Posts
7
Joined
3/29/2018
Location
MT
US
First things first, follow @speed.police, they are the real authority on this subject.
I have seen a ton of clips on instagram recently which I believe are sped up. I'm not gonna come out and point fingers and claim I know for a fact that x or y is sped up, because honestly I don't know or have any sort of proof. I just have a suspicion and it got me thinking that there is little discussion about speed-manipulated footage in MTB.
There's plenty of space online for a) people with ridiculous bike skills and b) people who are charismatic, funny, knowledgable, or otherwise likeable and worthy of following. If someone has to speed up their videos to get people to pay attention to them online, they probably don't deserve that attention in the first place. Also, there is a lot to be said about social values if people really are speeding their shit up and getting rewarded for it.
Additionally, it seems like there is an incentive for riders to manipulate their footage now that a) riders can make money through insta/youtube/etc b) the influencer marketplace is crowded and c) riders more or less have a degree of control over the discussions which happen on these sites (note: I am referring only to rider's personal insta/youtube pages on which they can moderate the comments. Obviously once something gets on vital/pinkbike/etc this doesn't apply.)
Also, I know that videos lie and that a good editor will cut regular speed footage in a way which suggests that the rider is going faster/bigger that they really are (like a pan-and-zoom corner slap). To me, this is fine, as it is more a mark of a skilled filmer/editor than a compensation on the rider's part, as the footage they use is not actually being played at a speed faster than what the rider was going.
So vital, what do you think? How common is it for riders to speed up their footage? Are you all okay with people speeding up their clips for reasons of fame/insecurity/#freeshitbro? Should people be called out for this? Is speeding up footage the new equivalent to sandbagging?
I have seen a ton of clips on instagram recently which I believe are sped up. I'm not gonna come out and point fingers and claim I know for a fact that x or y is sped up, because honestly I don't know or have any sort of proof. I just have a suspicion and it got me thinking that there is little discussion about speed-manipulated footage in MTB.
There's plenty of space online for a) people with ridiculous bike skills and b) people who are charismatic, funny, knowledgable, or otherwise likeable and worthy of following. If someone has to speed up their videos to get people to pay attention to them online, they probably don't deserve that attention in the first place. Also, there is a lot to be said about social values if people really are speeding their shit up and getting rewarded for it.
Additionally, it seems like there is an incentive for riders to manipulate their footage now that a) riders can make money through insta/youtube/etc b) the influencer marketplace is crowded and c) riders more or less have a degree of control over the discussions which happen on these sites (note: I am referring only to rider's personal insta/youtube pages on which they can moderate the comments. Obviously once something gets on vital/pinkbike/etc this doesn't apply.)
Also, I know that videos lie and that a good editor will cut regular speed footage in a way which suggests that the rider is going faster/bigger that they really are (like a pan-and-zoom corner slap). To me, this is fine, as it is more a mark of a skilled filmer/editor than a compensation on the rider's part, as the footage they use is not actually being played at a speed faster than what the rider was going.
So vital, what do you think? How common is it for riders to speed up their footage? Are you all okay with people speeding up their clips for reasons of fame/insecurity/#freeshitbro? Should people be called out for this? Is speeding up footage the new equivalent to sandbagging?
fwiw, speeding up footage by say 10%, to try to get away with it, yields a gross, ugly, frame-jumping product. re-posts are often degraded original vids which may look faked/sped up. speeding up footage 25% or more (to keep it relatively frame-jump-free) is way too obvious that it's sped up (the dylan forbes thing?). without your examples, i can't comment on specific clips but i do know there can be issues when camera frame rate doesn't match editing timeline frame rate and you get dropped frames which can feel like sped up footage. i also know seeing what professional riders do in real life often leaves me in disbelief (gaps, lines, turn speeds etc). if i hadn't seen it in person, i might not believe it could happen.
i can see speeding up POV footage to get likes on instagram, but there's no way doing this will actually make a rider any kind of significant money or gain them new sponsorship. if you notice that a clip is fake, the people in charge of sponsorship (or even paychecks) know it too. they're not just handing out checks for insta likes.
if riders are actually making money strictly for instagram work, it's probably peanuts or product. the athletes making a living are diverse and fairly proven (via youtube, editorial, race results, in-person events etc) and not pigeon-holed to sensational instagram clips. if anything these days, it seems like the most successful social celebs (youtube) are barely semi-pro-level riders. they're enthusiasts or former racers that ride a lot, have heart, have charisma (like you mentioned) and figured out some kind of hook to get people to watch their stuff, cracking the youtube mystery box. they're not doing well because they're the fastest on the internet.
edit: yeah, speeding up is DEFINITELY lame and should be considered digital sandbagging.
