The Bicyclist

The Radio Room inaugurated a web series screening last night and The Bicyclist was happy to be a part of it. It was good to see other series producers there and to watch their work on the big screen with really big sound.

The Bicyclist was up first with episodes 10/11 - then 24 -and anchored with 27. This made for a nice twenty minute recap of the series that gave new viewers a taste of the series and character arcs. It was a blast from the past for me as The Bicyclist was a pioneer among the now many web series and the first one to be made into a feature. As I watched the show I felt the audience's energy shift as the story went from farce to drama. It made me realize how blessed I was to work with such talented actors and crew over the two seasons of the series and the film.

The abundance of creative energy and talent in our community means there's enough series currently produced in Portland alone to ensure that The Radio Room will make this a monthly event.

Harmony Specialty Dairy Food

If you've watched the web series of The Bicyclist or the film The Bicyclists you know that Conrad Miller, played by Jayme S. Hall, hales from the rolling dairyland of Wisconsin, but what you might not of known is that the cheese factory mentioned in the film is based in reality.

The Harmony Specialty Dairy Food Company is located in the small town of Edgar, Wisconsin. It also happens to be the same cheese factory that Sharon's family, the Dvoraks, owned for around a half-century. Her grandparents home, a truck garage and the cheese factory took up only one acre of land.

When we scouted locations for The Bicyclists we wanted to find a place as close to the look and feel of the original cheese factory. We think we succeeded.

In other news we're still entering film festivals, selling dvd's and may be headed to the American Film Market in LA in November.

The other day I was prepping footage for Mr. Paul Glazier's reel and took the opportunity to watch some of the Bicyclist episodes. I had intended to watch only for Paul's scenes, but I ended up watching whole episodes. I haven't taken the time to watch most of them after their original post date.

I have my favorite episodes and some were stronger than others, but overall we have a nice little web series that all who participated can be proud. We recently hit the 100,000 hits mark on blip.tv alone. That's an indication that The Bicyclist is still capturing new viewers and the blip tv is probably a third of the true count. So not bad.

We're waiting to hear from film festivals about The Bicyclists movie and how it fared. Sharon tells me we should start hearing soon. And we heard the showing in Budapest went well. So, that's eastern Europe.

Soon I'll be programming a dvd of The Bicyclist series for those of you who would like to see the episodes in full resolution and in living color. Oh and if you're interested in our next project please check out Dex Dixon .

It ain't nothin' like The Bicyclist.

We've been invited to the Budapest Bicycle Festival in September and we're very excited to have been chosen as one of the main events during the festival that includes film, art and community activities.

Budapest is a big bike city and it's great to be a part of their celebration - especially since they found our web site and series on the internet, watched it and the movie trailer and invited The Bicyclists to screen without us even entering the contest.

The power of the internets!

The Budapest Bike Festival

Check out the festival's website and let me know what it says. I've tried translation programs to make the Hungarian to English understandable, but it's like they have a different word for everything.

This is an exciting time for us as we are now ready to sell The Bicyclists to the public, in addition to booking small theaters around the country and waiting to hear from film festivals about our status. (We're early entrants on a lot of festivals - so the wait seems even longer than normal.)

The Bicyclists has gone from script to screen in a little over one year. The Bicyclist web series had barely wrapped production when I began to write The Bicyclists, in fact there were several episodes still waiting to be edited. After ten days of immersion I finished writing the script on July 11, 2008 and we went into rehearsals soon after that.

We had begun some pre-production, but then went full on into full production and actual shooting with only a partial cast on August 2, 2008. We needed to move fast because I wanted to work in the golden light of August and September and some of the cast planned to move to LA. Throughout shooting we added cast and crew “just in time”, along with wardrobe, locations and props (bikes, lots of bikes). To say it was stressful would be an understatement.

Would I do it that way again? Not on purpose. We did have the advantage of having worked with the cast for two seasons and of having planned early in season two to make the Bicyclists – so at least we knew what was coming. And now for the good part: we just took delivery of The Bicyclists DVD’s on Wednesday and are setting up our page on Film Baby as I type.

We hope you can make it out to the DVD release party and if not catch The Bicyclists on the web.

www.watchthebicyclist.com

put in the code: bikechain