You wouldn’t call Abhijit Rao’s 25000km journey on his Royal Enfield Himalayan as your regular corporate film. But that’s exactly what BigBadBikes, a startup based in Bangalore, wanted to achieve when they decided to partially sponsor Abhijit Rao for his trip. Providing him with all the gears he would require to accomplish his journey, BigBadBikes documented his 6 month long travels through what was once called the Silk Route. The idea was to create a 5 part documentary series showcasing Abhijit’s trials and tribulations, all along getting a glimpse into the durability and longevity of the gears he was using.
Documentaries such as these generally tend to have big crews who travel along with the protagonist, covering his journey and the places they visit from multiple angles as well as giving any assistance that might be required along the way. But since we had budget restraints, we had to figure out another way in which we would be able to capture Abhijit’s journey along the ancient Silk Route. Having very little knowledge of cameras and the whole shooting process, the filmmakers gave Abhijit a crash course on filmmaking and got him used to a Gopro. The plus side of this was that we got to see the true nature of off-road travel, it’s unpredictability, it’s surprises and it’s disappointment without any sugar coating. In turn giving us a real picture of how his gear was coping in the unpredictable terrain.
The downside to this approach was that we were limiting our options as filmmakers, in terms of how the story could be told. Placing our faith in Abhijit we handed over all control of the filming process to him and wished him luck. 6 months later, when Abhijit returned to India after successfully completing his travels, we were handed back a treasure trove of footage, our gamble had paid off and we now were in the possession of a nail biting adventure, full of trials, failures, set backs, and triumphs. All the ingredients required to produce a successful, adventure documentary.
Wanting to get it right, BigBadBikes was keen on taking it’s time and working on the story until it felt it had done justice to Abhijit’s journey. Thankfully the post production work was completed around the same time that IBW, 2019 was scheduled to take place in Goa. Taking this chance we decided to screen the entire series at the BigBadBikes stall, as a marketing strategy to pique the interests of fellow Motorbike lovers before releasing the series on Youtube.
After a successful screening at IBW, Abhijit Rao’s 25000km journey on his Royal Enfield Himalayan, is finally ready to be viewed by the masses. Catch the documentary series now on DCAM Productions Youtube channel.
