LATEST WORK: The Making of Red Bull Rusch Hour

Among many Native American cultures of the Southwest, Kokopelli is a fertile deity, often depicted as a humpbacked flute player. But many believe Kokopelli to have been a the ultimate Storyteller—a traveler who brought language and information from afar. Through his incomparable storytelling abilities, Kokopelli was able to unite distant and diverse communities through his universal messages.

On April 27, Rebecca Rusch shattered, by over 90 minutes, the female speed record on the famous 142-mile Kokopelli Trail. The trail navigates the rugged backcountry between Moab, Utah, and Fruita, Colorado. It’s an extremely tough ride with technical descents, big uphill slogs and beckoning single track. Most people take five or six days to complete the ride. Rebecca did it in 13:32:46.

During the record-setting ride, Rebecca pushed  through the pain. Grinding herself down. Harder, faster. Two hours before dawn, the headlamp mounted to her bike helmet went out. She continued in the waning desert moonlight. In what was close to total darkness, she flipped over the handlebars and badly dislocated her finger, tearing open the skin. Blood pooled and poured from her glove. She got back on her bike and pushed on.

Rebecca is a longtime friend and one of the more incredible, interesting individuals I know. She has an uncanny ability to push herself harder, and for longer, than maybe any other endurance athlete, male or female, alive. The reputation has earned her the appropriate moniker of “The Queen of Pain.”

When I first found out from Rebecca that she was planning to try to break the female record on the Kokopelli Trail, I was simultaneously approached by Red Bull to document her journey. However, once I thought about how insanely difficult it is to access and navigate the Kokopelli, a few flags went up in my mind.

First of all, this was either going to be a giant, expensive production complete with multiple camera crews stationed throughout the course and a rented Bell helicopter with a Cineflex mounted on the front.

Or it would be impossible.

Interestingly enough, this predicament is not uncommon in today’s world of adventure-media storytelling. In fact, most of today’s adventure videos rely in some way on this technique of recreating original athletic feats, for a number of logistical reasons that include getting the right light and positioning the cameras appropriately.

Given the tremendous logistical hurdles involved with shooting the Kokopelli Trail, our small footprint production—consisting mainly of myself (Director and Still Photographer), Dane Henry (DP) and Sean Haverstock (RC Heli Pilot and Assistant) —decided that we’d have to shoot, as inconspicuously as possible, what we could during the actual ride, then return in the aftermath to shoot B-Roll or “cover footage.” In other words, we’d recreate moments of Rebecca’s ride in order to capture the imagery and motion footage we needed to tell a greater story of inspiration that happens to be rooted in the specific details of this event.

There are a few rules when taking this approach. First, it’s extremely important that we not influence Rebecca’s ride. This was her adventure and it was important to us that we do all we can to respect what that means; i.e., stay out of her way.

The second most-important rule is to not try to pass off the footage as if it’s from the actual ride. Using a number of editing techniques and a well-crafted script, we aimed to make a piece that would inspire people to get out there, get after it, and go as hard as Rebecca. Not a documentary.

While covertly watching Rebecca from the sidelines, we were blown away by the sheer ferocity of this athlete, now fully in her element. She began at midnight, using her fateful headlamp to illuminate the terrain. Working in nothing but moonlight, we shot great video and photos with Nikon’s flagship D4, which is simply the best low-light DSLR camera on the market. As she whizzed past, we felt electrified and even lucky, as if we had just caught a glimpse of some rare and beautiful animal stalking through the night.

By the time Rebecca tagged the bathroom that marks the official finish line of the course, we were there to capture her emotions, which poured from her face like the sweat on her brow. Rebecca went straight to the emergency room, after passing out and collapsing at the finish line, to have a specialist inspect her mangled finger and tap an IV. Though eventually she would need serious attention, Rebecca said it would have to wait till our shoot was over. In moments like these, “The Queen of Pain” begins to seem like an understatement.

After a bit of rest, we launched phase two of our shoot—in which we would return to the course with Rebecca to recreate her ride on camera. Having not slept for nearly 48 hours, we were beat. But we rallied back to Utah, beginning on the rim above Castle Valley.

Of course we consulted maps, and decided on a few diverse locations along the 142-mile course that would be visually best. As this wasn’t for a documentary, I decided it did not matter if we now shot her riding past a particular mile-marker during a time of day that did not directly correspond with that of her original ride. I wanted to create dramatic footage.

I was tasked with capturing both motion and still content, something that has been standard for me in my work over the past few years. We brought out our secret weapons: two Nikon D800s and a Nikon D4s, as well as one Red Epic camera for ultra slow-motion footage.

We logged two intense days of shooting with the indefatigable Rebecca, then faced an incredibly tight turnaround in post. While Rebecca went to get some well-deserved rest and tend to her finger, we flew back to California and got right to work. This was a week of virtually no sleep, especially for Dane Henry, who edited the piece. We received one round of critiques from Red Bull, basically asking that we cut the piece down from five minutes to three minutes. That in itself is extremely time consuming, as any editor knows. But we persevered and created something everyone was psyched on. Less than five days after wrapping up the shoot, our piece was live online. Already, it has had more than 50,000 views.

Because we were recreating moments of her ride, the motion piece didn’t really lend itself to a documentary-style interview voice over. So I worked with Rebecca to write a script to go with the motion piece. We aimed to compose words that really rang true to her experience on the Kokopelli. These are the thoughts that go through Rebecca’s head on a ride like this. Ultimately, the goal was to have a narrative that resonates with people on a primal level and gets them motivated to go outside and push themselves.

Though this journey, I feel as if I witnessed a surreal transmogrification as Rebecca took on the spirit of Kokopelli. First, from breaking the Kokopelli Trail record, an incredible thing unto itself. But also, I think it was equally important for Rebecca to channel Kokopelli as Storyteller. Because through her actions, her words and all her perseverance to create this media piece, I believe she has succeeded in uniting all of us, bikers or not, in some greater universal message: To be driven. To be fearless. And to be confident that the pain goes away, as long as you just keep grinding forward.

Special thanks to everyone that made this project possible: Rebecca Rusch, Red Bull, Specialized, Nikon, SanDisk, Lowepro, Schneider Optics, Litepanels, Dane Henry, Sean Haverstock, Hans Stolfus, Josh Glaze, Greg Martin, Don Nurge, Tectonic Media Group and the entire crew at Corey Rich Productions.