We’ve been in contact with Triumph Motorcycles America for a while now, so we were thrilled to finally get the opportunity to work together. Triumph needed video services for their upcoming collaboration with Meta Magazine — as a subscriber to Meta and a huge fan of their content, we were honored to lend our skills to this project.
Obviously, COVID-19 restrictions presented a challenge — specifically, we were limited to only two people to capture the content that we needed. Believe it or not, this actually turned out to be a blessing. Together with our good friend Ryan Handt, who was in charge of pictures, our tiny three-person production crew allowed us to create an intimate, personal atmosphere on our shooting days instead of the impersonal bustle of a huge production. COVID restrictions also meant to have to do everything on our own while wearing face shields, masks, gloves, carrying around all our gear, and holding a 20-pound camera all day. Don’t get us wrong, it was completely worth it in the end! But let’s just say we had no trouble falling asleep after a long day of shooting.
The first time the name “The Lumineers” was mentioned on a call, JP was embarrassed to admit that it didn’t ring a bell. But when he listened to “Ho Hey” after the meeting, the lightbulb finally went off — holy cow, these guys are huge! Considering their stardom, we buzzed with a mix of excitement and nerves when we met Wesley on the first shoot day. Thankfully, it turns out that Wesley is a charmingly humble and down-to-earth guy. It was more like hanging out with some moto buddies in the Catskills than being around a world-famous rock star!
Without a doubt, the highlight of the shoot was the campfire in the evening, when Wesley took out his guitar and started playing a few songs for us. This was a magical moment — it was almost difficult to focus on the camera when all we wanted to do was listen in awe.
We want to use this opportunity to thank Adam from Triumph and Ben from Meta, who graciously gave us complete creative freedom. We can’t imagine being the producer sitting at work without any idea what is happening on the production set, especially if you haven’t worked with the team before. Luckily, Adam and Ben were an absolute pleasure to work with. This hands-off approach allowed us to capture very personal moments that could never happen with 20 people on set. At the end of the day, this was unlike any other shoot we’ve ever done, and we are beyond grateful for the experience.
All in all, it was such a great collaboration. Shout out to Dale for writing a terrific article, Craig Carlsen for helping us get the perfect shot on set, and Ryan Handt for taking those incredibly good pictures. Special thanks to Wes and Simone for being so easy to work with and to Bryan Grimes, who has supported us since day one and connected the dots.
- pictures by Craig Carlsen