Gravel Bike Commercial Shoot Day Board — Chalk Line

A crew's board for a one-day cycling commercial: lookbook grid, treatment, locations, wardrobe states, call sheet and gear notes.

Updated

This board was built for a single day of shooting: a thirty-second gravel bike commercial on a chalk ridge in November, with two fifteen-second cutdowns cut from the same material. There is one day and one sunrise, so everything on the board is there to get the crew through the morning without questions. It opens with a photo grid of the look: mist on the ridge, low sun on gravel, a rider kept small on a country road, frost on the fields, a beech wood in fog and a mud-caked bike. Beside it sits a palette pulled from those pictures, so the grade, the wardrobe and the bikes are all judged against the same handful of colours. A short clip of morning fog over the hills sits at the top because the opening shot depends on it. The treatment section puts the look into a page of prose: what the film is, how the light changes across the day, how the camera behaves and what the spot is not. Next to it is the one reference the whole crew was asked to watch, a 1976 documentary of a cycling race, with a note saying exactly what to borrow from it and what to leave. A wild track of wind on the ridge sits there too, as the sound bed for the opening. Locations are laid out in shooting order with a table of time windows, access and gate codes, and notes with arrows pointing at the pictures they describe. Wardrobe follows one outfit through three states of mud and weather, with fabric textures, the caked shoes of the last state, a palette for the kit and a checklist of what still needs dyeing, buying or clearing with the client. The last section holds the running order, the call sheet, gear notes, a checklist of open jobs and the recce alternates kept for a wet day, including a chalk quarry that works in rain. If you are putting together your own cycling commercial mood board, the most useful habit here is ordering everything by the clock. A one-day shoot depends on the light, so the locations, the wardrobe states and the running order all follow the sun from sunrise to sunset, and each card answers a question someone will ask on the day. Photos by simon adams, Lorenzo Manera, Karel Drozda, rtb3_photography, Tom Fisk, Ludvig Hedenborg, Sergej *****, Mathias Reding, https://kaboompics.com/, K, Manda Walker, Maria Botnarenco, vito passtoors, Vladimir Srajber and Engin Akyurt on Pexels. Sound: "Perseverance rover's SuperCam records wind on Mars" by NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/ISAE-Supaero (Public domain) on Wikimedia Commons.
Serene autumn countryside with a dirt road, golden trees, and rural landscape.

A × visual grid — The look (5 images) — view it on the board above.

Detailed image of frosted leaves on a branch in winter, showcasing nature's beauty.
A wooden gate stands prominently in a serene winter landscape, surrounded by frost-covered fields and trees.

Chalk Line — the look

The idea

One rider, one ridge, one day. Ellis leaves the village in the dark and rides the chalk until the light goes. No finish line, no stopwatch, no other riders. The bike is what makes the day possible, and the film is the day.

Light

We shoot in the order the day happens. Blue before sunrise, the first hard light raking along the ridge at 07:11, the flat middle hours under the beeches and in the lane, then the low gold off the west end from 15:30. No sky replacements and no grade that preten

Locations

  • Loc
  • Where
  • Window
  • Access
  • 1 Ridge
  • Hale Down track, east gate
  • 06:45–08:30
  • Gate code 4417, 4x4 only
  • 2 Beech hanger
  • Bridleway below Hale Wood
  • 09:00–10:45
  • Hold walkers, don't stop them
  • 3 Sunken lane
  • Coombe Lane, south end
  • 11:30–12:30
  • Closed 11:00–12:45, permit
  • 4 Flint barn
  • Upper Hale Farm
  • 13:30–14:45
  • Park by the silage clamp
  • 5 Last light
  • Trig point, west end
  • 15:30–16:15
  • 15 min walk, carry kit
  • Base
  • Westcombe village hall
  • 05:30–17:30
  • Keys from Mrs Ward, 05:15

Kit colours

  • Oat merino — #d5c7aa
  • Olive wool — #595b37
  • Frame orange — #c65f1c
  • Chalk mud — #9a9284

