Stranger Than Fiction: Behind the Scenes of Stay Fit with Rich Hirsch

FIT Bike Co. is easily one of the most respected brands in BMX. Consistently putting out great products and boasting arguably one of the most innovative teams around, they have emerged as one of the premier companies operating today. The only piece missing for the brand was a full-length follow up to FITLIFE.

That all changed in the Winter of 2009 when brand manager Robbie Morales announced that FIT was steady on the grind with a new full-length video. The only details were that it’s title would be STAY FIT, and that it would be completed by September. With a massive online promotional campaign, STAY FIT managed to generate an unprecedented amount of anticipation.

However, 6 months before the video’s deadline, FIT still didn’t have an editor to lead the project. Eventually, they chose Rich Hirsch (Lotek Footwear / Stranger Bikes) to helm the final product, and although he has navigated countless video projects, it was clear that Rich had his work cut out for him.

Adding to the chaos, not a day after the premiere of STAY FIT, the band broke up. Robbie Morales left his position as brand manager @ FIT Bike Co. to start his new company CULT, taking with him FIT riders Chase Dehart, Dakota Roche and Chase Hawk. Regardless of the split, STAY FIT was released on DVD to positive reviews.

BMX drama aside, STAY FIT is certainly the best video FIT has ever produced and now signifies the end of an era for a progressive and diverse team. Rich managed to create a final product that reflects FIT’s brand aesthetic and yet manages to not take itself too seriously. We caught up with the man to discuss his direction and aesthetic sensibilities for STAY FIT and how he handled the massive project.
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It seemed that when you landed the project, there wasn’t much direction on STAY FIT save for a deadline.
That’s right. I hadn’t come up with an exact idea before I started making it because they had a few different people on the project at the time, Ryan Navazio being the main one. For whatever reason, they weren’t making the video anymore, and about 6 months before the video was due they handed it to me and asked me to make something out of it. I sort of took on the whole thing and just planned on finishing it somehow.

When you took up the reigns on STAY FIT, what were you looking forward to?
I was excited to see all the footage. It’s sort of hard to edit a video of other people’s footage; it’s hard enough to edit your own footage, but that’s one way this project was different. Most of the footage was from Navaz so I already knew it was going to be perfect but some of the other footage I heard was crazy. I was really excited just to be the one that got to edit all this crazy shit together.

Describe your initial ideas for direction on STAY FIT and how you shaped the style of the video.
I got to see a good chunk of clips on Robbie’s computer and I kind of knew right away this was going to be a very straight-forward riding video. The riding was already gnarly enough to where it had to be straight-forward and we were going to do it in 4:3 so it was going to be a little less artistic and more on the side of core clips. We needed to do some things to spice it up, but the initial thought was that the clips were so important because some of the things the dudes had done.

Was there anything you were apprehensive about?
Probably the music rights to tell you the truth. I had never done music clearance before Stay Fit. The idea of trying to find 14 songs that were solid and that we’d be able to clear in time, that was the thing the whole time that didn’t really feel possible. It ended up just falling together and it all worked out.

Describe your working set-up and how the footage came to you.
My shit was pretty simple. I was just on a table with the laptop and a monitor plugged in. That was it really. Just in our apartment hammering it out.

All the media came to me on drives and the filmers mailed new footage as it came in. S&M also had an ftp server set-up because they had 8 filmers shooting non-stop, so they could just load them there and I could pull them from the ftp. It was cool, I didn’t have to log any clips that was like the first time I’ve ever done that, it was really nice.

What kind of different types of media were coming at you?
The video was shot 90% with HVX’s at 720p but then there was a solid chunk of second angles and stuff that were shot with VX1000’s and a plethora of SD cameras. So just trying to mix the two and get a good looking frame rate was tricky. I had multiple formats from 1080i to 720 — even stuff that was in 4:3 SD. Also, Navaz shot a lot of film at trails and that stuff went in.

It was hard because the HD stuff looks so good and I didn’t want to bring the quality down to make the SD stuff look good, so I just experimented with the codecs and it seems like it all came out great. That’s why we did everything in 4:3, we just lost a little bit on the left and right cause that’s how they have been doing movies this whole time. It was way better than cropping for the widescreen.

What were some of the editorial setbacks that you came across?
All kinds of stuff, just like any video (laughs). We were editing the night before the premiere in Las Vegas in my hotel room, adding and subtracting shit. The biggest one on this was just getting a hold of all the footage.

The guys at S&M really made it easy for me, but even them getting it to me was a huge task. There were just so many loose ends, like the guys would have shot one clip with like Dave Parrick over the summer or something, so getting to track all that down was interesting.

And then making sure I didn’t forget any clips and bum anyone out in the process. I didn’t film the video, so I had to make sure everything was all there and nothing was missing. It all worked out, but at first, there were a few drafts where we were totally missing clips and still had a lot to track down.

What types of techniques did you use to keep the style consistent and what type of aesthetic were you trying to create?
That was the hard part, with all the different types of footage, so we had to come up ideas to keep the vibe consistent. I basically just used a lot of colored layers, film burns, and multiplied layers with composite modes so it didn’t feel too jerky. But really, it was still simple — it was riding with bold titles.

Another interesting part was dealing with the changing footage. It would change from trails footage to night footage. That’s the thing with a bike video, it’s not like you film and progress with the day. I’d have 3 clips that were completely pitch black then my next one was sunny, so I did a lot of stuff to keep the daytime footage together and then I’d keep the flow of people airing to the left. I’d continue to cut where they were airing to the left to keep a continuous feeling instead of clip clip clip.

Was there anything music-wise or film-wise that was inspiring you at the time?
I feel really disconnected, you know. I was getting into a lot of music that was in the video — it’s weird because it’s not really music I listen to, but I just like it all. I was just sort of searching through bands and bands and I kind of let the music dictate the way it was edited. We picked out the songs first and then cut the video to that.