Regarding your comment about camera frame rate and editing timeline, I do feel like I’ve seen a lot of edits done over the years by less professional riders/editors who may just not have as much experience as others, and their edits may appear sped up unintentionally.
I remember being a teenager (before instagram even existed) and being impressed by a semi-pro european movie (Virtuous from Ionate). And my older brother-in-law who worked in tv production told me some of the parts where sped-up, like 10-20% maybe. To me it wasn't that obvious at first, but he told me to look at the "physics" of the dust/trail debris which reacted in a very unnatural way. I remember it felt like quite a treason.
It's like some ski/snow movies where the image is extended a bit on top and at the bottom to give the impression of steeper slope. Apparently it was a common practice at some point.
Anyway, as you said there's no shortage of awesome raw(ish) talent so that sped up videos should burn in hell
But on the other side, it is not always some evil purpose. Recently a friend was editing a video and a couple parts looked quite sped-up to me, like his body was moving to fast (I looked a bit "weightless"), but he didn't. Instead he shot those rushes at 60fps and was editing the video at 30.
An other thing to account for, especially with POV footage are all the technical aspect. Stabilisation, angle, resolution, frame rate and so on can give quite a speed impression without any need to speed the video...
24-30fps
ND8 filter on the gopro
Then in post, sped up approx 3-5% for inperceivable differences to human eyes/ears, ramp it down the same amount when in the air.
Trick is to listen to the freehub sound
There are 2 "influencers" who definitely do the above, one who has gone too far and it's almost comedic now watching his stuff. I'll let you figure out who that is.
https://www.instagram.com/speed.police/
@sspomer, don't know if there's a way to embed.
https://youtu.be/tl63f0_XIXQ
(i embedded for you -spomer)
Sorry If it was cryptic. At work.
this one I'm fairly certain has the stuff @brash is talking about
this one i'm less sure about-it's cut so fast that its harder to tell but some of the corners/bike flicks just look sped up to me
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvrfd1Sl3yl/
sorry for no embed
i really have no idea either way. jkw is a NASTY rider. to speed up 10-15% seems like a bonehead move for no real benefit.
i kinda think same w/ vinny t's clip. he's hauling ass on smooth, steep, tree-lined terrain. it looks like speeder-bike action with his camera angle/set-up just right. his bike movements are bonkers but the actual terrain isn't going by at an unreasonable pace for someone of his skill.
maybe i'm too naive and trusting, but both JKW or vinny t have proven they shred w/o POV and i can't imagine they're adding or keeping followers by speeding something up 10%. they're experienced and know what trails look best on camera, so they choose them.
thoughts?
If you have to speed it up then the footage is shit! Fact!
Go through some of Vital's RAW videos and you'll see a recurring comment to the tone of "why do you guys speed this up? Its so LAME". Lol. RAW isn't sped up, and 99% of the videos people are questioning, too, aren't sped up.
A few riders might have sped things up at some point, but the big point the original poster is missing is nobody is going to reward this beyond the dopamine infested "like train" of Instagram. That's the only payoff. No company is going to go "wow, look how fast this no-name rider looks, better give him a contract and a bunch of free bikes".
Thankfully bike riding has remained a race-centric or competition-centric sport. You actually have to be good to have a paycheck. There are a handful of gnarstagram influencers getting something out of the pie, but its few and far between.
In the end, this is a zero-burger to me.
I feel like this subject is the instagram equivalent of PEDs.
Could be a glitch somewhere else. I have no idea. But yeah, something doesn't appear right at 4:02 on.
EDIT: Just watched it again, looked more normal on second take. Semi unrelated, I'm mad for even taking time to "investigate" this. Lol
"Why would Lance risk it all by doping? He wouldn't. He's an incredible rider in the first place so he doesn't need to dope, plus he's such a down-to-earth likable guy. I trust him."
People are competitive and weird, and they don't all share your values. When people can cheat, a lot of people will cheat. Not all people, but a lot of people.
BUT NO ONE WOULD CHEAT IN MOUNTAIN BIKING, WE'RE ALL JUST BROS, BRO
6:00-6:30.
And re: what spomer said about pros just being that much better. I think this is a great point, and I've never really seen a pro ride at full pace. That being said, I think that if/when a video is sped up, you tell through undulations in the trail and corners where gravity just 'looks faster', and not the all out speed of the rider.
Regardless, this thread was not made to 'call out' specific people, though I see the need for linked footage to discuss. It was made to see if sped up footage was even on other people's radar and their thoughts on it. Here on the internet we can't prove that anything is sped up, it's all just conjecture to a certain degree so a 'call out' thread would be useless.
