Trek Bikes DOCUMENT at the Tour de France

Stories We're Telling

By Barry Poltermann on 12th July 2009

5900_109008012233_640282233_2724158_4677613_nWe arrived in France over the July 4th weekend to begin shooting the next phase of the “Document” series for Trek Bikes. Pat Buckley is producing the Tour de France section of the series and Manny Marquez is directing.

We began in Monacco. Manny hadn’t arrived yet, so Pat directed AND produced the first episode. Pat recently directed a festival favorite flick — “William Shatner’s Gonzo Ballet”, so he was a great stand in while we waited for Manny to show up.

The folks at Trek had been working with us for a while and were cool with letting us upload the episodes directly to YouTube without review. This way we were able to get the videos up within a day or two of the actual shoot.

I uploaded the first episode on the Trek website and YouTube page on July 5th:

The strategy was simple:

  • Tell stories along the route of the Tour that seldom get covered.
  • Avoid standard race coverage.
  • Follow the human stories.
  • Look for the unexpected.

The next episode, shot in Montpellier in the south of France, provided a rare opportunity to see what it’s like to ride in the team “follow car” with coach Dirk Demol.

Joining Dirk is actress Christine Taylor. How Manny wrangled his way into the car with Ben Stiller’s wife is still beyond all of us at AboutFace:

Ben Coates is the Trek Team Liaison to the Astana team. Manny rode with him to Le Cap D’Agde to the start of the fifth stage of the Tour de France and shot this episode:

Manny Marquez

Director Manny Marquez

As we continued on along the south of France, it was definitely getting tougher and tougher to get any time or attention from the Astana team. After all, it is the Tour de France.

We always intended to mix up episodes between the team and the fans. Manny I decided it was time to focus on fans.

But how can we still get to the Trek Bikes story without following the team? And how hard would it be to find good stories ‘on the fly’? Nothing was planned. The series was called DOCUMENT UNSCRIPTED after all… we are about to give some serious testing to the “unscripted” part.

In this episode Manny meets Santi from Girona, France, and uncovers an amazing story about Lance:

 

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • •

3 Comments

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. AboutFace Media | Trek Bikes | DOCUMENT UNSCRIPTED

    [...] By admin on 30th April 2009 window.setTimeout('window.location="http://aboutfacemedia.com/963/honda-insight-let-it-shine-on-vimeo"; ',10*60*1000); We just began a series of docs for Trek Bikes called “Document Unscripted”.  The series will follow Lance Armstrong, Alberto Contador, Levi Leipheimer and the Astana racing team as they traverse the world in the 2009 cycling season.  Eventually we plan to follow them at the 2009 Tour de France. [...]

    Reply
  3. AboutFace Media | If You Build It, Will They Come?

    [...] Bikes, About Face Media created a series of online videos, called “Document Unscripted” which chronicled the behind-the-scenes journey of Lance Armstrong, the Trek Bicycle 2009 Tour De France Team and their [...]

    Reply
Leave a Reply

Anti-Spam Quiz: