OverDrive Media Group

We've finally fnished shooting for our two mountain biking-themed short videos in Verbier, Switzerland for the 2010 season - First Hand and Project GAMMA. We've collected over 30GB of raw footage over the last three weeks, including scenic clips from over 8 different cities. Editing for Project GAMMA will begin in a few days and is set for release shortly, whilst First Hand will be edited and released late August - early September. Both projects will be released to the web on PinkBike, Vimeo, YouTube, and on the OverDrive site.

Over the past few days we've been hard at work producing Project GAMMA with young local rider Alain Bruchez on the beautiful plateu of Verbier in South-West Switzerland. Our first and second shoots for the 4-minute project were completed on Thursday and Saturday respectively, and the third and final shoot is planned for Monday July 19th. Project GAMMA will be released in mid-August shortly before the release of our second mountain biking-themed project for 2010, named First Hand. Below are a few screenshots from the first shoot taked directly from the raw camera files.

We just wrapped up our first day of shooting in Verbier, but the weather doesn't seem to want to cooperate (set to improve over the weekend however). Shooting for First Hand is in progress, and the final preperations are being made for Project GAMMA, which will begin shooting in 2 weeks.

We're also promoting our 2010 advertising package to local businesses between shoots, and our OverDrive Crew shirts are on the way which will be a cool and inexpensive way to generate some brand recognition whilst we work around the village and on the mountain.

Attached is a screenshot of one of our clips from today for you viewing pleasure.

OverDrive Media Group celebrated its 1st anniversary on the 12th June this year, and we decided it was the right time to restructure OverDrive slightly and redefine our goals. Among the changes include a minor website overhaul, the purchase of a new camera, our new environmental policy, and a new set of targets and focus in the industry.

Redefined Industry Focus & Targets

We decided to redesign our industry focus and update our targets for the coming season, which will see OverDrive moving in a slightly different direction. Instead of focusing specificially on mountain biking cinematography, we've decided to target the action sport industry as a whole, although our main focus will remain on mountain biking with the addition of skiing / snowboarding and wakeboarding.

The largest change to OverDrive this season is the launch of our corporate / commercial sector. We will be available for paid corporate and commercial shoots for businesses in Europe and Asia starting from August 2010, for the production of  advertisements, event documentaries, and other relevant media.

Minor Website Overhaul

Some minor changes to our website have been made, including retouches to the Projects page, a collection of new rotating backgrounds, new profile pages, and an updated Production Equipment section. In addition, from now on our blog entries will be much more media-rich with the addition of pictures and video, and we will be sharing more information during the shooting of our projects.

Environmental Policy

Mountain biking, skiing, wakeboarding, and so many other sports are dependant on a clean and safe environment, and as a company based on documenting these sports the care of the environment is of particular importance to us. For the 2010 season, we've decided to plege to do our part to minimise our impact on the environment, starting with small things such as making sure we leave no trash behind after a shoot and travelling to locations in the cleanest way possible. Over time, our goal is to become an entirely carbon neutral organisation.

New Camera Purchase

The recent purchase of our new camera, a Sony HXR-NX5P, gives us more creative freedom during the shooting process and enables us to use multiple cameras for more complex shoots. The addition of the NX5 to our arsenal enables us to better convey our ideas by reducing the technical limitations of our equipment, which ultimately translates to more creative and entertaining videos.

We're confident that these changes for the 2010 season will see OverDrive progressing to new heights, and we hope you're all looking forward to another year of entertaining video content from us!

We've been planning for our 2010 summer projects over the last month, which together will make up the bulk of our shooting for this year. Project GAMMA will be the main project for 2010, and will showcase some of Verbier's young up-and-coming riders as well as the riding and scenery that the village has to offer. Project GAMMA will be released around August, following production mid-July.

In addition, we will be releasing The Melting Point, a short video based on a mix between two sports in early August, and depending on our shooting schedule for paid projects, Felix may be producing another self-filmed video for release in September.

Our final project for the year will be our 2010 Demo Reel, featuring all the best shots from the 2010 and 2009 seasons. This year's Demo Reel will be released in October.

