sticks & stones: an homage to early winter riding on the east coast

"sticks & stones" is a black and white, self-filmed project by Stan's NoTubes athlete Brice Shirbach paying tribute to the chilly, damp, and brisk time of year that makes trails uniquely brilliant before winter truly sets in.

"I love the self-filming process. There’s something very meditative in there for me, and recently I decided to go the solo route for a concept I’ve been chewing on for a couple of years. I filmed “sticks & stones” on some local mid-Atlantic trails with a goal to create a stylized, dark, gritty, and chilly homage to the nuanced yet brilliant riding opportunities afforded to east coasters during “stick season”. The dirt is ever damp, the sight lines free from obstruction, and the chill in the air a welcome respite from the oppressive heat and humidity of the summer. There's a surreal quality to riding in the woods this time of year, and it's one of my favorite things about riding bikes on the east coast."

Brice Shirbach

Stan's NoTubes: Can you run us through the process of shooting this self-shot video? Camera set-ups, remotes, number of takes per trail section, etc. 

Brice Shirbach: This was a really fun and interesting project to work on. I've been producing self-filmed videos for a very long time, going back to my early days at Pinkbike and making these little :90 "Local Flavors" videos for the "EastBound and Down" series. I still have some regular projects that involve this process, but for "sticks & stones" I wanted to do something different. A lot of self-filmed videos, my own included, will utilize POV footage to help glue tripod shots together while also providing the video with a very different perspective and dynamic movement. It's easy and highly effective, but for this I wanted to challenge myself to make something without the use of any POV footage. One of my primary goals was to produce something on my own that had the look and feel of a video that utilized both a filmer and a rider, instead of a single rider/filmer. Filming on local trails was a big part of how I was able to accomplish that. I had plenty of time to really dial in the process, I knew exactly which trails I wanted to film on and how to go about getting the most out of them, and I was also able to spend a lot of time working on the trails themselves and dialing them in. From a technical perspective, I knew I was going to need to be able to mix up angles and compositions, and in order to do so I needed to utilize a few different cameras for this.

Camera A was my Panasonic Lumix S1. I shot everything in 4K at 24fps for a cinematic quality and because I knew I wanted everything in real time and no slow motion. The S1 had a 24-105mm lens on it at all times, giving me a good range from semi-wide to telephoto, and for compositional purposes I think I kept that range between 24-75mm. Anything more tends to "pancake" the image, meaning the depth of field is altered as the background and foreground appear closer to the subject, which can affect the way we perceive speed when watching a rider ride through the frame.

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