finish a thought.