Red River Gorge Adventure Race Film Production of the Rough Trail 50k

Early in 2020, we were contacted to help produce an exciting, high quality short film to highlight the Red River Gorge Ultra, a 50k along the Rough Trail, to use for marketing this and other future races hosted by this particular company. After a year of event cancellations pushed this back, we finally were able to create this awesome promotional film in December of 2021.

When planning this film shoot, I knew right away that we’d need a team of camera operators positioned in different places around the Red River Gorge, at different points along the trail, in order to capture the diversity of scenery and content we would need. Our goal was to show off the trail and it’s ruggedness, just as much as the runners themselves. After a few client meetings and reviewing maps of the running route, we settled on a handful of different places on the trail that would provide what we needed. This included Auxier Ridge, a beautiful and open-sky ridgeline with stunning panoramic views, as our first major filming area. The second place would be the creek area along Rough Trail, just down from the Chimney Top Road trailhead, where a serene creek flowed between large boulders and mossy trees. Our third spot was a location I personally had not been too before, which was a few miles out along Rush Ridge, then down into a rocky gully below a large rock overhang. We decided that these locations combined with the start of the race and some post-interviews would provide everything we needed for a great promotional video.

Coordinating a crew of 3 to be in specific places at specific times was tricky logistically. Mapping routes and estimating the time it would take to hike to these locations, along with estimating what time the runners would be passing by, meant some scouting was in order. I personally did several scouting hikes to the different filming areas, which not only gave me insightful information on the approach distance, but I was able to shoot some reference still photos and share those with the crew.

With a plan in place, we executed on the day of the event and thankfully had amazing weather and the runners had perfect conditions. The editing was easy as we had plenty of great trail shots to choose from; the harder part was having to leave so many good visuals on the cutting room floor since we had a target of about two minutes for the completed video! Being at the event and looking back on the video makes me want to sign up for one of these, so I think the video is doing its job!!