Gravitate will be a free-to-view online documentary film about the Scottish Downhill Race scene filmed and edited by geomorphologist (yes, we don’t know either) Stefan Morrocco.

Here’s a teaser and a short vid with one of the featured riders, Joe Connell.

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Gravitate Teaser

Joe Connell: featuring in Gravitate >>

Joe Connell: featuring in Gravitate

Gravitate will be a free-to-view online documentary film, made available to view on the Dirt/ Mpora platform, following downhill mountain bike riders competing in the Scottish Downhill Association (SDA) Series and Scottish Championships. Gravitate is filmed and edited by Stefan Morrocco (Morrocco Media) and will premiere at the Dundee Mountain Film Festival on the 26th of November. This film will showcase the diversity, varying backgrounds and skill levels of those who meet once a month over the summer to race in the SDA series. The film is aimed at the “mountain and adventure film festival” market, to act as a promotional tool to encourage new people to try the sport and showcase the quality, growth and diversity of downhill mountain bike racing in Scotland. The soundtrack for the film will feature Scottish bands, some of which will be up and coming, unsigned bands.

The aim of Gravitate is to raise the profile of downhill mountain bike racing to those outside of the sport and to demonstrate the diversity of the people who participate in the sport, in that it is not only dominated by amazingly fast elite riders, in order to encourage more people to try the sport. Gravitate will go someway to dispelling the myths that the sport is for crazy, unfit, fat blokes who can not ride their bikes uphill, but is actually done by dedicated, fit and perfectly sane people.
The film will investigate why people ‘Gravitate’ towards the sport and specifically to race in Scotland, what motivates them to race, what their aims are, how the different individuals/ groups approach the sport/ races and what makes them take part in what is often perceived as a dangerous sport.
The cast list includes the 2009 Scottish Series Champion and World Cup Rider, Chris Hutchens; Perth City Cycles Team (which includes World Cup rider Fergus Lamb); potential future World Cup rider, Joe Connell; Highline Racing Team (Tom Lamb, James Shirley and Ronan Taylor); the older member of the group, masters rider, Ian McIntosh; Paul and Sara Rennie, who are first time racers; Darren Wilson, a constantly improving junior rider who is entirely dependent on his parents to drive 4-5 hours from Campbletown to attend races; and one of the top female riders in Scotland, Bex Reiley.

Stefan is employed as a geomorphologist (google it) but does filming as a hobby and as an artistic outlet having come from an artistic family. His first experience of filming was through an iFilm competition at University, where he was heavily involved in the production of a 5-minute film for the University Cycling Club. He was instantly hooked in both the filming and editing process. However, there was several years delay before he could afford a video camera and editing software. Since then, Stefan has spent three years filming downhill mountain bike races in Scotland as a hobby, only making a few of his 2009 films available to view online.
This year Stefan has upgraded his camera, editing software and kit and decided it would be a good idea to try and make a 40 minute documentary film, funding it exclusively out of his own back pocket (no big budgets here!), whilst also producing short highlight films from the races he attends. Stefan is using Gravitate as a learning experience as it is the first of a large number of adventure-sports films he has ideas for.