Hasta La Creative!

Skye’s the limit for Danny MacAskill. And he doesn’t need a plane to soar. He flies just fine on a mountain bike in this seven-minute dazzler called “The Ridge.”

The gorgeously shot vdeo finds the cyclist back home on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, his epic adventure captured by helmet-cam, drone and lenses that are seemingly everywhere.

This outing shares the spirit of the exhilarating clips that made him a star, while supplying MacAskill with an infinitely more stunning visual canvas. It provides an intriguing contrast with his “Imaginate” film from last year, where he performed stunts in a fantasy recreation of his childhood bedroom with giant toys, books and loop-de-loops for props.

That voyage was internal, a trip through MacAskill’s mind to share the cyclist’s youthful dreams. But in “The Ridge,” we’re treated to the ethereal but very real grandeur of the Cuillin Ridge, a fog-bound, craggy stretch of mountains, 3,255 feet at its peak, that resembles the terrain of some distant planet. That effect is heightened by MacAskill’s row-boat arrival at the hauntingly beautiful spot.

No other humans are in site, strange creatures splash in the shallows, and Martyn Bennett’s hymn-like vocals ring out on the soundtrack. It’s as if MacAskill trekked across the void, or perhaps journeyed back into prehistory to perform and explore.

MacAskill’s exploration of Cuillin’s awe-inspiring topography is sure to thrill fans (the clip’s already approaching 10 million YouTube views in less than a week) and delight brand sponsors (Five Ten, Enve Composites, Red Bull and Santa Cruz Bikes among them). Which is all for the best, since the shoot was an intense labor for everyone involved.

“It was a serious effort to just get to the filming locations,” says Stu Thomson, who directed both “The Ridge” and “Imaginate.” “The Cuillin Ridge is seven miles long, and to get to the easiest summit is at least two hours of hiking up, and then two hours back. We had to carry food, water and all our camera gear, including the drone and eight batteries for it, in and out each day. The longest day on the mountain was 8 a.m. until 1 a.m., and included a total of seven hours of hiking for five shots in the film.”

Traditionally, the Playboy Mansion’s main attraction has been the small army of Playmates who hang around it. But professional cyclist Danny MacAskill manages to overshadow even the bunnies, as he turns the estate’s grounds into a trials-style obstacle course in this new ad for Red Bull.

It’s not that a couple of scantily clad women aren’t featured heavily in the two-minute clip. But the promise of sex is practically table stakes in advertising aimed at young dudes. Sad as it may be, the oversexualized shots of ladies lounging in bikinis and under waterfalls serve more or less as background once MacAskill starts doing his tricks—it’s just much more fascinating to watch him jump off walls and ride backwards down a hill on only his front wheel. In fact, even the actual birds—parrots and flamingos—make for more novel b-roll.

Overall, though, it’s deftly filmed, and fun to watch. The soundtrack, “9.2.5” by Ghosthouse, is a great fit, and showcasing an offbeat street sport in a clever way is right in Red Bull’s branded content sweet spot—even if this iteration is less charmingly inventive than MacAskill’s work for the brand’s “Imaginate” series last year or the amusingly overcomplicated Red Bull opening machine to which he contributed in 2012.

As for the tawdriness, MacAskill, who now has some 100 million views across his YouTube portfolio, seems more interested in the terrain than his co-stars. “It turned out there were some decent bits to ride, but it was quite hard with all those girls distracting you, quite hard work doing all this riding [laughs],” he says in a Q&A over at the brand’s website. “I’m a little too shy for that kind of stuff.”

Danny MacAskill é um ciclista escocês especializado em Biketrial, uma modalidade que é quase um “Parkour” das bicicletas.

Junto com a RedBull (sempre ela) ele acaba de lançar um vídeo incrível, que demorou 2 anos para ser finalizado: MacAskill’s Imaginate – Enter Danny’s Mind. No vídeo de aproximadamente 6 minutos, ele faz acrobacias incríveis em um cenário com brinquedos gigantes dos anos 80, inspirado em sua infância em Glasgow.

A qualidade da produção do cenário, assim como a interação de Danny com os obstáculos é impressionante. Em 68 semanas de filmagem, houveram cenas que foram gravadas quase 300 vezes. Assista:

Se você gostou, dê uma procurada por mais vídeos desse cara. Tem coisas muito boas por aí.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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