Motorcycle Season Begins?

It's hard to believe that three days ago Jamie and I dusted off the Magna for a short ride around town. The great thing about the weather around here is that if you don't like it, just wait 15 minutes…

Post-production continues on the film as we log hour and hours of footage. Matt tells me that most of the tape has been captured and he's pumped about turning out that first rough cut. I'm excited as well because unlike our other projects, there is quite a lot of footage that I haven't seen yet (I wasn't present for the shooting), so there will be a lot of stuff I haven't seen yet in the rough.

As the weather turns fair it reminds us that we don't have a lot of time before the spring run (two months?) and neither of our bikes are quite "road ready" yet. On Matt's end he continues to battle the leaking fuel tank issues while mine are less serious mechanically (I'll get into them in a minute) but I'm still uncertain about obtaining a proper title which really grounds the whole project. If I don't make any progress in this regard soon, I'm seriously considering a frame swap…

But on the mechanical end of things, the two highest-priority items I have on my list are:

• Work out the midrange power problems
  
• Figure out (and fix) the back brake "clunking" issue
  

When I had the bike out last year I noticed, when accelerating through the rev range the bike struggles as the tach climbs beyond 3000rpm. After thinking about it over the winter, I'm pretty confident this is a jetting issue, since I really opened up the intake and exhaust but I'm still running the stock main jets. So I ordered a "jet kit" off ebay that comes with several different sizes of main jets and we'll give this a shot.

The brake issue is something else. I un-intentionally disassembled the rear (drum) brake when I removed the wheel to have new tires mounted. I thought I put it back together correctly, but apparently I did something wrong. When applying the brake, it begins to grab as expected but then it will suddenly grip, make a "clunk" noise and then all but lock-up the rear wheel. If you plan for it, it's not a problem but if it catches you off-guard it's very unsettling. I'm not sure if I goofed something up inside the brake itself or maybe something in the mounting (the torque arm?) but either way I'm going to have to spend some time figuring it out. If I had even one disc up front, I wouldn’t sweat it too much but with (old) drums on both ends, I need every bit of stopping power I can find.

The weather is supposed to turn warmer again this week and I expect my jets will arrive as well. If both these things happen I may charge up the bike, get some fresh fuel and see if I can at least get it to start. If I get that far, I'll try installing some new jets and see what the difference is. It will probably be awhile before I can do another road test, but at least I'll be ready for the next break in the weather.

Ike

It's hard to think about motorcycles when it's -5 degrees Fahrenheit, but I'll try.

Matt and I have been busy capturing/logging footage and taking a step back to look at what we have so far and how that fits into the "picture" of the film we started out with. Some things have come out exactly as we expected and others have exceeded our expectations in many ways.

There are two ways to approach a non-fiction film, you can set out to tell the story a certain way from the start and "force" this story in the way that you acquire footage and information or you can pick a "starting point" and let the film take shape as you gather media and information. I think that you have to have the whole story in mind when you start out, because you need to be able to envision the end of the film, but conversely I think you need to be able to let this go if, along the way, the story reveals itself in a way that is contradictory to your original vision. Ike said it best;

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

Matt and I had a very solid vision of the film when we first started shooting in 2007, but since then so much has changed. When we started we could scarcely imagine the resources that we would be able to gather and today we stand here with such a rich collection of stories and images that to force them into the mold we originally set would be to sacrifice too much. So we have spent the last few months taking all this in and contemplating how to grow the idea of the film, in light of all that has changed, and we've come up with something that we are very excited about and we think you will be too.

…of course I can't spill the beans here, you weren't expecting that were you?

All grand plans aside there are some very basic and concrete tasks remaining before we can consider production "a wrap". Next on the agenda are interview sessions with yours truly and Matthew to gather updates on the project bikes, and speaking of project bikes there is the small matter of readying them for the spring run! At the moment the biggest obstacle for Matt is the self-draining fuel tank and for myself, aside from a few (what I consider minor) mechanical issues is the greater matter of getting the bike registered and street-legal.

So my next post will return to a discussion of these technical/mechanical items, but I wanted to take a moment to update you all on the status of the film itself. We are very excited to reveal more, and in the coming months we'll be leaking more details. Stay tuned.

BTW, for those of you who missed it on television you can see Matt and I on Wisconsin Public Television's "Directors Cut" online and catch a brief "sneak peek" of some of our Crud Run footage near the end of the episode: http://www.wpt.org/directorscut/111gullickson_cribben.cfm

More Interviews

Last night we completed another key interview for the film and now we're down to only one left on the list. That isn't to say we won't be doing more, or doing additional interviews of subjects we've already spoken with but what it does mean is that we're one interview away from putting together what we're calling the "outline cut".

This is where we take everything we've shot so far, put it together in the timeline and watch it end-to-end. The goal here is to see what we have, identify the stories we want to focus on and determine what else we need to tell these stories in a compelling way.

So it's not so much the end of production in the traditional sense, but it is the beginning of post-production and a milestone that we've really been looking forward to. Unlike a drama, where the story is written before the camera rolls, this is where the story our film will tell really starts to emerge.

The other transition happening here is a shift in focus from working on the motorcycle to one of working on the film. I have a few bike-related tasks in store for the winter but the updates here will have more to do with "shots-and-cuts" and less to do with "pipes-and-jets" (although bigger jets are on the top of my parts list). The primary challenge facing the bike at the moment is getting the title and license squared away and from my experience that doesn't make for very exciting writing. So unless something particularly exciting happens, I'll spare you the gory details.

We will also be annoucing new posts using our Slimey Mailing List. If you'd like to receive these updates, follow me to sign up.

Look forward to more consistent (if not more frequent) updates and let us know if you like what you're hearing or if there is something you think we're leaving out.