In the Field: Outdoor Sports Productions are Puzzles. Here’s How to Solve Them.

For the launch of a new home fitness bike, NordicTrac’s iFit division needed a series of videos capturing professional European cyclists in a legit early-season training destination for European cyclists. 

That’s where Dave Steiner and Scott Markewitz—both Hence Experts and Roster members—stepped in. The pair have produced and directed cycling projects around the world. 

The location was easy. Dave knows where the pro peloton hangs out in the off season—Mallorca, the eden-esque island off of Spain. “I put a proposal together that included all of the on-bike and off-bike exercises,” says Dave. “It was based on my lived experience as a cyclist and a producer. I knew the Mallorca locations intimately, right up to the hotels and the coffee shops. I saw it all in my mind’s eye. But I needed Scott’s expertise with logistics and the technical side to pull it off.” 

We know, Mallorca isn’t exactly a hardship tour—Dave and Scott were once chased by rabid dogs in Chile for a similar project. But if you think orchestrating a shoot that involves a crew of 16 (plus six athletes) with a promise to deliver 30 segments is easy, you don’t know what such a cycling—or any outdoor sport—shoot entails. Here’s a look behind the scenes.

Once Dave had secured the contract through his LLC, Falcon Productions, it was time to scout. He and Scott had a handle on the ride locations, but they also needed to produce 20 off-bike training segments to accompany the ride sessions. 

“The idea is to get the client as much value as possible,” says Dave. “The athletes were going to be there anyway, and they don’t come cheap.” So in December, Scott and Dave toured half a dozen Mallorca hotels looking for outdoor spaces that could work. They needed natural light to keep the cost and logistics of a studio shoot out of the equation. On the same trip, they needed to scout the rides and find good locations for intros, outros, and two to three spots in the middle of the ride for the crew to capture action B-roll clips and photos to add to the POV footage of the athletes riding in a small peloton. 

“With outdoor shooting you are always playing the weather and the time of day,” says Scott. “And with the on-bike segments especially, there are no second takes. Everything has to be dialed.”

In the past, Dave has taken on the role of sourcing talent, but for the Mallorca shoot, that fell to iFit’s athlete manager. On the ground though, the producer (Dave) and director of photography (Scott) ran the show. 

That means communicating with the athletes—and ensuring they are fed and safe. The cyclists were a who’s who of the pro peloton: Sir Bradley Wiggins, Jens Voigt, Nicolas Roche, Coryn Labecki, Dani Rowe, and the iFit trainer Hannah Eden. Everyone can ride bikes in a pack and keep to a schedule. 

It’s the off-bike stuff that takes more rigorous oversight. “Because of the weather and lighting challenges we take an approach like: ‘If we get this done fast, you will have more down time.’ It’s a good carrot. But everyone involved is a pro,” says Dave.

Here’s why location scouting is vital. The on-bike workouts had to be shot from start to finish over 40 minutes to an hour. But without some B-roll of the athletes riding in a natural environment, the segments wouldn’t be as visually engaging as they could be. 

The fix? Dave—with cameras facing fore and aft to capture the POV action from within the peloton—had to either drop off the back of the group or charge off the front before the predetermined locales so Scott and his team of shooters could capture the overhead drone footage and rolling peloton shots from street level. Dave has a team of go-to specialists to get that type of footage. “We rely on systems to pull it off,” says Scott. “We run through checklists with one another before we get in the van, because if someone forgets their spare batteries or other vital gear there’s no way for us to recreate the shoot.” 

It helps that Dave’s drone guy, Ty MacCarty, also runs all the audio. “He was a perfect fit for this project,” says Dave. “We need audio from the workouts but not with the B-roll, which frees him up to fly the drone. Audio people can be difficult to work with because they all have their own processes, but Ty is no drama.”

Riding an iFit bike is an immersive experience. You aren’t an avatar spinning the gears in a CGI landscape. You are peddling along with the heroes of professional cycling in idyllic destinations. 

To capture that, Scott gets Dave suited up with front and rear cameras capturing a 360-degree view of the peloton. Road cycling is precarious enough in normal situations. It’s even more so for Dave, who is moving around in the pack and capturing angles from the side—where the traffic is coming up from behind. 

“I’m a bit exposed out there,” says Dave. “For one thing, the pace can get intense. But I’m also thinking about the shot and trying to stay safe.”

That’s where the athletes come in, like a team tending to their leader for the overall podium in the Tour de France, the pros keep Dave protected by calling out instructions and checking the road for opportunities to pass.” 

The choreography at 35 mph is challenging when Dave is filming solo riders. With a peloton project like Mallorca, it’s only more so. “For me, physically and mentally it’s a challenge,” says Dave. “I don’t think I was ever complaining that I was too tired to bike because the pace wasn’t as fast as some past projects. But being that alert and capturing so many different riders and angles takes energy. I also have to be quiet because we are capturing audio the entire time.”

Because the Mallorca production was in support of a new product launch, the timelines were tight. So much so that Dave had the editor Nick Barney on site because of the fast turnaround. Crew member Blake Bekken was dumping raw footage each day and Nick was roughing it out as he went. By the end of the ten day assignment, he had multiple segments in the bag.

“Nick’s a savage,” says Dave. “As was everyone on the team. A production like this is like a professional sports team. Every day, someone stood up and crushed it. Whether it was Cal Aamodt sniping long lens action, or Blake Bekken on the gimbal running alongside cyclists getting B-roll. When I think about what the crew does, I tend to speak in heartfelt terms. We don’t pull off shoots like this without them. That’s how important the team is.”