The making of a video. For www.i-am-specialized.com

May 10th, 2009 by Conrad Stoltz

This video was made for the “triathlon” part of the i-am-specialized website.

The a href=”http://www.i-am-specialized.com/triathlon” target=”_blank”>i-am-specialized website is aimed at being the public’s way of following Specialized riders’ racing and stories online. It is a new site and will mostly aim at internet video content. Internet video is the new TV.

I am honoured to be the 1st triathlete to have a video on the site.

Terrenzo and Macca will have videos soon…

The shoot started with swimming.

Bobby Behan - our Marketing Manager (and a few other things) used to be a pro triathlete himself, (we lived and trained together in Stellenbosch in 2000) so he knew exactly what needed to go into this movie. He sat in the director chair for 2 days.

Aaron Vogel just realized his dream job by becoming Specialized’s first in-house videographer. He says it wasnt really his dream job- he couldnt dream of a job where he could ride bikes and make movies AND get paid for it!

Anyway, Bobby decided we’ll kick off with swimming. And posing. Lots and lots of posing. I hate posing, but it was one of the many things I learnt about acting that fateful day….

Posing to da max. Oh yes, on the speedo issue- I’m old school (ie started racing tri in the late 80s) so I wear a speedo. End of story. At least its not lime green or pink. Like it was in
this picture from 1992!

Gary Perkin took some still pics for “a day in the life of….”

Finally we started swimming…

not too much scripting here. Although I had to pretend to do a set of 100m reps coming in on 1.10 and leaving on 1.20. Bobby actually made me swim a 100 in 1.10! (and leave on 1.20) It was 2 days after racing Sea Otter (still brokin), I hadnt swum in almost a week, no warm up, and as you can see- long course…

Gary getting the shot- whatever it takes…

Like I said - whatever it takes!

Then cycling…

After an interview about training and swimming (to use a voice over video) Aaron, Bobby and myself had lunch and set off to Henry Bear park. A beautiful place in the hills near the Specialized head quarters in Morgan Hill, CA.

Aaron had this huge equipment bag - at least 40lbs - and was trying to climb these really steep hills on an Enduro bike. (ie not a climbing bike!) I remembered seeing a really pretty place on top of the hills and made them ride up there instead of shooting at the bottom of the hills- which is less scenic. Aaron was wearing a full face helmet with a camera mounted - so he was really suffering. So I helped and rode the bag to the top:

Specialized 29er Epic.

Cali has some crazy steep hills.

Almost there guys…

It was well worth the climb:

Later Aaron shot quite a bit of video with his helmet cam- he would ride behind me and film flowing single track through lush green pastures…

Of course we still had to do the run pictures. The light was getting really good, but it was a race against sunset. We still had to shoot 3 locations running and an interview. You’ll notice in the last interview on the video where the light is fading fast. And I look hungry, tired and broken from a full days’ acting. Acting is not glamorous, its definitely hard work and real actors are really gifted. I just rode my bike, swam and ran, (many takes) and mumbled a few lines. No use scripting those- when I repeated scripted lines it sounded like and old gramophone that got stuck.