As you will have hopefully known, ShaFF took place last weekend. With Monkeyspoon having a short film being shown, entitled “Downhill Mountain Biking In The Peak District“. The film showcased some of our best downhill riding in the Peak District. It was shown as part of three compilations, shown twice on Saturday and once on Sunday. In the “Bike” compilation, which we went to see, it was shown alongside such classic mountain bike movies as “Between The Tape” and “NWD 8”. It was a funny thing seeing our riding being shown on such a large screen, alongside other movies that I really respect and have inspired me to ride my bike. I can only hope that our movie will have inspired others to get out and ride there bikes in the Peak District.

James Irwin – Main Rider and Owner of Monkeyspoon

I very pleased to have our film shown on a massive cinema screen in front of what was quite a few people. I was amazed how good quality it looked on the huge screen, considering it (and the other films, as far as I know) were only DVD quality. I though the editors did a good job with choosing what to sections of the longer films to show. In particular Between The Tape, its quite long if you’ve seen it once or twice, but the edit keep the best sections, mainly the WC rounds, it was a comfortable length, and there was also quite a lot of Peaty in it, which added a local connection and relevance.

The one film I hadn’t seen before was “Vicious Circle” was interesting. It didn’t seem to have such a big budget or be as well equipped as some the big names on shown, but there were some good sections made more interesting by the choice of music. It was quite different from most MTB films with older but well known tracks like “Jolene” by Dolley Parton and “Poison” by Alice Cooper, they worked surprisingly well (for me) with the footage and made for something a little different from the norm.

It was great to see the trailer for the new Collective film, Seasons, it looks even better on a cinema screen. It would also have been nice to see the Virtuous (in HD) and F1rst (new from Clay Porter) trailers, perhaps in between the longer features.

Anyway, well worth going to see it and I’ll try and do something even better for next years one. I’ll leave you with a piece of advice in case you ever find yourself having your film shown at a big event, don’t drink a pint of coke before you go in…

Jeff R King – Cameraman, Editor and Film Producer.

Also worth mentioning are the guys from DHP, Joe and Sam, who also contributed to the film but couldn’t be there as they were at a race. And thanks to the other riders involved.

If you went to ShAFF don’t forget to fill out a feedback form, you might win something. It will be available to the end of the month (31/3/08).

See you there next year! 😀

A medium quality version of the film is now available for download, it is 90MB and you may need the 3ivX codec do view it.