We're almost done shooting for the first half of The Melting Point in Verbier, Switzerland - announced today as the official name for Project BETA. The name itself is a good indicator as to which two sports will be featured in the video, which will be released mid-August after filming of the second segment. We'll be releasing a few screenshots closer to the release date, and more information about our summer 2010 projects will be released shorly.

We're just finishing the plans for Project BETA, a short video to be shot in Verbier, Switzerland this year. We will be heading off to Verbier in late March to shoot part of the video, and the remaining pieces will be shot in July, ready for final release early August. Project BETA will involve a mix between two different action sports and will be self-filmed by Felix.

Project ALPHA, originally intended to showcase the riding in Singapore, has currently been cancelled due to trail issues. There is no scheduled replacement as of yet to be released at the same time as ALPHA, but we may have the opporutnity to work on another project during the summer in a new location. Leading up to the release of Project BETA, which is still many months away, we will be working on building the OverDrive brand and further planning and improve our existing planned projects for the season.

Just over two weeks ago we completed most of the scenic shots for Project BETA in Verbier, Switzerland, and we will be returning to Verbier in March and in July this year to complete the action shots. Project BETA is based on a mix of two different sports (which we won't mention just yet) and will be a short, sharp self-filmed video by Felix with plenty of cool editing and good cinematography.

We've also been scouting for riding locations for our Project ALPHA shoot in Singapore. Shooting will begin sometime within the next few weeks, and Felix has enlisted the help of a friend to help with the filming for the project. Project ALPHA is scheduled for release around mid-April.

We'll keep updating this page perodically so please check back or subscribe to our RSS feed for the latest news!

On behalf of the OverDrive Media Group team, we would like to wish you a happy 2010! Not only is it a new year, but the start of a new decade, and we hope that the new year will be a great one for both you and the sport of mountain biking in general - we know it will be for us! OverDrive will be stepping things up a notch in our second season of producing videos, which we hope you'll enjoy watching more than ever!

Thank you,

Felix van Oost

This morning we finally purchased our membership to Vimeo Plus. We are OverDrive will be using Vimeo more and more as a platform to share our projects. So what does the new membership mean for you? It means that you can now view our videos directly from the Projects page, in HD! The embedded player is now larger than ever for a better viewer experience. You are now also able to download a 720p HD version of each of our videos directly on the Vimeo website, and if you have a Vimeo account you can add us as a contact and comment on our work. In addition to this, you can subscribe to our RSS feed on the Vimeo website, meaning when we release a new project, you'll know about it in seconds, even on your phone! This is only a taste of what is to come, and we will be rolling out more features over the coming weeks.

So visit the official OverDrive Media Group profile on Vimeo:

http://www.vimeo.com/odmg

The 2009 riding season has officially ended for OverDrive, and it's been quite an eventful one. This was the first season OverDrive has been in existance - it was only in early June that I created OverDrive Media Group at the age of 15. In the 6 months that OverDrive has been running, we're released 3 videos (one of which was nominated Video Of The Day on PinkBike, the world's largest MTB website), created a website which is ever-increasing in popularity, and have plans for many new projects in 2010.

It all started in February 2008, when I met Vivian Viljoen. Myself and Vivian were the only two people riding downhill at school, and being classmates we had plenty of time to talk about mountain biking. In February one of us casually threw around the idea of making a video together, and after days of brainstorming we finally came up with a name - 2WO FO4R ZER0, which stands for 2 Riders, 4 Locations, and Zero gravity. That summer, in July, we went to film for a week in Verbier, Switzerland as my family have a residence there, we we had plans to shoot in 3 other locations in Germany. However, the project stalled shortly after shooting in Switzerland due to exams at school, and we only resumed work on 2WO FO4R ZER0 in April 2009. About a month before we had planned to film at the other 3 locations, Vivian has some bad news to share. He had just found out that he was moving back to his home country of South Africa - in 4 days' time. We frantically got back to work and filmed the Hamburg, Germant segment (one of the local spots) literally hours before Vivian had to pack his bike up for the move. Vivian's early departure meant that we never managed to film in the other 2 planned locations, so we had to leave 2WO FO4R ZER0 as it was. Editing the thing took me almost 3 weeks, as I had never edited a video in my life before. It was finally released late May this year, just over 10 months after we started filming. In the end, 2WO FO4R ZER0 was never really a success, but nevertheless we were proud of what we managed to achieve. What 2WO FO4R ZER0 did do was show us how much fun we could have filming, riding, and editing a movie together. I decided that I would persue this new hobby and make more videos in the future, so I created OverDrive Media Group as a name to go by for my future videos.

