From prototype to the Olympics

Out of the blue, I got a call from a friend. They needed marketing and branding material for a stirrup they were prototyping. Everyone who tried it said this product would be something totally new and might go far. I said «Yes», packed my gear, got in the car, and drove off to the island of Gotland … but I had severe doubts about this.

From prototype to the Olympics

Gotland is a mythical place in Sweden.

The ferry lands in Visby harbor on a Sunday afternoon. I’m instructed to drive south to Hotel Stelor and meet with Ryde’s ceo.

I’m glad I’m here. After the initial call, the project has been on and off. My part was a no-go just a few weeks earlier.

I drive along the coast next to the Baltic Sea. The sea and the cold winters have shaped the land. Nature is rugged, harsh, and scarred. Spending time here in the summer is a walk in the park. Now, in late October, not so much.

When I arrive at Hotel Stelor, it’s closed for the season. It’s dead quiet and eerie – it feels like something out of a zombie movie. The hotel is next to Svältholmen (The Starvation islet), an ancient Viking trading ground and harbor.

Svältholmen

I can almost hear the rumble, shouts, and commotion from the ships, animals, and tradesmen by the water. I decided to walk the grounds and capture the feeling of the hotel and the area.

When the hotel opened in 2011, I designed and built their site. It was run by Karin and Björn, and I’m about to find out that the same Karin is now ceo of Ryde.

30 minutes later, Karin arrives, and I snap out of my daydream. Ryde has rented the hotel for us to use as a base for the week.

Will I manage to pull this off?

I’m stressed about this project, and I doubt I will come up with decent material.

Firstly, the amount of shooting that is planned. Secondly, the schedule is not only ambitious. It’s borderline physicaly undoable.

Filming handheld for a full day with a 7+ kg camera rig is an arm and back killer. It might not sound as much, but shooting handheld requires static poses with the rig in your hands at all times.

Get a kettlebell and hold it in front of you for a day, and you’ll get the idea.

Another challenge is mental focus. A shooting day from 07.00 to 16.00 demands concentration and stamina. It also has another 4–5 hours appended and prepended to it in the form of prep, setup, rigging, wrap out, travel, backing up, and logging material. And we have days like that planned for the whole week.

… so, just the logistics are immense. Then we have the horses. That is another story …

I’ve done about three years of horseback riding before: in the Swedish armed forces and with my daughter Vilda when she was young. I know the size, speed, and power of a 1,500-pound muscle beast with a skittish mind in a full sprint will be challenging as hell to film.

I can’t just walk or run next to it or stand on the side, whipping my camera left to right, hoping to capture cool stuff on pure luck.

So we have to come up with a lot of diy solutions to avoid the filmed material being shit.

Hotel Stelor was quiet and cosy, The perfect place for our workshops, discussions, tests, and exporations during the week. My laptop screen shines through the window. Me at my regular spot, sorting clips, searching for music and working on the first Zero Day Edit. Early selection for brand colors. Nicke running a brand workshop on Tuesday evening. Super early morning at Tofta Beach prepping a full days shooting. Protoypes, test, adjustments, prototype, more tests, and more adjustments. Here in the Ryde workshop in Norrköping. The project was really exhausting. Early mornings, late nights, hard work ... but, heck, it was fun as hell and worth every second I spent at Gotland.



Chasing a visual style that stands out

Before heading to Gotland, we talked a lot about the style of the visuals we wanted. One inspiration was the Imported from Detroit commercial Chrysler made for the Super Bowl. It’s rough, grainy, and shaky, but it captures the soul of the Motor City and the origin of Chrysler.

If Ryde brings such a visual style into the very formal, conservative, and cutesy equestrian world, it will definitely stand out, but it also risks alienating the brand.

But heck, it’s what we want, so let’s chase the reality of horseback riding: the hard work, the grit, the early mornings, and the mental stamina it takes to champion riding with your horse. But also the friendship between the rider and the horse, the community of people, and their love for this animal.

Pulling it off

Location - Svältholmen

At Svältholmen, we used a 4-wheeler, on which I sat back to back with rider Nathalies’s father, Curt, as the driver. We drove back and forth what felt like a million times. Nathalie and her horse were phenomenal. She even had to hold the horse back because it was so eager to overshoot us on the 4-wheeler.

