Wow, so much has happened here at Fraktiv HQ since the last blog update.

I guess the biggest news has been our inability to tear ourselves away from our new in-house production arm – geebeebee media – and our fantastic Sony NEX-FS700 camera, which has kept us so busy that we’ve hugely neglected this blog! So, without going into huge amounts of detail, here’s the lowdown on geebeebee since our Canon 7D test project, shot at the Gravity Project in May:

  • April 2012: Sony announced the NEX-FS700 at NAB, getting us quite excited, despite us just investing in a Canon 7D
  • May 2012: we filmed a series of events at cycling venue, the Bull Track, on our trusty Canon 7D, with the released series of films achieving great reviews
  • June 2012: we launched a marketing campaign across social media platforms and bike-specific websites and forums (full list below), to raise our profile
  • June 2012: we planned a two week filming trip to Chatel, France, to test out camera equipment, in order to build material for a portfolio. We also shot a short test commercial for Canadian mountain bike brand, Cove Bikes
  • June 2012: after lengthy discussions, Sony UK delivered to us one of only two European-spec prototype FS700 cameras in existence, allowing us to use the camera for 3 weeks for our trip to Chatel (even UK broadcast firms only got a day or two at a time), so we were incredibly fortunate
  • July 2012: we commenced two weeks of mountain bike-related filming in the French Alps, based around the Chatel and Morzine areas. After a few days of acclimatising to the new camera, we filmed the annual FMB Chatel Mountain Style, filmed with a Scott Bikes freeride team and with a Transition Bikes professional rider over the course of a few days, as well as shooting test material for Sony UK
  • August 2012: mostly editing…
  • September 2012: we planned, shot and edited a doc/behind-the-scenes video in aid of a Help for Heroes fundraiser
  • October 2012…so far: we’ve edited our final feature from our summer trip to France; a short film featuring professional Transition Bikes rider, Nick Simcik, in advance of his entry as a Red Bull Rampage 2012 competitor…and October has several projects in store for us still!

In all, geebeebee has produced 20 short films in the 6½ months since we launched in April 2012, and across our social media outlets, we’re racked up over 125,000 views of our films. The rest of 2012 is continuing to look busy, as is 2013, so stay tuned for more, and if you haven’t followed us yet…where have you been?

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/geebeebeemedia
Twitter: @gbb_farah and @fraktiv
Pinkbike: http://geebeebee.pinkbike.com
VitalMTB: http://www.vitalmtb.com/community/geebeebee,15281/all
MPORA: http://www.mpora.com/users/geebeebee
Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/geebeebee
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/geebeebeemedia
geebeebee.com: http://www.geebeebee.com

What, no mention of Fraktiv? Oh yeah, we’ve been super busy here too, but I’ll save that for another post…