After months of hard work I’m excited to finally be able to announce that next week our latest Sportbike project, “Twist The Throttle“, will premiere online on Discovery Turbo (Update: The direct link to the content is http://turbo.discovery.com/twist-the-throttle/twist-the-throttle.html). Shot entirely in High-Definition because of the multi-platform nature of the project, ‘Twist The Throttle’ is an inside and behind-the-scenes look at eight of the major and/or most storied motorcycle manufacturers in the world, including; Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki, BMW, Ducati, MV Agusta and Bimota.
Segments showcase the remarkable histories of these brands, their manufacturing process, their R&D and of course their latest, greatest sportbikes. There’s also a cracking stop at Alpinestars, which sheads a bit of light on what goes into creating a state-of-the-art set of riding leathers. And just in case you’re curious there are some short behind-the-scenes films as well. All told over 4 hours content will be available and the best part is that it’s 100% free and no sign-up of any kind is required to watch it!
It’s been quite an adventure getting to this point and while this wasn’t the easiest production to shoot, coordinate or, well, live through, but it was however one of the most satisfying. To say that working on this has been a labor of love would be a tremendous understatement - I know I always tend to say that when I mention new projects on Twisting Asphalt, but in this case, this particular production has unequivocally been the best project I’ve ever been associated with and I truly hope viewers enjoy the end result.
There are a host of folks who deserve considerable appreciation for helping to make this project come to fruition, but two folks who I’d be remiss in not publicly acknowledging are our immensely talented Director of Photography Andrew Warsuzki and 2nd Unit Shooter (and Jack of All Trades) Andrew Cochrane. Both poured their hearts and souls into ‘the work’ and the finished project shows it.
A few useless factoids from the trip that might be of interest:
- We traveled over 36,000 miles to 4 countries on 3 continents over six weeks during production.
- We ended up shooting over 120 hours of tape.
- Traveled with over 1,000 pounds of luggage on 9 planes.
- Captured and logged over 20 additional hours of Historical Archival film and video (plus more still images then I can count).
- Ended up interviewing over 40 people spread across 9 brands.
- Ended up riding over 20 different sportbikes (unfortunately not all of them made the final cut).
- Shot and rode on 4 tracks, 3 of which are not open to the public (very cool), and 2 of which took place after 30+ hour travel days (not so cool). Also got the chance to ride many of the bikes on their home turf, including the Futa Pass in Northern Italy and the incredible Bavarian Alps (I’d gladly go back to either locale to ride tomorrow - it was that good).
- As a group received just 1 speeding ticket (thank you Austria), inadvertently damaged 1 press fleet car and broke 1 field production monitor, but otherwise escaped unscathed.
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This is great news, however there’s nothing on the Discovery Turbo site about it that I can tell. Please advise.
I want to pass the news on to folks, but I don’t want to give them a “dead link” per se.
Thanks!
Hey ya Jason-
It’s my understanding that the launch has been delayed until Wednesday afternoon/evening. It was supposed to launch today, but apparently there was a system wide server issue that popped up
Cheers,
Dylan
Thanks Dylan,
It sounds like you’ve got a lot of great HD footage there. I can’t wait to see it! Is there any chance that this will air on HD Theater? Or is Disco going to wait and see how many hits “Twist the Throttle” gets?
“HD” as in High Def.
Correct! High-Def, not Harley-Davidson. If that was the confusion. Harleys are cool, but I don’t think they’re hurting for media attention in the US.
Ah, so this Wednesday - cool. I just hit the site and was wondering why I didn’t see it.
Anyways, looking forward to seeing the show!
No dice on the Disco Turbo main page. However, if you do a search for “throttle”, 5 Twist the Throttle videos pop up in the Video Results panel.
I just finished watching the Ducati segment. Awesome and I’m so very jealous! What a great job, and what great footage. I’m looking forward to watching the rest of this. Any chance it’ll be coming out on DVD or Bluray?
Small update — The Twist mini-site soft launched because of the server issues - but you can directly access the page via http://turbo.discovery.com/twist-the-throttle/twist-the-throttle.html
More clips will be added over the next few days
Cheers,
D
Dylan,
Just watched the Ducati segment and it was awesome! Hearing the 1098 and the SportClassic has really got me jonesin’ to ride my 1098. Winter can’t end soon enough here in Boston!
FYI, Part 1 of the MV Agusta segment is missing…maybe they’ll get it up later.
Question: after riding all of those bikes, which did you like the most?
Hey Koolio- Glad you enjoyed the Ducati segments - they’re some of my favs for obvious reasons I guess…
The concept behind the project was to offer both current motorcyclists and also non-motorcyclists a window into the worlds of the various brands. The riding films were never really intended to be a direct comparison test, rather what we were tasked with was letting folks get a sense for the experience involved with the different bikes. So we tried very hard to refrain from directly saying bike X is better then bike Y - the moto mags already do that very well and very scientifically… That being said, if you look closely at the various riding films you might notice which bikes I personally got on well with
Noel - To answer your question, as of right now I don’t have any info on the DVD front. Sort of depends on how many folks visit the Turbo website and the demand for discs…
Cheers,
Dylan
Dang! Good luck with this man!
Great to see some bikers can really make a go of it… I’m looking forward to watching. 
(BTW, I’ll be doing a post about this on my site next week too.)
Good job.
Anyone see the Suzuki ad in the current Motorcyclist magazine? It’s in the front, right after the inside cover (page 2 & 3, I guess).
‘Interesting’ similarity with the flames and the slogan.
Any chance we can see this anywhere in HD? I read that it was filmed in HD so it seems a shame to have to watch it in Flash. I watched a few bits and the show looks great either way, but seeing it in HD would kick ass.
Hey ya Hoyt - I haven’t seen the Suzuki ad, but the title design for the project was done months ago - so I guess they’re riding our coattails lol… I jest of course… but odd coincidence nonetheless…
Kevin — You’re absolutely correct, everything was in fact filmed in HD and as I’m sure you can imagine it’s quite a treat to watch the footage that way… HD is just a magnificent format for this sort of stuff imho…
Hopefully we’ll know more about the HD front in the coming weeks and when I do I’ll post something about it… Until then enjoy the web
Cheers,
D
Dylan - just to be clear, I was not insinuating you copied Suzuki….if anything, it appears that it is the other way around.
thanks for the work.
Didn’t take it that way at all
Cheers,
D
Awsome, can’t wait to see this!
Warning, Rant below:
I can’t find my local Direct TV schedule to save my life. I would love to set this up to record on my DVR ahead of time. I just spent the last 20 minutes on google, Discovery’s site and DirectTV’s site and can’t find the info.
What good is promotion of a show if you can’t convert the viewer!? This is more a jab at Discovery than anything. They should have an “Email me with local showtimes” button or something.
End Rant. Anyway, I will be persistent.
I added this site to RSS, great site!
Hey ya Skadamo-
You can check out the vids online right now!
http://turbo.discovery.com/twist-the-throttle/twist-the-throttle.html
Cheers,
D
Just got done watching a couple of the segments. Great job!! I’m jealous (except for the 30 hour travel days.)
Great Stuff!!!!
Put it out on Blueray and I’ll take two copies!!!
Thanks for this great work!
Hi all, thanks for all your comments and questions about Twist The Throttle — just to keep everything straight, I’ve added a reaction post that hopefully answers some of your questions regarding the project. You can check it out here.
Cheers,
Dylan