NEWPORT TO MONTEREY

Took a little trip up the coast with Ducati a couple weeks ago.

We filmed a group of Ducati Monster owners traveling from Newport Beach up to Monterey for the Annual Quail Hill Motorcycle Gathering.

We stopped at Ducati Santa Barbara and grabbed lunch with our boy Carlin Dunne at Enterprise Fish Company. We don't eat a lot of seafood but the Mud Pie was excellent. Thanks Carlin.

The hills of Santa Ynez Valley. #Ducatilife

Random zebras off the side of the road near San Simeon.

Stopped at Nepenthe for lunch near Big Sur and then all the riders got to do a few parade laps at Laguna Seca raceway in Monterey.

It was a good trip, great weather, really nice group of Monster owners who we traveled and hung out with for a few days. Got some cool shots of the group riding through some nice scenery. The Quail Lodge meetup was cool - a ton of really unique vintage bikes. Not a bad way to spend the weekend.

Launching another new bike vid on here in a couple days. NoBizPlan is coming back, no really, I promise...

STAPLE SNEAK PEEK

Started working on a new project last week along with our boy jeffstaple.

Jeff was in LA and we were able to link up and film a few things with him.

We're not really allowed to say too much about it for now but it'll be in the works for the next few months and we're excited that it's underway and all starting to come together.

Nothing makes you feel like you don't own enough sneakers quite like hanging out with jeff for a day. He had some fresh Puma Pigeons on, of course.

Anyway, really need to get back to blogging and distributed bootlegged rap music on here soon. That'll hopefully happen shortly, stay tuned.

In the meantime, thanks to everyone who came by the office last week for our Open House and had pizza and watched the Celtics game with us. More, much bigger and crazier office events to come. Also shout out to everyone over at Imprint lab and InterTrend for throwing a killer event last Friday.

Last but not least, the first 2 series are wrapped and the Leaderboard has been updated. Enjoy your weekend, we're heading up to Monterey in the morning with Ducati for a few days so don't spoil any of the NBA games this weekend for me - I'm recording them :)

2013 NBA BRACKETOLOGY

Like we always do at this time.

This year's NBA bracket is up and running. We've been doing this for a few years now - always fun to see poorly everyone does at predicting future NBA champs.

Decided to go with an In-N-Out gift card for the winner. And of course if you don't live within driving distance of an In-N-Out then you have bigger things to worry about than some online hamburger contest.

The playoffs should be fun this year. Excited to see how James Harden takes his hard feelings out on the Thunder, if the Clips can outlast Memphis again (I think they can), if D.Rose will emerge and take the Bulls to a 2nd Round Heat matchup and of course if the Lakers can pull off a few miracles.

nba2013.nobizplan.com

We'll accept brackets until next Tuesday, spread the word.

DESERT STORM

Went out to the middle of nowhere for a couple days last week.

Shot a cool little spot for our boys at Cycle World.

This was just more of a passion project from Jeff Allen at Cycle World than anything else. No editorial story or client guidelines - just a fun piece that Jeff had a vision for. He asked us to help out and be a part and it was a no-brainer for us.

Brought out Scott and Sean from 4120 to film some RC helicopter aerial stuff for us. Check out those virtual reality goggles - pretty sweet right?

An on-board shot via one of the new GoPro Hero3 Black Editions - we used these out in Austin as well. Footage quality improvement from the Hero2's is huge. We still got love for Contour - excited to see what they come out with next.

Shout out to everyone at Cycle World for bringing us out to the desert for some fun (and adventure). The CW guys are so chill and easy to work with. Also thanks to Ducati for the bikes and Alpinestars and Arai for the gear. Stay tuned for the vid.

DUCATI AUSTIN: I

First half of the recap from our epic week in Texas.

We spent most of the week out at the Circuit of the Americas which is the new F1 racetrack they have down there. The track and the whole facility was amazing - plus Ducati went all out all week branding everything from the paddock at the track to the Audi courtesy cars. They had a full setup at the hotel - Ducati reception desks, a Panigale in the lobby, Ducati room keys - it was legit.

Anyway, Nicky Hayden and Ben Spies were out there for the first couple days and Ducati flew in journalists from all over the globe to come in throughout the week and ride and test and review the new Panigale R.

We crashed here for the week. #toughlife

We had one sort of half day off in Austin and we made the most of it. First off we stopped by Taco Deli and grabbed some food. The tacos were good - they had Mexican Mashed Potatoes - it was a cool spot. All the food in Austin costs a fortune though, but whatevs.

After lunch we stopped by DJI Innovations - they make radio controlled helicopters for flying cameras and capturing aerial footage and their HQ happens to be in Austin. The whole aerial cinematography game is something we've been looking into lately so we just sort of dropped in unannounced and luckily they were cool and chatted with us for awhile about new products and stuff they're working on.

After that we stopped by Nice Kicks and Ryan picked up some sneakers. Then we hit South Congress which is apparently the 'cool' street of shops and food trucks and stuff.

