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Somewhere down the road you will find your flow.
SynopsisSeeking fun and adventure a butcher, a surgeon, a driving instructor, an engineer, a filmmaker and a pastor left Dresden on their motorcycles in the summer of 2008. Following the group on their trip to the heart of Russia the documentary explores the universal spirit that unites motorcyclists all over the world, beyond the cliché of the outlaw biker.
Saxon humor, Russian hospitality and some of the finest orthodox monasteries provide an original scenery for this present-day quest for companionship and self-determination.
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Directed by
Stefan Kluge -
Written by
Stefan Kluge -
Produced by
Stefan Kluge - Biker's Soul Website
Written by: Stefan Kluge
Produced by: Stefan Kluge
Cast
himself: Stefan Klugehimself: Matthias Lenz
himself: Thomas Lohse
himself: Roman Bannack
himself: Christian Lenz
himself: Uwe Schleinitz
Crew
Co-Producer: Roman Bannack"funny, sharp, ironic and intelligent..." MOTORRAD (Europe's most popular Motorcycle Magazine)
"Without doubt a true insider tip!" MotorradABENTEUER
I'll try to get at a cleric involved in every future film project of mine, since our Open Source road trip documentary „Biker's Soul” has been blessed from the beginning. Let me share some production details:
Camera
I have been using the Sony PDX10P for 3 films now. It's a 1/3" chip 3CCD handycam - technically outdated, but still in use in a certain niche, last time I saw it was in Long Way Round. I can still recommend it for productions like these - it's extremely robust, tiny & handy and has a great full automatic mode, which I almost always used, since it's so reliable. Colors are good, sharpness is okay for SD and auto focus is fast and precise with some faults at extreme back light.
What I don't like anymore is SD resolution: I'm missing the sharpness, the possibility for jump cuts, keying and motion stabilisation. Another drawback is the bad low light capability - if you are gonzo filming on a trip like this there are always low light situations where you just can't pull out a video light. If you are on a tight budget and you can live with these limitations: the camera sells for under $1000 on eBay - I found it always better to buy outdated professional equipment than the newest consumer stuff for the same price.
For my next road trip documentary I'm thinking about experimenting with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Not a dedicated video camera, but I have the feeling, that you can achieve extremely interesting esthetics, that will work excellent in a gonzo style documentary.
Color Correction
I did the color correction in Adobe Premiere and all it took was a correction of the RGB curves. Maybe some saturation adjustments here and there.
My 63 minutes project file was very unstable after I put those effects on every clip. More than 20 crashes a day was quite common - I was hoping CS4 would be more stable, but I have to admit that my editing workstation is an antique 2GB Dual Core E6600. My new system is about to arrive, now that I finished the post production, how stupid is that.
After rendering I'm running every frame through a Photoshop Action as well, using the new "vibrant" adjustment to desaturate everything but the skin tones. My color correction school was this: Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction. I don't like the writing style but I learned a lot.
Editing
I like Adobe Premiere. Quite unstable when you max out your system, but it perfectly fits my workflow: SD capture here, HD capture there, this codec here, that codec there, drag in some internet files, edit in photoshop and throw it back in a second, create some minor animations - it always works the way you expect it. I'll stick to Premiere.
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Director
Stefan Kluge

Germany