CASE STUDY EASY RIDER
ON THE ROAD
EASY RIDER REBORN It was a dream job: the chance for photographer and filmmaker Richard Bradbury to retrace the steps of the anti-heroes fromEasy Rider and to take to a Harley-Davidson for the ultimate road trip
WORDS AND IMAGES RICHARD BRADBURY
T he year 1969 was a big one for the US arts scene. Andy Warhol’s factory churned out multiple soup tins, and The Rolling Stones arrived with what would be named the ‘world’s first mythical rock tour’. The first draft of US troops to fight the Vietnamwar were crying out for a cinematic backdrop. The sterile consumerismof the fifties celebrated the middle-agedmarried couple, but Easy Rider , released in July 1969, made it cool to be young, free and rebellious. Even if their parents didn’t approve, every teenage girl in America wanted to hang out with a badass biker gang.
Starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, (long before they became global superstars), Easy Rider tells the tale of two Harley-Davidson-riding anti-heroes doing a one-off drug deal in LA. They ride across the states to spend their earnings in New Orleans but, let’s face it, I don’t need to tell you that, because I know you’ve seen the movie. It’s the Eleanor Rigby of the film world: you’re not sure when you first saw it, but you just know all the words. It’s part of every movie lover’s DNA. Easy Rider has become a rite of passage for every cool teenage boy (and quite a few teenage girls) in the English-speaking world.
RIGHT With a remit to celebrate the 50th
anniversary of the classic film Easy Rider, the shoot became a glorious road trip
This year marks the film’s 50th anniversary, so Harley-Davidson, in partnership with the US Tourist Board, contactedmotoring writer Jeremy Taylor andmyself to ask us if we’d like to re-enact the road trip (minus the narcotics). It took us the best part of five or ten seconds to say, ‘Yes, please!’ There were, however, a few issues to deal with. First, we could only find one free week in our calendars that coincided. We had to do the trip early last December and we could only reasonably do half the journey fromLA to Phoenix. Also, we wanted the trip to be for real, just like in the movie, so no support vehicles allowed. Packing gear Pete, Dennis and Jack didn’t need to carry camera kit to shoot stills and video along the way, so they could travel light. We, on the other hand, needed to think carefully about howmuch we could take with us. Our gear needed to be light and small enough to fit in the panniers of a Harley, but powerful enough to offer 4K video and advertising- quality stills. My brand of location stills involves off-camera flash for a rich, dramatic effect and we wanted to get plenty of high-end video for PR and promotional purposes. I like a challenge and I was determined to have a ‘no compromise’ kit to shoot full-frame stills and 4K video that I could carry on a motorcycle.
“I was determined to have a ‘no compromise’ kit to shoot 4K that I could carry on amotorcycle”
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PRO MOVIEMAKER SUMMER 2019
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