Fun, Games, and Good Vibes All Across the West
Going on a month-long road trip across the Southwest was a serious undertaking for Tim, Colter, and their team. Things didn't always go according to plan, and despite everyone's best efforts to remain relaxed and flexible, it occasionally got tense. That said, those tense moments were more than balanced by the trip's countless moments of hilarity and serendipity. "Tim and Colter are ridiculously high energy," said TGR Cinematographer Pat Focke, one of the team's cinematographers. "Their lightheartedness about virtually everything really created the trip's awesome vibe." Classic cinematography involves deliberately constructed shots which often require numerous takes. That wasn't the case with this trip. "There were very few moments when we had to tell Tim and Colter what to do," recalled Focke. "My job was quite easy; we would just follow them around and try to keep up with the action." However, there were a few instances where the cinematographers had to convince the athletes to step out of their comfort zones. "I had the idea to get some shots of Tim and Colter hiking across the Californian desert in their full touring getups, jackets, skins, the whole deal," said Focke. "They weren't incredibly stoked about that, but it turned out perfectly."
The whole team enjoyed the finer things in life in Las Vegas. From left: Misc. Las Vegan, Tim Durtschi, Pat Focke, another misc. Las Vegan, Eric Parker, Colter Hinchliffe, Walter Wood, Ben Dann.
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Tim and Colter might have been the team's most visible members, but they'd be lost without their cinematographers. Along for the ride were five of TGR's finest: Pat Focke, Eric Parker, Walter Wood, Ben Dann, and Austin Hopkins. "A couple of us had worked together before, but it was definitely a new team," said Focke. "It was pretty much like 'Hop in this van and go make a short film.'" Spending 24 hours a day together is a great way to get to know people, so the team gelled almost immediately. "We got comfortable with each other super quickly," said Focke, "That was important because we were often stuffed into a Ranger together for hundreds of miles." We asked Focke about the trip's funniest moment—not an easy question. After some deliberation, he came up with one moment in particular: "Seeing Tim and Colter out of their comfort zone at the wave pool in Ogden was hilarious. They were taking such brutal slams that I could hardly keep the camera steady because I was laughing so hard."
