Why Gran Canaria?
I wanted somewhere that would be nice and sunny, as the weather in Scotland has not been that good. Also somewhere nice and colorful that works really well on camera. We needed to find all this with nice, flat roofs, so I could ride atop of them and do gaps between the buildings. I spent a week just for scouting in Las Palmas before we started filming. We must have been on top of over 40 different buildings and out of these 40 buildings we found maybe 15 locations that we could do actually some riding on, because they had to have a start and an end point on them.
Did you get in trouble with any of the locals?
Not at all. Generally the locals in Las Palmas were really welcoming. We went knocking on the doors asking if we could get up on top of the rooftops, they were very welcoming and next thing would be I had to bring my bike up there. I think it would have been very difficult to do that anywhere else in the world.
How long did the shooting take?
We filmed for two weeks altogether in Gran Canaria and it was just enough time. We didn’t have the best weather when we were there, but that’s always the risk in shooting outdoors. But still, we were lucky; even when there were huge thunderclouds, you could usually see blue sky. We managed to make it look like sunny weather all the time.
What’s the most technical trick in the video?
Probably the end shot. We started on top of the hill and I tried to think of something good to end the film – what we call the banger of the video. So we built this scaffolding structure in El Roque where I come down off the scaffolding and do a big frontflip into the ocean. I originally planned to do it from the very top of the building which would have been like a 28-meter drop and then discard my bike before falling into the sea. But the sea wasn’t deep enough at that point and we ended up moving it down a bit, which meant I could stand on my bike – it looked pretty cool. We only had the scaffolding for one day, so the pressure to do it was quite high.
How many takes did you need for that shot?
The El Roque drop was really just one take. It was at the very end of the day and we were losing light fast, so I’m really pleased it worked out. I slightly over rotated the frontflip and land face first, but it makes for a good shot on the P.O.V. clip (laughs).
You didn’t injure yourself?
No. I am not particularly scared of water. I’ve done a lot of different silly things into water in the past so compared to the idea of falling off a building onto the concrete this was totally fine. Or at least I thought that. In the end it took me a little bit of time to get myself together to go off the edge. But the water was warm; it just took me a while to get out of it.
-end-
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