Garmin - Tread 2
Still Photography, Motion & Production
Brief: Create stills and motion assets of snowmobiling, overlanding and rally bikes for release of the Tread 2 device.
Solution: We decided to split up the shoot into two to allow for greater flexibility. Since snowmobiling would be the most challenging, we decided to tackle that first.
General Approach: Find rad locations, figure out how to get the team from a to b, pack warm clothes, bring lots of sunscreen, check the weather, press record/shutter, make sure to keep the high fives going, and most importantly keep everyone safe!
Topspin Team:
Director/Photographer: Greg Mionske DP/Producer: Javier Fernandez Production Production Swiss-Army Knife - Chris Nye
Tread 2 - Snowmobiling
One of Greg’s favorite spots in Colorado is Crested Butte. He’s a bit of a ‘Butte’ head.🥁
Eleven Experiences, a ski lodge based in CB gave use the go ahead to use their lodge with access to the backcountry terrain we’d need from the shoot, bypassing the need to secure a forest service permit, as well access to the Snocat to get the crew and gear up the mountain.
The simplest and safest way to capture dynamic footage of our riders was to tap FPV Zip-LORD Christian Ojala. Christian flew a RED Komodo around our riders at full speed.
The Garmin team is always super clear with deliverables and expectations which makes the process really smooth. As creatives, it gives us a clear benchmark for what we need to capture on the day and allows us to really focus on delivering. If we’re efficient, which we are💅🏽, that leaves some time to experiment beyond the scope of the initial brief.
A note on visiting a Crested Butte or any other ski town during mud season. Plan on cooking your own food. Not many restaurants were open during our time there and we ended up cooking Topspin Tacos™️ on the third night because we’re in our 30's now and can’t do back to back deep dish pizza nights like we could in our younger days.
Tread 2 - Overlanding & Rally
Round 2 - We headed to the eastern sierras to shoot the overlanding and rally bike portions of the project. Setting up basecamp at The Wayfinder, we split our days between Alabama Hills and Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. Shooting on BLM land is nice because unless you’re shooting a Hollywood film, and plenty of films have shot there, you don’t need a permit. The location does some pretty heavy lifting . I can see why the area is so popular for production. I’m also glad its kind of a pain to get there because otherwise it’d be loved to death. We didn’t run into many people out there during the week. Icing on the cake was a full moonrise as we wrapped production, pretty heady experience and production core memory.
🌀highlight reel from the campaign below🌀
Thank you to Marianne Gjerstadt and Ian Robinson for the challenge. I never thought I’d commute to work on a Snocat.
If you’d like to see more photos or video from this shoot or to learn more about Topspin Tacos™️ and other Topspin Recipes™️ hit us up at -
greg@topspinstudios.com
javier@topspinstudios.com
subject line: it’s pronounced faheeta