Right Chaps, like the title says I want to know what's the best mountain bike DVD you've ever seen. I need a little something to stick on my itouch when Im sat in the office and look out the window with the sun coming down and me stuck behind my desk… You know the kind of thing, free riding, xc, downhill anything really…. Note to self download BMX bandits tonight, that will fill tomorrow boredom 8)

Seasons is pretty incredible with really stunning cinematography and some of the best riders. More aimed at DH/Freeride/Slopestyle but still pretty inspiring.

I've not seen that many, but probably liked Virtuous most, probably mostly because of the intro, and the bit in the dark with the candles and the disco ball. You can get it off itunes for about £1.80 too. Seasons is on there too.

Dirt – Remind's me of the good ole days and a few bits of Bristol in it.

ROAM – Great cinematics, great soundtrack, good riding too! Can put on in the background with non MTB'er's and they are wow'd.

There are more video's but I can't remember them, will check the shelf at home when I'm home

I have DIRT on vhs – some of those moves JMC makes are awesome.

What do people think to Klunkerz?

This one! http://www.youtube.com/user/willfoxere2k7#p/a/u/0/W3ZND8nbU4s

Another vote for Seasons. Purely inspirational.

Klunkerz good documentary but sort of thing you only watch once or twice, not really a film you can have on in background whilst you do other things like the other 'riding' films

1 The Collective
2 Roam
3 Home (love the Scottish scenery and that its trails you can realistically ride yourself, we can't all visit Whistler!)
4 The Tipping Point
5 Seasons
6 Dirt (the riding would put it top of list but the production shows its age now, and being VHS isnt that easy to watch (my video player died along time ago)

The Earthed series are good (esp 5), some of Kranked series okay

Seasons is on itunes for less than £2!

Home… just inspires you to get out and ride 😉

Does this count?

Earthed 3

north shore history x…..
the first 5 films from todd fiander (digger)on one DVD, released 2002..

different..but again and again worth looking..

Freedom Riders
First
Klunkers

All are proper films with a story to tell, and not just people randomly riding bikes in the woods with music playing, which are pretty lame and unimaginative.

MBR movie or MTB movie?

My favourite MBR video (I've not seen many) is the helvelyn one on youtube, mostly for the bonnie tyler soundtrack ..

MTB movie, I quite like NWD 8, just because I've seen it more than once because I have a copy. I can't really remember many others. Some of the opening commentary on Seasons can come across as a bit pretenious (though a very minor part), though there are plenty of good bits in it
I remember NWD9 looking a bit OTT, though if I remember rightly it was focussing on how much the riders were being pushed to ever bigger

Home

All good suggestions – nothing is more inspiring than Sam Hills Champery run in the rain on Clay Porters F1rst though. Earthed films are all very good too.

Alex Rankin's Sprung videos are great… Sprung 3 topping them all!!

I thought Klunkerz was pretty terrible, considering the subject matter and the amount of access they got to the riders… Compare with, say, Dogtown and Z Boys, to see what it could have been. It's still interesting, but it's not a good film, it just happens to be a bad film about a fascinating subject.

Seasons has its low points, to me it does drag a bit now but the good bits are so damn good. Saw it on Sanny's cinema tour last night and the Whistler section still knocks me out every time- I was really down on Follow Me after that, just because nothing in it comes anywhere close to that.

Kranked 7, Seasons, and Virtous are all on iTunes.

One thing I find hilarious in all the arty ones is the amazing cinematography and stunning landcapes and wilderness and then it cuts to some baseball-capped biker spurting some chimera of 8 year-old's English and biking slang.

So Northwind,

"it just happens to be a bad film about a fascinating subject."

Ouch! Just out of curiosity, what exactly would YOU have done? I made this film on my own, no sponsors ($$$), and I made exactly what I wanted to make. I wanted to a create a real documentary, a character study of the people behind the birth of the sport. I made it, mostly, for the guys who are in the film, too. They were all there for the world premiere (except for Prof. Scott, who was murdered shortly after I interviewed him). I'm friends with most of these guys now. I know their life story, their family, and their friends. Ask Stacy P (not that he cares) if any of the the real Z-Boys would spit on him if he was on fire. I spent 3 years of my life and six-figures of my own cash following those guys around, getting to know them so they'd trust me enough to let me tell their story, chasing that footage all over the world, etc. I didn't want a rock/montage film… I wanted to do something different than what I'd seen in this genre. After completion I got the film in more than 100 film festivals around the world. No marketing firm from a bike company, no p.r. agency, just me. It's aired on television in more than 120 countries, including PBS in the U.S. I'm pretty sure that's the first the Public Broadcasting Company has aired anything MTB-related. The film has raised more than $100,000 for bike advocacy, trail-building and other cycling-related causes. Every year since it's release at least one cast member from the film has been nominated into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame. No one had thought of a lot of these folks in years and I hunted them down. I preserved and restored the subject's deteriorating materials, more than 1000 photographs and thousands of feet of film, for future generations to study and enjoy and fattened up the archive at the MTB Hall of Fame in the process. I am sorry you didn't like the film, but at least USA Today, The New York Times, Movie Maker Magazine, Filmmaker Magazine, Movie Magazine International, STUFF Magazine and pretty much every mountain bike publication in the world appreciated my efforts. I'm stoked that I had the opportunity to share this piece of history, even if I never live to pay off the loans. It's like they say here in town, Northwind, if you don't like the films you see, get out and make some of your own.
Sincerely,
Billy Savage
writer/producer/director/distributor
Klunkerz c/o
PUMELO PICTURES
6464 Sunset Blvd. #1095
Hollywood, CA.
http://www.klunkerz.com
http://www.facebook.com/klunkerz

Get the free mpora app and there are loads on there.