Running order — Tue 10 Nov

  • Time
  • What
  • Where
  • Shots
  • 05:30
  • Crew call, breakfast
  • Base
  • —
  • 06:45
  • Set on ridge, rig track car
  • Loc 1
  • —
  • 07:11
  • Sunrise runs ×3
  • Loc 1
  • 1A–1C
  • 09:00
  • Descent through the beeches
  • Loc 2
  • 2A–2D
  • 11:30
  • Sunken lane
  • Loc 3
  • 3A–3C
  • 12:45
  • Lunch
  • Base
  • —
  • 13:30
  • Barn stop: bottle, hands
  • Loc 4
  • 4A–4E
  • 15:30
  • Last light, drone
  • Loc 5
  • 5A–5B
Jersey — oat merino
Jersey — oat merino
Vibrant autumn leaves covered in glistening water droplets, showcasing nature's fall beauty.

From the 28 Oct recce. Kept in case the ridge is fogged out all day or the farm pulls the barn. The chalk pit has its own access off the B-road and works in rain.

Loc 1 — the ridge
Loc 1 — the ridge

Ridge — first light

Sun clears the Weald at 07:11 and rakes the track side-on by 07:20. About 25 usable minutes before it flattens.
- Rider runs east to west, sun behind, rim on the shoulders
- Track car on the farm road below, 180mm up the slope
- Three runs max; turnaround is 6 min
- If fog sits on the ridge we wait for it to lift. Fog beats sun for the open.

Gear notes

Camera: one Alexa Mini LF. Track car on the ridge, handheld everywhere else. 25fps, 50fps only for the gravel spray.
Lenses: 35, 50, 85 primes; 180 for the ridge.
Bikes: two identical gravel bikes in frame orange, 40mm tyres. Hero bike for close-ups only; B bike does the lane and the spray.
Sound: Kofi takes 2 min of wild track at every location before we roll.
Drone: one shot, Loc 5, after 15:30.

A Sunday in Hell

Taking from Leth

What we borrow from the Roubaix film:
- Long lens from a moving vehicle, rider held steady while the ground moves under them
- Faces left as they are: grit, wind-red, nose running
- Road sound loud under everything, music late
- Weather as the subject, not the backdrop
What we leave: the race, the crowds, the commentary. Everyone watch the first 20 minutes before Friday's prep meeting.

Loc 3 — sunken lane
Loc 3 — sunken lane
Gilet — olive wool
Gilet — olive wool

Coombe Lane plan

The one dark section: banks 3m high, beech roots, wet all year. We see the rider drop out of the light into it.
- Moved to 11:30 so there is still sky at the top
- Battery 2K bounced off the bank for faces, nothing else
- Lane closed 11:00–12:45; Lena holds the permit
- B bike rides it first so the mud is real
- Leaves stay on the road. Nobody sweeps.

Downland, November

  • Night ground — #121412
  • Chalk — #e4ded0
  • Frost blue — #8ea1ae
  • Wet flint — #3b3f44
  • Low sun — #d6a14f
  • Beech rust — #8c4723

Gear — still to sort

[x] Track car with roof rig booked
[x] Two bikes tuned and matched by client tech
[x] Battery 2K and 4x4 bounce for the lane
[ ] Drone permission for the west end
[ ] Spare tubes, plugs and track pump in the van
[ ] Hand warmers and a dry coat for Ellis

▶ Gravel pass, 50fps (plays on the board above)

Ellis — one kit, three states

One outfit all day; it ages with the light.
- Loc 1–2: clean, gilet zipped, cap under the helmet
- Loc 3: first splash on the shins, gilet in the back pocket
- Loc 4–5: wet through, shoes caked, gloves dark
Three sets of everything so we can shoot out of order if the weather moves. Mud is chalk slurry bucketed from Coombe Lane on the recce, not make-up mud.

▶ Mist off the ridge (plays on the board above)

Includes a nested board (open it from the canvas above)

♪ Wind on the ridge — 0:40 · 0 BPM · M4A (plays on the board above)

Loc 4 — flint barn
Loc 4 — flint barn

Wardrobe — to do

[x] Oat merino jersey ×3, size M
[x] Olive wool gilet ×3
[ ] Dye client gloves olive (white reads as a logo)
[x] Chalk slurry bucket from Coombe Lane
[ ] Helmet with no visible logo, client to sign off
[ ] Rain shell for the wet plan