Chasing horses

During the Ryde project I’ve tried to capture the reality of horsebackriding: the hard work, the grit, the early mornings and the mental stamina it takes to champion a 1500 pound muscle beast. But also the friendship between the rider and the horse, the community of people and their love for this animal.

Chasing horses

Gotland is a quite mythical place in Sweden.

The Baltic sea and the cold winters has put a stamp on the land. Nature is rugged, harsh and scarred. Spending time here in the summer is a walk in the park. In late October and the winter, not so much. I think that is why I like it.

I arrive with the ferry Sunday afternoon. I’m instructed to drive down to Hotel Stelor that is now closed for the season but will be use as our base for the week.

When the hotel opened in 2011 it was run by Karin and Björn. I designed and built their site. I’m about to meet the same Karin, who is now ceo of Ryde … but I don’t know that yet.

I arrive at the hotel, is empty. It’s half an hour until Karin arrives so I walk the grounds and try to capture the feeling of the hotel.

It feels like I’m sneaking in to an upperclass garden party that was abandonned 100 years ago.

A bit later Karin arrives and I get pulled out of my day dream of tea, cakes and tall hats.

Packing for improvisation

Shotings like this requires a lot of improvisation. So I try to pack for any non-planned situation that might occur. Mostly it’s some weird rigging that is needed so a lot of issues are solved with velcro, straps and duck-tape.

But for this trip I’ve packed to be able to do:

Trip music

When I have long drives to location I often end up playing a song on repeat. I think it has to do with me trying to plan, think through and visualize as much as possible beforehand … then the same song becomes a catalysator for that. I don’t have to think about the music.

This time aroud the song on repeat turned out to be ”Stockholmsvy” by Hannes.

Day 1

I get up at 5 am to double check batteries, format sd-cards and walk through todays shooting. At 6 we meet up with rider Nathalie at Svältholmen, a toung of land out in the Baltic sea. Svältholmen used to be a viking port and there is definately something supernatural about the land.

Text om Svältholmen

Images: dimmiga bilder Svältholmen. Pannlampor mm.

The Zero Day Edit

The Zero Day Edit has become super important in my projects. It’s basically me spending a few hours inthe evening of the first day of filmning. I do a rough cut of the clips from the first day of shooting.

Why is the important?

It gets the team engaged and involved in the project if they early can see what the end result can feel and look like … or not look like … Without the Zero Day Edit all they see is me running around with what looks like a sub-standard camera rig.

I’ve had team members saying “Now I feel really inspired to push harder”. I’v had mothers of subjects tear up saying that no-one has portrayed riding in this way.

So after showing the Zero Day Edit we are more glued together and works as one unit.

Workshops and late nights

Some of the days we filmed were quite long and physical. So it was really good to have some half-days where we stayed at the hotel and workshopped the feeling of the brand, filmed interviews and just created.

The whole Ryde team was gathered this week: Patrik the engineer, Jennifer the marketer, Sanna the inventor, Karin the ceo, Niklas the art director plus we were joined by a bunch of guests as well.

Military protected area

Since drone regulations has beecome stricter in Sweden the last two years I always check the aip sup, which contains information about temporary flight restrictions.

Unfortunately the week of our shooting the airspace over Tofta beach had a no-fly-zone status. The Swedish Navy was test shooting on targets just outside the beach.

But after a bit of back and fourth with the flight control at Visby airport we were allowed to fly if we kept the drone below 50 meters.