masse said...
One reason for why they do this is actually money. Maui is the perhaps most "cost efficient" location to do something like this since everything is in place and the conditions are normally good or very good. But I agree, it would be nice to see different venues and footage.
And the cost for filming and editing this is far less than most people would think.
My wild guess is the majority of teams pay for return economy airfare for the riders appearing in the photos / videos. That's probably about US$ 1000 per rider. Don't know if they pay a per diem but I guess they at least put them up in a house. Let's say they only pay for air fares... and let's say it's a small team with 6 riders: US$ 6,000
Accommodation for 2 weeks: US$7,000
They probably do 2 to 3 hours of aerial footage: $1500 - $2100
Photographer for 2 weeks... let's say you get a cheap photographer that throws in the gear for free and doesn't charge a license fee: $500 per day = $7000
Video crew (let's say again you get a cheap one man band that throws the gear in for free): $500 per day = $7000
Expenses photographer + video (assuming you are not using a local crew): $6000
Editing (let's assume the one man band does the edit and doesn't charge for the edit suite and only did one video): $600 per day = $3000 (based on a conservative 5 day edit)
Let's assume you are ignorant and don't bother with paying a license fee for the music (because hey I already paid $1 for each song on iTunes)
Where are we at? About US$38,000. To be honest this is very conservative and my wild guess is the real budget is probably closer to US$100k.
What do you get for all this money? Yup the same video we already watched last year but with different boards.
I understand they need a place that is sunny and half way reliable when it comes to wind. But that doesn't mean you have to just serve up the same tape on repeat year in year out.To be honest I didn't even bother watching most of the video. I mean how many cut backs in Hookipa can one watch before you feel like deja vu.
Just look at the videos Jason Polakow or Kai Lenny do for Redbull. A lot more interesting to watch and you rarely get the impression you are watching a product video.
ok, I am now getting off my soap box.
