Bilenky Cycle Works
"I grew up around Philadelphia and studied at film school at the Temple University. In fact, the only other real job I have had, other than filmmaking, was as a bike mechanic. So bicycles have always been a love of mine."
"At some point in time, somebody told me about Stephen Bilenky and his shop up in the old neighborhood. Stephen has always made these very expensive handmade bikes - but was also the person to go to for repairs if you cracked the steel frame on your beloved road bike. And that’s how I first met Stephen. When I broke my bike frame!"
"When I took my bike into him,I was just totally blown away by his shop. It’s this incredible maze of tubing and machinery. Long story short, the cracked frame of my bike wasn’t fixable, so I never did get my bike repaired. But I did get this wonderful introduction to his shop. It was such a visual place, that the image of his shop stuck in the back of my head for years."
"Four years ago in New York, I met someone from Bicycling Magazine who told me they were looking to do some videos. I told them about this guy I knew building these beautifully handcrafted bicycles in this dirty shop in a run down part of Philly! They were totally cool with the idea and funded me to go back for a two day shoot."
"Stephen is not always the most talkative of guys, and not the biggest personality you’ll meet. But he loves talking shop, and that’s really what this piece was all about. I grew up loving this sort of stuff, and when you interview someone like Stephen, they get that pretty quickly. I think he liked talking to someone who knew stuff important to his world, like what a steal lug frame is!"
"I think the other thing that makes these craftsman films so interesting, is that the subjects can also see the craft in filmmaking. They pick up on my dedication to my craft as well. In the end, the interviews I do are more like a conversation between two craftsman, versus a documentary interviewer and their subject. I think the charm in this piece, comes from my legitimate interest in Stephen’s craftsmanship."
"In the end, my AC and Cam Opt Andrew Whitlatch and I shot this over one and half days. We spent the first half of day, shooting Stephen’s Interview after hours, and then we spent the entire second day shooting fabrication, shop details and bike beauties. The workshop is this maze of a place, full of bike frames and tools. It’s one of those spaces you know has been there for a very long time. From the faded photos on the window sill, to the decades of dust at the base of each machine. It’s just one of those classic workshops where everything is falling around you."
"Four years ago, I shot this piece on a Canon C300 with some EF still lenses. I shot the whole thing in c-log, which has its own kind of look to it. If you can nail your exposure and keep a consistent white balance while shooting in c-log, then it only takes a little contrast and saturation to get the right look."
"With the C300, I would always try to shoot as close to how I wanted it to finally look. At that time, I really didn’t know much about color grading, whereas, these days I am getting much, much more into DaVinci and shooting with an ultra flat log. Back then, the only projects I was shooting that were graded, tended to be much bigger budget TV commercials. Now I tend to grade everything, because I am using a much wider range of cameras."
