I'm working on a bike video project and I've downloaded gigabytes of similar videos so I can find what works and what doesn't. Here are real life examples of what I've seen.
DOs:
- Crashes. A spectacular crash will guarantee viral distribution of your video. The same with losing body parts. Think Bambi Meets Godzilla, which has humor and irony.
- Stupid Motorist Tricks. Right hooks. Left crosses. Doorings. Plain inattention and cluelessness. We've all seen it, we might as well make the video a little educational.
- Stupid Motorist Antagonism. Go head and perpetuate the myth that all drivers are jerks. Seeing a punk pitch a beer bottle from the window of his pickup truck connects deeply with the inner cyclist in all of us.
- Stupid Cyclist Tricks. That's why Lucas Brunelle videos are so well known. We see cyclists running red lights, going the wrong way, hitching rides, and riding drunk. We condemn the behavior and then we forward the URL to 20 of our friends.
- Traffic noises. I want to hear the honks, the diesel engines revving, the words of encouragement from passing motorists and startled pedestrians.
- Go fast. Ride it like you stole it. If you're trying to outrun a big dog, a cop, or a motorist who's ticked about the big dent that appeared after you kicked his fender then so much the better. If you actually did steal the bike then wow.
DON'Ts:
- Motion sickness. PLEASE try to hold the camera reasonably steady. PLEASE DO NOT wave your camera left and right to capture everything around you. Otherwise, I'll vomit like Linda Blair.
- Six minutes of footage of the golf course. That's about as exciting as, well, watching grass grow.
- Nobody wants to watch the wheels of the bike going round and round. Round and round. Round and round. The wheels of the bike go round and round. All through the town. The same with pedals. We know that they go round and round. Round and round. You get the point.
- Techno dance music. Pedaling is repetitive enough. Don't compound it with drudgingly boring synthesized beat-beat-beat-thump.
- Thrash music is so cliche. For goodness sake do something a little unique. And please, if I hear Queen's "Bicycle Race" one more time I'm going to puke. There are at least a hundred other good titles in every genre out there about bicycling.
- Speeding up the video. Juicing up the frame rate a little is okay, but cranking it up past 2X to make it more "exciting" is lame and stupid.
- Slow riding. A relaxing ride down a beautiful forest path is very nice personally, but vicariously it sucks. Unless you have some outstanding prose to go with it.
So how about it? What are some good examples of bike videos out there? What are your personal likes and dislikes?
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