I think, as Jeff.brines said, the vast majority of videos are not sped up, but as team robot said there are bad apples in every bunch. To me, this thread is about both how the media is consumed and how it's made. Hopefully this thread gets people thinking about evaluating the things they're shown on instafacetube for their validity/reality, and cements to any filmer reading this that speeding up footage is wack as fuck.
i said why would vinny t or jkw speed up stuff? they don't need to because they've proven themselves otherwise. sure, it doesn't rule out that they could speed stuff up, but they're not trying to build a career off of only sped up POV footage. i haven't looked at the other examples.
or
people are weird.
What you are really honing in on is something bigger, which is "how much do you trust what you hear or see". I was a lot less wise in 2007 than I am in 2019, at least I hope so. That's part of getting older. I wasn't saying people don't cheat. I was saying "who cares, nobody is going to reward this like the original poster was suggesting".
As far as you calling-me-out for being a "Lance apologist"....
Are you suggesting everything that is called out as cheating must be true? That we must disarm ourselves of any analytical capability merely because the defensive rhetoric kind-of-sort-of reminds you of what it was like to defend something when you were wrong over 12 years ago? Seems like poor logic to me.
This is nothing like the Lance situation. Lance was making real money from cheating. He is also cheating in a world where cheating is directly tied to making money. Yup, I was wrong. Yup, I took the bait, like millions of others did too. Oh well, I learned something, but that "something" isn't "everyone cheats all the time". The something was "sometimes you are right, sometimes you are wrong'
So maybe I'm wrong here, but I have a lot more reason to think I'm not, as a guy who uses GoPros to film trails and often gets done with a ride, reviews the footage and goes "holy crap, it looks like I'm going a lot faster than I am".
...I've also posted a few "viral" videos that some could aruge were sped up (yes, Tucker is that fast). Guess how many sponsors have knocked down my door after garnering some decent views on all that shit? Zero. As you are aware, nobody cares about a 30somethingyearold who can maybe eek out a top ten at some BME enduro.
So tell me again how this is like me defending Lance?
Yes, people cheat, in bikes, in their job, in their relationships...in life. I'm aware. Not saying they don't. Just saying I like to live in a world where we give people the benefit of the doubt. Where we don't get to burn someone at the stake socially before they get their day to tell their side. Where due process is a thing. Where the mob doesn't rule all.
...but that's me.
whenever i have asked a rider (granted, most often racers) if they have any kind of deal structured around likes and view counts, they laugh, like it has never come up or is a possiblity. this doesn't mean it's not how it works for some riders, however.
if i was the person that wrote a pro rider a paycheck, there is no way i'd ever trust view counts or likes alone. the systems and tallies are way too vague, the views/likes can be bought or faked too easily and popularity of content often has nothing to do with the talent, skills and personality of an athlete, but more to do with gaming some kind of algorithm to crack the "home feed" of an app. speeding up footage doesn't seem like an effective way to make that happen.filming yourself talking about building your bike for 15 minutes? now that's the secret.
Long story short if people all over are stoked on your riding it makes you more marketable. Speeding up footage is a way to help this along. It's easy for us to all say we would never do it because our careers (excluding maybe sspomer) aren't centered on content.
In the photography world, we know there is a lot of photoshoping and editing going around. Now People tend to say this about any photo that isn't "raw out of the camera", but it is widely acknowledged that photography is an art all about transmitting the vision of the photographer to the public. The camera isn't reproducing an exact picture of the reality, so a raw footage is already a "fake", and all the editing (digital or thru the chemical development for silver photography) is just a way for the artist to complete his piece. Some will use some light treatment to keep a realistic look while some will go for heavy treatment giving something like an "artsy" look.
So planning and framing the picture and all the editing/development process are all fine, but photoshoping aka modifying the subject of picture (removing a plane from the sky, the fat from a model and so one) is a lot more controversial.
I would argue that it is the same for the video, all the framing, editing, adjusting the colors, etc are all normal practice, slowing thing is also perfectly fine (although to much slow-mow will make people whine) but speeding up is a terminal crime...
Why is that ? I haven't studied the subject and all this is really a quick thought, but I tend to think that speeding up a video, just like altering the look (body shape, spots removing, etc) of a model's picture is looked at as cheating because it simply tends to make things more "perfect" and is showing you how "unperfect" you are. So yeah, i'd say there is some (un)conscious jealousy in play.
Now I know there is a lot more to it, like a big issue is that it is creating a virtual reality where people just crave to reach some unattainable goals which can lead to serious issues (like all the eating disorders "promoted" by skinny photoshoped models).
To close this, maybe a slightly sped up video, as long as it isn't really noticeable, shouldn't be a trouble to us. It don't think it will create depressions from us regular cyclist, it will probably just make us a bit envious and then make us want to ride
Post a reply to: Discussion: Sped up and manipulated MTB footage