Monte Sano Trail Ride Quick Time Movie (17 mb) or small file version Monte Sano QT Movie (9.7 mb) Click "SAVE TARGET AS" to download and view at your convenience or just click on it and wait for it to play in your player. Submitted by Jason Worley of Scottsboro and Jose Matienzo of Huntsville (click on photos for large image).

Making The Movie

Making of the Monte Sano Trails video
By: Jason Worley

In May 2004, I had the idea of putting together a video of the Mountain bike trails on Monte Sano Mtn. in Huntsville. I wanted to have a way to look back on my rides as they happened. We all know how our riding stories evolve over time. I also wanted to be able to see the trails when I could not actually get out & ride.

Since I had no idea where to start with my project, I sent out an e-mail to the Spring City Cycling Club - Dirt message board. I got back a wealth of knowledge on the subject, but still didn't have the equipment I needed to put the whole thing together.

Enter Jose' Matienzo. He offered to bring his digital video camera & shoot whatever I wanted. Jose' even offered to fully edit the whole thing, including adding the awesome soundtrack. Off we went with a camera & a vision……

The video is (in order) a mix of:

1. The short technical trail at the end of the paved cabins road
   
2. Family Trail on top of the mtn. (fast),
   
3. The beginning of Mountain Mist
   
4. The trail that goes from the woodpile near the cabins down to Mountain Mist
   
5. Goat trail
   

I had a great time making the video, especially since all I had to do was ride around while Jose' filmed. J Watch for more Monte Sano videos to come. As soon as I have a helmet camera, I am going to put together videos for every trail on Monte Sano. I will try to put together a video that shows them all in one.

Happy Trails, J

Jason Worley

Technical Aspects of The Movie

Technical Monte Sano Trails video
By: Jose' Matienzo

The MS Trail video was shot on location (of course) on two separate Wednesday afternoons. It all started as a quick email exchange about making a similar clip as those of the B'ham trails. I've been wanting to do the same exact thing - so we quickly agreed to shoot. Two days later we filmed and then again the following week for a total of about three hours (less than 20 minutes of actual footage).

I shot using a ($340) Sharp digital camcorder and then dumped the footage to my laptop and did about 20 minutes of editing - which was basically throwing out the start and end of most scenes. I used IMovie on the Mac (soooo easy) and added cross dissolves, titles, transitions, and of course music. I doubled the speed and the results are OK - I wish that I could play it at 1.5 times - but do not have that option. The music goes well with the speed - it's from the movie "Snatch".

Jason was great! We exchanged ideas about what we wanted, created a mental story board, and we went at it. Pretty simple. I did the easy part - he's the one that had to ride over and over. The hardest part for me was shooting with one hand as we rode through the top trails. We didn't have a helmet cam - so that was the only way to get the rider's view...

Jose