Learn how to turn daylight to night

Filming on Svältholmen, it has a Lord of the Ring feel to it. Discussing schenes at Svältholmen

Running and gym

For the running and gym scenes, we used a golf car that Patric drove, and I hung out of the back filming Jennifer and Sanna-Marie.

Location - Mulde - terrain

On the third day, we had no access to vehicles, so shooting terrain jumping had to be done on foot.

So there was a lot of running, squatting, and whipping to get what we wanted, and since I’m fit like a fridge that was no problem at all X-|. Plus, I managed to crash the drone … never shut of the obstacle sensors if you can’t fly like a pro :-(

How to create a seamless transition

Location – Tofta Beach. A beautiful shit show.

This was the location I looked forward to the most. It’s a very scenic place in Gotland, with its almost white sand dunes and the Baltic Sea.

There is a total vehicle ban on the beach, so we had to devise other ideas to capture the horses.

My idea was to use the visual dynamics between calm drone shots and super up-close underwater footage.

Military protected area

Tofta is a military-protected area, so flying drones there is super restricted. A few weeks before Tofta, I contacted the flight tower in Visby to get clearance to fly.

When I checked the aip sup, which contains information about temporary flight restrictions, the airspace over Tofta Beach was a no-fly-zone zone. The Swedish Navy was test shooting on targets just outside the beach.

But after some back-and-forth with the flight control, I was allowed to fly if I kept the drone below 50 meters.

The beginning became a bit of a shit show from my side. The sd card in the drone malfunctioned, the A-camera refused to start, and the horses were nervous and not keen at all on getting into the water.

But after a short break and a regroup, things started to fall into place, and in the end, we got some of the week’s best material here.

A huge thanks to Hilma and Jennifer for being über patient with me.

Cleaning and checking the underwater housing Me mounting a GoPro on Hilma riding Mynta. What you see below the GoPro is the dead-man-trigger and gas canisters in the security vest Hilma was using.

The material and the Zero Day Edits

Almost every evening, I sat at the kitchen table sorting, logging, and going through material from the day. To my relief, at least 70 percent was good enough for me to pull the Zero Day Edit together; this time, I made two.

Me working on the Zero Day Edits

The Zero Day Edit is a proof-of-concept edit that I made on location. It is a rough cut of the clips from the first days of shooting.

If the team can see early on what the end result can feel and look like … or not look like—it gets them engaged and involved in the project.

Without the Zero Day Edit, all they see is me running around with what looks like a sub-standard camera rig.

At breakfast day 2 I could show the Zero Day Edit from our Svältholmen material. At dinner the evening after the Tofta shooting the second Zero Day Edit was viewable.

Trip music

There wasn’t much time to scout or go to the locations before we shot. So this time, most of my planning was done on the 6-ish hour-long drive to Gotland. That made the trip music even more important than in the Skistar project.

During the week at Gotland, it kind of became my breathing space when driving to the location.

This time, the songs on repeat were Stockholmsvy by Hannes and Den sista sången by Kent.

Wrapping up and the fantastic aftermath

So, now that some time has passed, the Ryde brand has evolved.

Gotland, the product’s origin, and the emotional triggers are not at the center stage anymore.

The brand now relies on the science behind it and the problem it solves for the riders.

Everyone who tried it said it would be completely new and that it would go far. They were right.

Today, Olympic champion Peder Fredricsson is one of the investors in Ryde, and the stirrup was used by several riders in the 2024 Olympics and the Paralympics in Paris.

The team behind Ryde.

Sanna-Marie, the inventor, 10 years ago she got the idea for the stirrup that will now be used in the Paris Olympics. Patrik, the constructor, I haven’t met a person that is more knowledgeble and focused on getting materials, details and the engineering side of the stirrup correct. Karin, the CEO, former school teacher is now running the daily operations for Ryde. She has been monumental in supporting me during the work with Ryde Jennifer, the social. Living in Jupiter, Florida, setting up events and try-outs in the epicenter of the equestrian world.

The final edit

The film’s final version is split into two parts, the first grittier and darker. The video then opens with a higher tempo in both cuts and music.