New Video! Watch My Ride in Under Three Mintues

I’m proud to present my official recap video! This took a few weeks of organizing footage and photos, sourcing music, learning Adobe Premiere video editing software, writing captions, and getting a little carried away.

If you want the three-minute Cliff’s Notes version of my summer-long bike tour on the TransAmerica Route, just watch this instead of reading the whole blog. You’re welcome.

The idea

I started picturing and storyboarding this video during my trip, when I wrote down a shot list of different scenes I wanted to capture. I decided on certain photo and video collections that I wanted to gather as well. That led me to grab every shot of every possible road vanishing in the distance, my loaded bike in front of state border signs and other landmarks, cool timelapses, and the crossing of bridges and symmetrical roads. Growing these collections became a daily photo scavenger hunt, which was fun. My collection of roadkill photos and a few other series didn’t make the cut.

The footage

If I was touring solo, then who, you may ask, was shooting this footage of me? I shot some of it myself using a tripod selfie stick. I owe credit to a few fantastic companions I had for various parts of the trip. Top “filmographer” was my dad, who met me for three different sections of the tour and had as much fun as I did with staging photos and shooting video. I also have my route friend Steve to thank. We shared the road for over two weeks, and during that time he captured some great shots such as the Mississippi River bridge crossing. Thanks to everyone else — friends and strangers alike — who obliged when I put my phone in their hands and asked them to shoot video.

The music

It took awhile to find the right song for my video concept. Luckily, I found a tool online for this very search. On Marmoset, video creators can search a database of songs available for licensing, filtered and sorted by vocals, mood, energy, arc, length, instruments, and genre. To find “The Great Divide” by the Long Valley, I used criteria like “instrumental” “high energy” and “folk”. After narrowing the search to three options, this one won with its inspirational vibe and foot-stomping beat that worked well for synchronizing with my photo collections.

The editing

Adobe’s video editing software is complex and takes some time to learn. Luckily, I found an eight-hour tutorial on Lynda that walked me through the process from start to finish. I’m no pro, but now I can find my way around in Premiere, and future video compilation projects will go much faster. I’m pretty happy with my final cut, and I’ll be excited to do more with video down the road.

My spin on it

Learning is fun! Working with video (beyond making GIFs on my phone) has been a goal of mine for a long time, and now I have a first project under my belt. Yay new marketing skills. The next step is expanding the video’s reach so that my many hours of work will earn enough eyeballs. Any likes, comments, and shares from YouTube are much appreciated! Subscribe and look forward to video recaps of all bike tours I have in mind for the future too.