There are a million food trucks all over Austin - it's kind of insane. Grabbed a gourmet grilled cheese from this one called Burro - the branding and truck design was cool. Not sure about the sandwich, Ryan claimed it was good but left half of it rotting back at the hotel the rest of the week.

This vintage shop Uncommon Objects was cool. We stopped in here and bought some used horseshoes and stuff - very well curated. You could spend all day in there.

And finally, us, looking tough, in the 25-story tall observation deck that towers over the track.

Part II coming soon including a full Yelp recap of all the Austin food places that bankrupted us.

Meanwhile we're staying busy - filming the next 2 days in a dry lakebed out the middle of nowhere. Should be fun :)

NEW DUCATI VID

Ducati just released the first video from our filming in Austin this week.

We're down here with The ID Agency at the new F1 track, the Circuit of the Americas, filming the International Launch of Ducati's new superbike the 1199 Panigale R. On Monday, Ducati's MotoGP riders Ben Spies and our boy Nicky Hayden hopped on the new bike and spun some laps. When they came back in the paddock someone asked them how fast they were able to push it - they said they didn't know because the bike's speedometer capped off at 185MPH. Damn.

Anyway we shot all this stuff Monday, uploaded it straight to Ducati HQ in Bologna that night, they edited it Tuesday and posted to the global Ducati Motor Holding YouTube account this morning.

All the behind the scenes pics and stuff to come soon. Stay tuned.

GOOD KID, M.A.A.D. CITY

Down in Austin for the week.

We're here with Ducati but we came in a bit early and got to spend some time at SXSW. Thanks to Victor from ID Agency we got to check out the last show down here at Viceland last night. Trinidad James was, um, interesting. This DJ kid Baauer was pretty amazing - definitely made a fan out of me. Dude never said a word, just walked out on stage in a sweatshirt and snapback and rocked the whole room.

Finally around 1AM Kendrick Lamar came out and set it off. It was a cool, small venue. A bunch of the crowd had waited all day for him so they were all really into it plus it was the last show of SXSW so the vibe was cool.

Alright, gotta go find a food truck for breakfast. More stuff soon...

BARTON PERREIRA SS2013 CAMPAIGN VIDEO

Last month we shot the new Spring Summer campaign video for Barton Perreira.

Early on Super Bowl Sunday, Matt and Ryan and I headed down to Long Beach and met up with our boy Tim Cadiente and the small army of models and stylists and assistants that he had assembled for the day. Once everything was in place we all caravanned down to a section of a bridge near the Port and started shooting. While Tim and his team handled the still photography, we did the video stuff. Plus, since the location was pretty epic, Tim had us bring out a couple guys to capture aerial footage as well.

We got this little handheld rig a couple months ago (Steadicam Merlin 2 for all you cam nerds out there). Works pretty well for capturing certain types of shots - people walking, running, specific types of movement. You'll see some of the shots in the video, below.

Anyway, it was a super quick shoot down at the bridge because, as you can maybe imagine, active bridges are hard locations to set up photoshoots on. Won't even get into how Tim pulled this all off - the dude just has a knack for making the impossible happen.

And after we wrapped up down in Long Beach, we shot down the coast to Sunset Beach where we filmed at the famous Water Tower home down there.

The aerial guys from 4120 who we worked with got some really cool shots at both locations. Looking forward to working with them again.

Definitely an amazing shoot. Worth missing the Super Bowl for.

Shout out to Tim C, everyone at Barton Perreira and the 4120 guys. Enjoy the vid.

RYAN SWOPE HARLEM SHAKE

Our boy Ryan Swope is in the final round of voting for the EA Sports NCAA Football 2014 cover.

On Sunday, Nima from Rep1 Sports, his agency, called us and told us to pitch video concepts to help promote him. On Monday this 'Swope Harlem Shake' vid was our only idea. On Tuesday we filmed for 2 hours at the Rep1 office. Wednesday we edited it. Today we melted Youtube's servers.

After the vid, go to facebook.com/easportsncaafootball and vote for our boy.

NFL COMBINE PREP

Matt and Ryan and Petra and I were prepping for the NFL Combine a couple weeks ago and these guys came out to film us.

But seriously, we spent the day with some of this year's prospects from Rep1 Sports - jumping and dashing and lifting and whatnot.

Nick Kasa from Colorado.

Ryan Otten from San Jose State.

The guys were all very focused as this was one of their last workouts before heading to Indy for the NFL Combine.

This WR Ryan Swope from Texas A&M was amazing - this kid could jump and run like none other. He's actually a finalist right now to be on the cover of the next EA Sports NCAA College Football game - you check that out and vote for Ryan here.

David Quissenberry from San Jose State - really nice guy, grew up surfing in Encinitas.

Our boy Latavius Murray, a running back from Central Florida.

It was a cool shoot. Interviewing these guys was interesting because they're at such a unique point in their journeys. They've all chased this dream for so long and are now on the brink of being drafted into the NFL. A few weeks ago they were broke and living in dingy college apartments and now the possibility of cashing NFL checks is hanging right in front of them. Very much looking forward to keeping an eye on where these guys end up and filming with all of them again.

Shout out to Nima and everyone over at Rep1 for bringing us out.