Danny MacAskill Is the Bike Video King
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@danny_macaskill
Six years ago, Danny MacAskill was working in a bike shop in Edinburgh, Scotland. In his spare time, he practiced tricks on his trials bike, something he'd been doing since he was 11. During that span he'd made just one video of significance, an edit that he says, "kind of went viral on Myspace."
Then MacAskill's riding buddy Dave Sowerby (also an ace videographer) busted his leg. Forced off the bike, Sowerby offered to shoot another video with MacAskill. The rest, as they say, is history.
Powered by MacAskill's jaw-dropping ability to ride his bike up, down, on, and over all manner of objects, and backed by a mesmerizing song by Band of Horses, the Inspired Bicycles video spread across the Internet, racking up 350,000 views in its first 40 hours. It's since exceeded 36 million. Subsequent videos starring MacAskill have enjoyed similar success.
RELATED: Watch: Danny MacAskill Jumps a Cow
"I never imagined this," admits MacAskill, now 29, who is arguably the world's best-known bike rider. "I was just trying to make a credible street-trials video. The only opinions I cared about were from the local trials community."
Today, he earns a handsome salary making several videos a year for sponsors that include Red Bull, GoPro, POC, and EVOC. His notoriety transcends his sport.
"Fame is a strange thing," MacAskill says. "It didn't really hit me until I started meeting people from all over the world who had watched the videos, and that brought it home. I'm incredibly lucky."
Danny's Video Tips
Get the right perspective. Keep the camera horizontal, and think about angles and scale.
Tell a story. Build in a theme and try to present a sense of being on a journey. If you can include some kind of story in the video it will make it a lot more fun to watch.
Choose a soundtrack. Find music that feels right for you and the video you are making.
Be perfect—at least once. I may try a trick a hundred times and land it only once or twice until I get it right. You have to make sure the riding is something you are 100 percent happy with.
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