Blessingbourne Estate has just opened its official mountain bike trails just outside of Fivemiletown in Northern Ireland. Â This is one of the first projects of it’s kind in Northern Ireland, with funding managed by Claire Wright from Countryside Access and Activities Network. Â There are around 6km of beginner to intermediate trails which are cleverly designed by World Cup track designer Phil Saxena. Â Red rated trails are interlinked so you can do a variety of loops and still not be bored. Â There’s also a pump track with loads of lines to keep you entertained.
Blessingbourne Estate also offers self catering accommodation and there are camp sites nearby.  You can find out more about Blessingborune Estate at their website or by visiting their Facebook Page
Video below for the launch event. Â Please help spread the word by liking!
The Royal National Institute of Blind People contacted Honcho Designs to produce a video giving an overview of their Eye Care Liaison Officer Service (ECLO). Â The ECLO service provides practical and emotional support in eye clinics to people who have been diagnosed with an eye condition that may lead to blindness. Â It’s a great service and the video aimed to generate awareness and also help raise funds.
This video was shot with our Canon 7D setup which allowed us to produce a high quality video for a relatively low budget using a crew of only two people. Â The staff at RNIB wanted to get as great a range of opinions as possible, so over 10 people were interviewed from various departments. Â The end result was to be a 5-10 minute long video that they could show during an upcoming fundraising dinner, and later on for web and DVD distribution.
Making tiny offices look as good as possible was definitely challenging
The audio was taken care of with our external recording system giving professional audio that the 7D lacks. Â For the lighting we used a two bank Kino with a three point lighting kit which was enough for what was required. Â A Merlin Steadicam was also used to get some of the eye condition simulation shots.
One of the requirements was to produce version of the video that is accessible to blind or partially sighted people. Â For this we used an audio transcription with the help of a BBC presenter and liaised with the RNIB to make sure everything was up to their standards.
The amount of interviews made for a challenging edit, but after a long time spent in the edit suite I managed to cut down the three hours of footage to around ten minutes.
Here’s what RNIB had to say…
“Honcho Designs were contracted by RNIB NI to produce a video about our Eye Care Liaison service which provides practical and emotional support in hospital eye clinics to people who have just been diagnosed with an eye condition that will result in them becoming blind or partially sighted.
Honcho Designs delivered a very high quality and professionally produced video which we have been able to use to encourage funders and individuals to continue to support this much-needed service. They were very flexible in ensuring that the video was produced in formats accessible to people who are blind or partially sighted. I would have no hesitation in recommending Honcho Designs”
Gavin Adams – Senior Manager for Business Development with RNIB in Northern Ireland.
The Mourne Seafood Cookery School is a new cookery school situated in the town of Kilkeel in the Mourne Mountain area of Northern Ireland. Â They needed an added presence on their website to help entice people to sign up for the courses they have on offer and decided that video content was the way forward to achieve this.
Some of the videos produced were cookery demonstrations with local celebrity chefs.
I have a background in downhill mountain bike racing and was asked to travel over to Slovenia for the first round of the downhill mountain bike World Cup to help filmmaker John Lawlor produce videos for the Santa Cruz and Specialized teams.
While in Slovenia I had a some spare time and put together a few short videos of my own. Â Honcho Designs has producer accounts and contacts with all the major extreme sports video websites. Â This means the videos were featured on home pages and viewed by thousands of people just a few hours after the event.
The samples that were uploaded were the top three viewed videos of the week after the race on sites freecaster.tv, MPORA, and Pink Bike. Â This represents an excellent opportunity for anyone wishing to market to the extreme sports demographic.
Check out the sample video and some of the stats below.
World class downhill mountain biker rider and personal trainer Colin Ross needed a presence on the web for his 2010 team ‘Rosco Lines’. Â Honcho Designs created and designed a custom WordPress installation to best suit his needs. Â The site will help Colin keep fans updated with the latest team news and offers from his personal training business. Â The WordPress system allows team members to easily post their own news to the website without the need to pay a web company to manage and keep content updated.
The Rosco Lines website allows for multiple plug-ins to be added to give increased functionality to the site. Â At the moment some features include a new-post subscription service, easy sharing to social network sites like Facebook, and advanced site statistics.
Colin is the current Irish downhill national points series champion and has just taken on youth development rider Jonny Charters. In 2010 they both aim to race and dominate the Irish race scene.
In 2008 Honcho Designs also produced an award winning video for Colin Ross at Cave Hill, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The long awaited Break the Cycle DVD has just been released! For those of you who don’t know, Break the Cycle film is a super chilled-out action sports documentary produced by Honcho Designs, showing how ten of Irelands best downhill mountain bike riders use their bikes to break the cycle of every day life.
Break the Cycle gives an insight into the life of these Irish downhill mountainbikers, while also showing off the amazing scenery and trails Ireland has to offer. We have also teamed up with bands from Ireland and beyond to provide an amazing soundtrack, from the punk rock sounds of ‘Rigger’ to the chilled out vibes of ‘The Frames’.
The DVD is available for sale internationally directly through Break the Cycle web site, and should also be available at all good bike shops.  If your local store doesn’t have it in stock ask them to get it in! X-treme video have took on European distribution so if you’re looking to stock BTC in your shop get on to them asap!
A premier was held at The Movie House cinema, Dublin Road, Belfast which was a huge success.
Freecaster.tv was at the 2009 MX of nations in Italy, the biggest and most exciting MX event of the year. Freecaster commissioned Honcho Designs to shoot and edit a few short videos to add to the live coverage available on the freecaster.tv website.
The MX GP series has moved on to Latvia. Below are two of the four videos produced on the weekend for Freecaster.tv. The first video shows some of the action and lifestlye from Saturday. The music at the start was recorded at a famous Medieval restaurant in Riga which we visited on Friday night.
The second video is a race round up of the MX2 category with interviews and action from the top three riders in their class.
Video put together for Freecaster.tv from the MX GP in Teutschenthal, Germany. Shows the action, and lifestyle from day 1 of the event. Shot and edited within one day.
Honcho Designs was at round 3 of the Nissan UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in Andorra to produce videos for factory teams Specialized and Santa Cruz.  The two teams have the best riders on the scene, with Santa Cruz Syndicate rider Steve Peat claiming victory at the weekend, and also setting the world record for the most World Cup wins ever.  Specialized rider Sam Hill was nearly two seconds up at the split before crashing hard near the top of the course.
The riders were not the only ones who had to go fast. Â The videos which were shot on a Sony EX1 camera were, edited, and uploaded to the team sites one day after the weekend.
Voluntary Service Bureau held the Creative Extremists event at Stormont Hotel, Belfast. The strapline for the event was ‘fighting for the common good’ and it had some high profile speakers in attendance including the Lord mayor of Belfast, and the MP David Blunkett.
Honcho Designs Looked after the branding of the event including logo creation, email shot, stage branding design, content for the stage projection screen, and video coverage.
Round 3 of the motocross GP series took place near Istanbul in Turkey at the weekend. Â Check out one of the videos produced for Freecaster.tv. Belgian Cameraman Tim Van Goethem was out with his Sony EX1 hooked up to a Letus 35mm adaptor to get some sweet footage.
