The Golden Age of Mountain Biking

This film was crafted to launch Specialized Bikes newest model - the Stumpjumper Evo. We had to create a video that was hyper targeted to the mountain biking community.​

Old Age Prosthetics

Central to the storyline in this piece is that three retired professional mountain bikers in the year 2063 reflect on “The Golden Age” of mountain biking (2020 in the piece).

We cast recognizable professional mountain bike riders: Matthew Miles, Matty Hunter, and Harookz; and then had to age them to realistically set them in the future.

Trail Building

The film surrounds a memory of the best mountain bike lap of the rider’s lives - so the trails had to be outstanding. This took weeks of prep from a local trail building crew with input from the riders. We had to line up the route so that the jumps matched our golden hour lighting.

Golden Hour

Since the trail ride had to be “perfect” we wanted to capture all of the riding at Golden Hour. Days are quite long in British Columbia, Canada in the summer so this meant 3:45am call times for the crew, a midday nap, and then shooting the sunset around 9:00pm. For two weeks.

Seamless VFX

The world had to feel as real as possible amid being set in the future. We used subtle VFX shots to enhance our world without detracting from the storyline.

Acting Lessons

It was important to get professional mountain bikers that the target market would recognize. The issue being, these bikers were not actors, and we had a character-driven script. We put the mountain bikers through acting lessons with a coach so they could get comfortable with their on-camera performances.

Audience Reception

The film was a hit - going viral on YouTube, racking up over 1.5M organic hits, and endless positive comments from viewers - a rare feat for an ad on the platform.  It nabbed a Vimeo Staff Pick, Vimeo Best of the Month selection, and a nomination for Vimeo’s Best of The Year in the Product Launch category alongside the likes of Apple and Volvo.

Instagram account @shitheadsteve with 6.3 million followers made a meme from a production still, garnering millions of organic impressions.

Multiple online outlets covered the release of the film, hailing it as marketing done in the best way possible, genuine, tongue-in-cheek, and perfectly suited for the mountain biking community.

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/interview-specialized-stumpjumper-evo-the-perfect-lap-behind-the-scenes.html

https://www.firstshowing.net/2020/watch-awesome-mountain-bike-advertising-short-the-perfect-lap/

https://www.adventure-journal.com/2020/10/specializeds-new-stumpy-looks-great-but-really-were-excited-about-the-video/

https://www.tetongravity.com/video/bike/specializeds-newest-stumpjumper-evo-ad-is-cinematic-gold