Filming models and motorbikes in Portugal
Last summer we’ve spent six days in the beautiful region of Odemira chasing models on motorbikes for Richa, a renowned moto apparel brand from Belgium. Now that motorbike season has officially started, we can finally share the beautiful results of this project.
Immerse yourself in motorcycle life.
I’ll start off with my personal favorite amongst the different videos we’ve created: the one about the Lifestyle collection.
The outline of this video in a nutshell (and in Dutch):
”Moto rijden is fun en plezier. Het is ‘van het leven genieten’. Net als een duik nemen in een meer, op café/restaurant gaan, sporten,… Vriendschap is hierin essentieel: shared fun = real fun. Naast de moto mag het er al eens zot aan toegaan. We houden van actie en we’re living life to the fullest. Goede momenten zijn er om te delen en om vast te leggen. Foto’s maken, filmen hoort hierbij.”
This video was shot in one day, with an additional evening for the swimming scene. Typically we started shooting at sunrise until noon with two models and did a second shift from 3 PM until sunset with the two other models.
Our base in Portugal for this shoot was Wim Motors Academy in Odemira, probably the best place to hang out for some fantastic Enduro riding in Portugal. Moreover Wim’s area is pretty big and has a large variety of settings that could be used for shooting different photo and video scenes.
Below you can find a small photo gallery that shows only a hint of the possibilities of this Academy.
Wim and his family are true motorbike lovers and they know the region very well. Thanks to their expertise we discovered the best places to shoot in no time and we were able to work in a super efficient way.
The mood video below is a kind of a slower paced recap of the whole Richa shoot in Portugal and shows the variety of locations we were able to film at.
During the 4,5 days of shooting we’ve made a commercial for each different RICHA collection: Touring, Lifestyle, Adventure and Racing. On top of that we’ve cut more than a dozen of short clips for social media. Finally, the mood film makes the video package complete.
You can check the Touring and Adventure video on my portfolio page about this project. The Racing video can be found below.
This last one was probably the most challenging to shoot.
First of all, the time frame of the road blocks was rather short, we only had 2,5 hours. Nothing to do about that… the road blocks were mandatory for this kind of shoot, safety first!
Secondly, the road - that was scouted by a local crew - was not in the best shape and therefore super bumpy. A shaking motorbiker was not what we had in mind. Luckily, with Lewis Rigaux, we had a super experienced rider for this task and he managed to make the best out of it!
Probably you wouldn’t have noticed the bad condition of the road if you had watched the video first. But now that we’ve made this small confession, you know which details to look for.
Last but not least I want to do a big shout-out to the fantastic crew, I had the honor to spend six wonderful days with. Not only the video crew, but also the photo crew did an incredible job and delivered some stunning work.
On my Instagram you can find a crew video of 2 minutes with a lot of behind the scenes footage, which is also a kind of an ode to this wonderful RICHA crew:
Agency: Handlangers
Production: Fenomeno x Handlangers
Agency producers: Louise Hoffman, Marie Messely, Hanneke Neven
Models: Anthea Adigery, Julia Maxine, Clayton Pyle, Sebastien Siegenthaler, Lewis Rigaux Director: Bruno Keustermans
DP: Frank Dewaele
B-cam/Super8: Bruno Keustermans
1st AC: Thomas Storms
Drone pilot: Jan Crommelinck (Aeroplayfilms)
Drone framing: Thomas Demeyer
Sound engineer: Thomas Storms
MUA/Hair: Nanne De Winter, Peggy Timmermans
Stills photographer: Wilhelm Westergren, Alexander Populier
Locations: Wim, Ruth, Clint De Cramer - Wim Motors Academy, Portugal
Rentals: Camalot Belgium
Editing & color grading: Bruno Keustermans (Fenomeno)
Sound design: Mathieu Savenay (Studio Henri)
Music by Musicbed
In this last video to conclude this blog post, we’re taking you behind the scenes of the making of the Adventure video. Capturing these images off the beaten track and between the cork trees was one of my best days on set so far.
