Rot Rally 2018: Shooting the largest motorcycle rally in Texas
In 2018, Swng attended the Republic of Texas Rally in Austin, Texas, to shoot additional footage and photos for FirstSight. This is the largest bike rally in Texas and brings attendees in from across the country. Besides the bikes, the event hosts a local vendors, musical performances, and racing events. When we were hired by FirstSight, we didn’t really know what to expect— this isn’t your typical event. It turned out to be an exciting rally that gave us several opportunities to capture engaging content.
The first day began with processions of different riders with their unique bikes. They set the energy level at a high, starting out the day with the motors roaring and everyone excited to begin the festivities. We captured footage and photos of the opening event, which served for the expository footage that FirstSight needed.
For a large event like this, we opted for on-sight social media editing. We set up a workstation so that we could take our videos and photos, edit them on our computers, and post to the ROT Rally social media pages while the event was taking place.
This took the stress away from our clients so that they could be focused on running the event. Our station gave them the ease of checking in with us at their own pace.
Biker at the ROTRally in Austin, Texas (2018).
The day continued with the AMA SuperMoto National Championship, giving us the opportunity to snap some great action shots. While not quite the same speed as a race, we loved shooting the people and vendors who were laughing and feeding off the energy of engines.Â
The Rally ended with a musical performance by ZZ Top, and we brought the right gear for this occasion. We’re no strangers to concert photography and footage, so we had all we needed to finish the day strong and to keep up with the best of the bikers.
The ROT Rally features more than your typical motorcycles like Motocross racing done on off-road tracks.
While we didn’t end up joining a biker group, we did have a crazy amount of fun documenting the ROT Rally. We used the different, but buzzing, energy of the day to fuel our work and capture the tone of the Rally in our supplemental footage and photos.
We had a blast both attending the rally and seeing our clients happy with the results. We’re ready to don our newly acquired leather jackets and go back next year!