Fast forward a few months and OverDrive had released two more videos: Felix van Oost - Riding 2009 and the 2009 Demo Reel. Felix van Oost - Riding 2009 was a self-filmed video I made, which took me 6 full days of filming and 10 hours of editing to complete. It was released in August 2009, and turned out much better overall than 2WO FO4R ZER0 as I had learned from a lot of the mistakes we made in our first video. By this time OverDrive Media Group started gaining popularity, and in October we released our 2009 Demo Reel, which was a compilation of the best shots from both 2WO FO4R ZER0 and Felix van Oost - Riding 2009, with some previously unseen footage thrown in. On the 26th November, the 2009 Demo Reel was nominated as Video Of The Day on PinkBike.com, the largest MTB website in the world, and it had been watched over 17,000 times over a period of 24 hours - a very positive note to end the season on.

I think that the unique thing about OverDrive is our age - because of this our point of view on the sport of mountain biking is different to anyone elses' so we have unique stories to tell, and this is what I believe will make our future videos entertaining to watch. I'd just like to take a moment to thank all the people that have supported us and our work, without which our videos would never be what they are today. We hope 2010 will allow us to step up a notch with our videos, and we can't wait for the new season to begin!

Felix van Oost

Our 2009 Demo Reel was today featured as Video Of The Day on the largest biking website in the world, PinkBike. The video currently has had over 14,000 views and 200 favourites, and our website traffic has dramatically increased. Thank you to all those who have given us positive feedback, and we can't wait to start our 2010 season projects!

2009 Demo Reel on PinkBike

The guys over at Distilled Magazine agreed to run an article on OverDrive Media Group on their website, talking about our first year of filming in the MTB industry. The article is currently on the front page of the Distilled website, so go to http://www.distilledmag.com to check it out! A big thanks to the guys over at Distilled for their help! 

Our first Demo Reel, featuring the best footage from 2009, is now available on the following websites (please click on the links to be redirected to the appropriate pages):

YouTube

Vimeo

PinkBike 

Alternatively you can also watch our new video on the Media page. Please comment to helps us continually improve our videos and show your support!

Very recently, a new website designed specifically for mountain bike-related videos was launched, called Watch26. Watch26 features a great layout, and a larger player than most other websites (meaning bigger videos and a better viewing experience) with a cool slow motion feature. We've created an account on Watch26 under the name of OverDriveMedia and all our videos have now been uploaded. Check it out at www.watch26.tv

We've just finished redesigning our Projects page, which now makes it easier to view both our up-and-coming / current projects, as well as our completed projects. In addition to that, the new page provides much more information about the projects, including the people involved, production and release dates, a synopsis, and links to websites on which the videos are uploaded. You can now also watch the videos in high quality directly on the Projects page.

Click here to check the new page out!

We finally managed to upload 'Felix van Oost - Riding 2009' to PinkBike (the site which generates the most exposure), and it can now be viewed here.

We've been trying hard over the last 2 weeks to get our latest video (Felix van Oost - Riding 2009) uploaded onto the internet. Although the video is currently available on YouTube and Vimeo, it has failed to upload to PinkBike and Facebook. This is due to an internet problem we are currently having (we recently moved to Singapore and do not have cabled internet yet) which does not allow us to upload large files such as videos. We are hopeful that we will have cable internet by the end of August, after which we will upload the video on PinkBike and Facebook as soon as possible for your viewing pleasure. We apologize for the inconvinience caused.