Maci and Bentley of hit show "Teen Mom" ride BMX bikes with Pro Terry Adams

Fun project I worked on! Shot w/ 5DII, GoPro3 and edited in FCPX

Heres the description from Youtube:

Last month I headed to Chattanooga, TN to ride with 4 year old Bentley Edwards. If you have ever seen the MTV show Teen Mom then you might recognize this little guy. I heard that Bentley was into riding bikes so I made some plans to go ride and keep the little dude motivated. Pedaling around with him made me realize the reasons I started riding. Plain and simple. It was fun.. Check out this rad edit from my day with riding with Bentley. Enjoy!

I enjoyed this. An effective succinct piece with a beginning, middle & end, making a complete story. That may sound elementary to mention, but many miss it in their work. Your ending merely a brief tidy wrap-up, so really the middle is where everything shines; the darling child, the spectacular stunts, accompanied by your absolutely perfect music & stellar slowmo. The lad's tumble was a dramatic way to begin that section, but I'm glad you didn't shy away from including it. Relieved, of course, he wasn't hurt. I also liked the way you didn't give much screen-time to mom, she's mostly in the background supportively out of focus, while the closeups go to the boy. This is really about him & his big day, his rare opportunity to ride with the big boys. This is summed up better than any actor or script could, by the close-up of his face watching you spin your magic.

If there was any section that could be trimmed just a tad, it'd probably be act one. Just tighten up that intro & travel time by a few seconds here & there.

Great job, thanks for sharing.

Works for me, wouldn't change a thing.

That aside, I personally know Micky. He's a life long member of our local FCP users group in New Orleans. Extremely talented young man.

Very good emotional content, with Terry showing such support and mentorship (for lack of better word) to a young kid like that. BTW, is mom single?

Loved the shot from the kids handlebars. What that a GoPro?

What camera & technique did you use for the travel timelapse shots?

Great shot of Terry doing that jump & spin above the camera. How's you physically set that up?

Thank you guys so much for the great feedback!

I’m really glad you enjoyed the “story” TrixTrax because this was a very tough shoot and on the drive back I was really concerned if we had enough material shot.
We barely had 2hrs shooting time with them. Maci was very generous with her and Bentleys time but this was a very cold/rainy day so I didn’t want to push it and risk getting Bentley sick, his hands were freezing and I could tell he was having a very rough time. As I’m sure most of you can imagine it is always difficult to film children especially in an extreme run-n-gun situation but Bentley was a real pro in front the camera so this made life easier.

But all of this led to me deciding to do that last “wrap-up” interview and I think it paid off.

Loved the shot from the kids handlebars. What that a GoPro?

Yes that was a GoPro mounted on his handlebars and facing him.

What camera & technique did you use for the travel timelapse shots?

All time-lapse's were shot with the GoPro as well, I can’t remember the exact settings but I think the driving time-lapse was set to take a photo every 4-5 seconds and all the others were set to like 7 or 8 second intervals.
All the other shots in the “travel” segment were done with my 5D and then just sped up. I didn’t get a great shot of a Chattanooga sign so I had to slow down that shot you see using optical flow. That shot happened so fast, I can’t believe how well it slowed down!

Great shot of Terry doing that jump & spin above the camera. How's you physically set that up?

Yes I love the way that shot came out, thanks. Anyway I just put the GoPro on the ground facing up and told terry exactly where to jump. This was done with the Hero3 at 120fps. I also watched framing on my iPhone with the Hero3’s built-in network capabilities. There is like a 3-4 second delay but its fine for framing and setting up a shot.

And no Ben I don’t think she’s single lol

Again thanks for the great feedback!!