On June 2nd, we released our first big passion project, THE NOMAD, to a sold out showing at The Globe Cinema (RIP) in Calgary, Alberta.
We can't thank everyone that came out to support enough for showing up to party and enjoy the film.
Don't even get us started on the afterparty!
For years, we'd chat with one another on the trail and while deleting beers, and thought we could probably make a movie if we tried hard enough, but never found the time in our busy lives to get it done.
Luckily for us, Austen is a mad man and jumped in with two feet to kickstart the project in 2022. He booked a $H1T ton of vacation with his banked overtime and we scrounged up possibly the smallest budget ever for an action sports film to get it going.
In recent years, we've been seriously unimpressed by bike movies.
Everything is about trends. We get that TikTok and Instagram reels have brainwashed people, hijacked our attention, and given us the attention span of a gnat, but we wanted to prove that you can still kill the old way.
We brushed up on our bike movie knowledge, watching all of the NWD films, Life Cycles, Follow Me, and the rest of the movies that got us fired up to ride in the past.
The goal was to show the industry that freeride is in fact, alive and well. Mountain biking isn't just chasing strava times and buying the newest shiniest parts to show off to your bike pals in the shuttle parking lot.
There's also this weird fixation on Whistler, Squamish and the surrounding area. For some reason, the incredible riding within a few hours or a day of driving never gets love by big mountain bike media.
After coming to that realization, the goal was simple.
We wanted to create a mountain bike film on a shoe-string budget that was entertaining, had a minimal amount of BS, a metric f**k ton of hammers, showcased the other world-class riding areas that exist, celebrate the community and how amazing it is, make people want to ride bikes until their legs fall off, and laugh along the way.
THE NOMAD is a celebration of our struggles, the steep learning curve we faced to make a movie, and all of us maxing out our line of credit to get it done and legal.
If you want to watch the film, you can check it out here:
We feel it's a nod to what we see biking to be and to the future we are trying to create in the sport.
It would mean the world to us if you'd take a moment to watch and support.
In closing, we learned a lot making the film. There's a reason why film studios have multi-million dollar budgets and doing it on weekends is a surefire way to drive yourself insane.
We've sharpened our tools, upgraded the equipment, and we're ready to get hurt again. Stay tuned and be sure to follow along with the behind the scenes action of us creating our next film STRAIN.
Until then, keep on rockin' in the free world.
Stay deadly.
-Joey