Brendan Fairclough is one of the world’s best mountain bike riders. Clay Porter is one of the world’s best mountain bike filmmakers. They’ve been good friends for a decade. You know they had to do a film together. For the last two years, Porter and Fairclough have been shooting and editing Deathgrip. Fairclough—joined by a squad of some of this generation’s most influential riders—and Porter traveled the world to push mountain biking’s envelope and bring it to the people.
Says Porter, “Deathgrip is essentially a byproduct of our 10-year long professional relationship with the sport of gravity mountain biking. We are using our collective experience working with each other to give our audience a futuristic vision into the sport and its most progressive riders. We’re aiming high but we’ve been working hard and have been putting a lot into it. It’s exciting to begin to see it come through in the edit.” Fairclough sees the film as a way to get people riding. “In my eyes the movie is the best way to inspire people to get out and actually ride a bike,” he says. “We’re showing off the skills of the best in the business in the world’s most epic riding locations.”
Yakima joined their journey because there’s a lot of stuff involved in a project like this – it’s not just a couple of guys, a bike and a hero cam. A given shoot can involve a couple of Red cameras, two Sony cameras, drones, a remote cable cam system, and eight GoPro’s. Plus a lot of bikes. “Filmmaking is essentially constantly moving from point to point and place to place,” says Clay. “It’s being able to somewhat manage the chaos around you and think quickly for the best of the project. Yakima helps us do that. Expectedly awesome are the racks. Unexpectedly awesome was the CrashPad that we use on the tailgate of pickup trucks when transporting the bikes from location to location. An essential piece of important equipment.”
“Oh yeah—there’s a crazy amount of gear needed,” adds Brendan. “Clay for sure wins this one with a mountain of gear every time we fly. Drones, jib arms, Red cameras and all sorts of crazy new toys. Oh—and don’t forget his bag of GoPros. Normally just bike, shovel and helmet for me. Been awesome having Yakima on board. If only they made a bike rack for a plane so I didn’t have to take my bike apart each time I fly. Maybe something we can think about?”
The Deathgrip World Premiere is April 25th, 2017 in London, and is followed by a global premiere tour. It releases May 30th, 2017 on iTunes and all other digital platforms.
