The Dirt Diaries and Deep Summer are, like the rest of Crankworx Whistler, definitely for the bike-minded — but anyone who loves good filming and photography will enjoy the popular events.
The annual mountain bike festival lands in the village like a sweet jump on a downhill ride on Friday, Aug. 7. It runs until Sunday, Aug. 16.
This year, the video competition Dirt Diaries takes six riders with a Whistler connection and lets them capture the essence of their pedal passions on camera.
Teams led by Yoann Barelli, Sarah Leishman, Jesse Melamed, Rémy Métallier, Kyle Norbraten and Charlie Sponsel compete for a first prize of $5,000. Second gets $3,000 and third place receives $2,000.
"Each team comes up with a concept that is three to six minutes long. They try to make it entertaining; people go in different directions with it. Some people go with humour, some go with straight-out action, others have a more documentary format. That's the excitement of it," says Seb Kemp of Crankworx.
The six resulting films will be shown in front of an audience at Whistler Olympic Plaza on Tuesday, Aug. 11 at 7:45 p.m. Tickets are $7 for those in the seated section. There is no charge to those sitting further back in the plaza.
"This year is interesting. Some of the six are very experienced film riders. They've done a lot of film work as professional athletes. Others not so much but I feel they have the potential to do something really entertaining," Kemp says.
The videos will be made available on the Crankworx website afterwards (www.crankworx.com).
Meanwhile, the Deep Summer Photo Challenge runs the following night, at Whistler Olympic Plaza on Wednesday, Aug. 12, at 7:45 p.m. Ticket prices are the same as Dirt Diaries.
Kemp says this year's Deep Summer field is a mixture of incredibly experienced pro photographers, up-and-comers, and "a few underdogs."
The competitors are five pros — Gary Perkin, Sam Needham, Tim Koerber, Grant Robinson, Ryan Worcester — plus the Pinkbike Deep Summer Wildcard, Laurence Crossman Emms.
They have three days to shoot an epic slide show that tells the story of riding in Whistler.
"This year, we've changed it up a bit. Rather than having second and third place prizes, we've only got two prizes — first is Best in Show, which is judged by our panel of judges. The other is our Viewers' Favourite, which will be voted for by the crowd and online," Kemp says.
Deep Summer will be webcast on the Crankworx website and online viewers can vote for their favourite slideshow on the website in order to choose the winner of the latter award.