I'd recommend Dirt TV: Finally (there are 5 parts)

they should get you your fix.

Sorry for the earlier rant. Having a pisser of a day and I'm off my meds.
Ride on,
Billy

Dirt – out of all the MTB videos that is the one that gets me out on the bike immedaitely.

Home – has a lot of my kind of riding and is a good film to just sit and watch – also makes me want to go riding.

Collective – good to watch but doesn't make me the slightest bit interested in riding my bike – mainly due to most of it being jumps or BIG North Shore stuff – great for camera, but I've no interest in that so I'll just watch and be impressed but have no desire to ride.

Roam + Sessions – as above…too much jumping in it…I like the sections where they are ragging down the hillside on a ride – very good to watch but as soon as the jumps and jumping arrives I switch off…

F1rst – although this is all about the racing (again not really any interest) – I did feel quite imspired by it – not quite to go rag my bike but it was telling a story that just watching a few good kids blasting down a hillside.

Not seen many more to be honest as they all tend to now follow this kind of formula – loads of jumping and not a huge amount of just riding so I have very little interest in them.

That's just me though…Dirt is the best out of all the MTB videos I've seen (I think I've seen about 20 in total over the years)…

Good film and good answer Klunkerbill!

My favourite is the semi-retro (maybe full retro now?) Chainsmoke with Shaun Palmer and others. Good mix of DH & XC and great music (in my opinion – Downset, Shelter and stuff). The shot of Palmer being dropped by a helicopter at the top of a long singletrack descent, as the opening riff to 'Empower' starts sends shivers down my spine! 😀

wow you go Klunkerbill!
Thanks for bringing us the film, your passion does definately come across in it despite what Northwind may think, and personally I find it much more watchable than Z-Boys (and I grew up as a skateboarder before switching to bikes) which I felt was now where near as 'personal'

Mudcows
Hammertime

CHEERS FOR ALL THE POST…
I need to crack on and find some of these online 😯

Disregarding any shameful plugging I may be prone to doing, I really liked Home. The sequence with young Ruaraidh winning the World Champs still gives me goosebumps. It's the look of joy on his family and friends that nakes me smile every time I watch it. I was feeling really chauffed with myself when I saw myself in Home on the big screen. The feeling lasted all of three seconds when I walked out the cinema and my good mate Doug (now of Basque MTB) said how much he enjoyed my bit especially as it had been shown in slow motion….talk about coming back down to earth with a crash! Ha! Ha!

Berrecloth's scene in Roam is a fantastic start to any film, the closing scenes in Seasons are well up there too. The final NZ sequence in Follow Me is really special. I think my wife summed it up perfectly when she turned to me at the end of the screening and said that she just wanted to go ride her bike. 😀

Cheers

Sanny

Oh and I forgot the shore scene at the end of The Collective shot in black and white to a soundtrack by Quantic. Marvellous!

Oops, that's what comes of speaking freely on the internet I guess. Klunkerbill, It's obvious you made the film you wanted to and you're proud of it and that's great, and I wouldn't deny it's achieved a lot, but… Well, I just didn't think it told the story well, is the bottom line, despite everything. Maybe it did exactly what you wanted it to and it's just that none of that is what I hoped it would do.

Everyone's a critic, eh.

Home for me too. I especially like Sanny's section despite any comments previously made 😉 I love the scenery and I think that the way it's captured a whole 'scene' is fantastic. Comedy neds as well, you can't get bored of that can you?

go for a proper classic – Tread

where can you buy Home from, the resetfilms.co.uk website hasn't been updated for a long time (blog entry april 2009) so bit reluctant to use the paypal link on there

Seasons, Roam, First, Klunkerz were all good. Looking forward to Lifecycles too… the video clips I've seen have been amazingly shot. http://lifecyclesfilm.com/

You can buy it from the website or send Mark an e-mail (it's on the web) and he'll set your mind at rest I'm sure. The blog is pretty out of date but the website is still live and good I think.

There's some great 'Kranked' videos on youtube including an amazing one about a guy who only has 20% vision and follows a guide about on his mtb over jumps and stuff.

Dirt, and not just because they use the sky as blue screen for that music interlude.

R979 has it Mud Cows rules above all else

Northwind, I totally get it, but I'd like to know what YOU would have done differently if you had limited funds? Dogtown's production budget was 1.2 million dollars, and Stacy hardly paid anyone for shots and footage. I didn't want to do play it like that. People got paid for their materials, or they donated because they were into what I was doing. I told the majors straight up I didn't want to make a commercial about their new products. Lots of the guys really didn't want to talk on camera about the old days. Many were still REALLY pissed off at each other. Some made fortunes, others drifted into obscurity, so there were feelings involved. I had to tread lightly. Some guys I had to hassle for more than a year just to get an interview. Others were stoked I cared enough to research and find them. So my question is if you only had 200K, what story about the mountain bike history would you tell? For me, I just wanted to look at the beginning of the thing and to end it with the intro of the first production bikes in '82. The question is where was the actual beginning? All that's open to debate. Would you have gone further into the future? Perhaps into the racing scene of the '80s? Annodiz-a-palooza? More modern stuff? Josh Bender-o-rama? There was certainly a lot more photos and footage once the '80s started rolling along. I'm old, so I was just into early guys and what they started. I did all kind of research (almost a year) on Von Drais, through the Bone Shakers and Safety Bikes before roads were paved, then the Buffalo Soldiers, Annie Londonderry, the Italian Infantry of WW1, the RoughStuff Fellowship, etc. In the end, I realized I only had 80+ minutes, so I concentrated on the California guys, cuz that's where I'm from. I really hope more people make films about the sport's history. There's lots to learn about our forefathers. After all, every rider has a story, even if they just got their first bike:).
Ride on!