involved in these one-block long alley races, and all number of different bicycles in use. Lucas won a few of these early races, and retains a lot of video footage, some of which is posted on his website.
Lucas’s first actual alleycat with checkpoints was in 2001 at a Red Bull sponsored event, “Urban Underground” where he took second place. Also in 2001 he was inspired to document the street racing he was increasingly involved with after watching a film a friend made with a shoulder camera. Thorough many hours of shooting and years of trial and error he devised a filmmaking technique that would showcase the action unfolding in front of him. He bought a Canon camera in 2002 and used Tupperware and duct tape to attach it and a counterbalance battery to his helmet. From that method he started regularly filming races, eventually moving to two cameras on the helmet filming forward and reverse views. The original idea for his latest “Line of Sight” work began with Brendt Barbur, founder of the Bicycle Film Festival, and his encouragement to make a video of the greatest hits. Three years of editing work and some $300,000 of travel and production costs later “Line of Sight” made the rounds of the 2012 Bicycle Film Festival and is now available for purchase at www.lucasbrunelle.com
Alleycat Filming
“I am thinking about my life, the fact I can lose it if I do a wrong move and if I fuck up. That first and foremost.”
“[I have] so much experience with this that it is second nature. It does come very easy for me, second nature, I think about what the viewers are going to see, safety first.”
“So I got into this through messenger work, loving to race. I race CAT 2, I race the alleycats—those are the two maintainers. I race a lot and my favorite thing is riding in traffic, I love traffic“.
Filmmaking Goals
“[Line of Sight is a] love of cycling and definitely not a financial success, this is a financial disaster for me.”
“I want to show people how to live on their own