Joe Bowman/Steel City Media have been gracing our screens this past year with some absolute gold. This Is Peaty was back for a third season in 2014 and has to have been one of the best yet. Joe was on the World Cup circuit filming some amazing RAW edits and has also found himself up a very cold Helvellyn creating video with the Hope Tech crew.
We caught up with Joe whilst he was in the air on a flight to New Zealand, on the first of many trips this year.
ST: Who are you? How old are you? Bit of history, where are you from?
JB: Hey STW.  I’m Joe Bowman, a 24 year old videographer who normally goes under the name of my little company Steel City Media. I grew up on the outskirts of Sheffield and was lucky enough to have miles of Peak District trails straight from the door, not even including Wharncliffe and all the other local spots in Sheff. Like most of you it’s always been about riding bikes since I was little. I’ve not really been doing this filming thing for that long, actually getting my first camera back in January 2010 when I broke my arm and started up ‘This Is Sheffield’ with a few mates so we could all pretend we were the Coast Crew. #Norbs
ST: What is Steel City Media? Was it a project on the side or something you wanted to be your career?Did you ever see it being that successful?
JB: In short, no. Ha ha. Steel City Media was born out of necessity/flat out panic when Steve Peat gave me the last minute opportunity back in 2012 to pack in my old job back at Bigstone (Five Ten UK) and take a huge leap of faith into the freelance life, travelling the world with him and the rest of the circus. I remember the phone call from him back in March that year actually. It was one of those ‘oh shit’ moments, where you obviously know straight away that you’re going to say yes, but at the same time you know you might not be remotely ready for it, ha ha. But looking back,  zero regrets, and This Is Peaty/Steel City Media have done alright and here we are!
ST: 2014 looked to be a really good year for you, your films were on every site, every homepage, and you always seemed to be boarding a plane to another sunny place. How do you think your year has gone? Any highlights?
JB: Last year was definitely the biggest and busiest so far, in a good sense, so it’s cool to look back at it all now during this winter whilst getting ready for 2015. I think the main highlight was seeing This Is Peaty finally develop into the online ‘show’ I always wanted it to be, plus with the year Rat had, and all the carnage that went along with it (like you saw), things just came together and the reaction/following it had through the year was awesome. So cheers to anyone reading this who tuned in.
Apart from that, one of the main things was seeing #26aintdead blow up across the internet, helped along with my mate @craigevans1 smashing that Cotic like his tight primark jeans depended on it.
ST: Travelling the World Cup circuit you must have some epic stories from the after race parties, care to share any?
JB: Haha, it’s not all flat out parties trust me, but most of the time the huge stories are normally to do with the travelling there/back. To cut a huge story short…
Back in 2012 when we flew to New York to go to Windham/Mt St Anne, we had a couple of nights in the city before heading to the races. There were four of us, two underage who had the other’s passports, so going out was tricky. Anyway, we met this birthday group of rich Texas oil baron girls in a bar, who turned out to own a penthouse above Times Square. We got invited to their party, which was on said rooftop garden/bar, all fully paid for by daddy who attended and looked like the sketchiest ‘property developer’ (read gangster) you’ve ever seen.
It got to 4am and we were all pretty on it and the girls had a table booked at some posh club downtown, naturally we wanted to go along, but got warned about the 1k dollar table charge to get in?!?! A couple of single members in the party seemed to think we’d ‘wangle’ our way in so off we popped. As we were queuing, birthday girl and daddy soprano get out of a cab and tell us to ‘come with them’. Off we went to the front of the queue where daddy dropped a grand for us to get in, plus another 2k for her mates, and we were in.
Many many hours and bottles of expensive stuff later we thought the real life movie couldn’t get any better. Turned out it couldn’t, as Daddy suddenly had a change of heart and ‘wanted his money back’. Cue us slowly doing ‘that’ dance as quietly as possible to the door, before legging it out onto the street and sprinting round the corner. We got a cab to Central Park, feeling like death and slightly worried about a mafia drive-by whilst we tried to sleep on a park bench. I got attacked by a homeless guy dressed in a hospital gown with crutches, so we gave up sleeping, got a coffee and started driving.
ST: How would you describe your filming style? Are there certain shots you always try to look for?
JB: All over the place? Ha ha. It’s funny I’m always at war with myself about what camera to use/what to do when it comes to each shoot. I love nothing more than using the EX1 (camcorder) hand-held, battery in pocket, and just panning and zooming around, but you can’t do that all the time. I love all kinds of filmers/styles; whether it’s Clay, Rankin, Stu Thomson, Tarrantino or One Tree Hill, I think it’s good to try and not stick to one style or genre. I think one thing I always try to bring across with action based edits though is speed, as people always seem to get stoked on that.
ST: Although you spend a lot of time behind the lens do you get to ride much? What kind of riding do you prefer?
JB: For the first couple of years in 2012/2013 I didn’t ride enough at all, but it’s all about finding that balance and looking at people like Sven Martin who seem to get that kind of thing dialled helped loads. You just have to make time really, otherwise you lose track of why you got into the whole thing in the first place! I used to race downhill, but now it seems to be 99% trail stuff, with a few big trips to the Alps or Whistler each year, cramming in as much as possible. My new Nomad takes most things like a champ, but like Craig says ‘you aint a proper bloke unless you own a DH bike’, so I’m going to get a new one soon.
ST: What’s it like to work with Steve Peat and get to be a part of his legendary career?
JB: At first it was scary for sure, I think the main thing that worried me for a while was just doing him and his story justice, because it’s bloody STEVE PEAT!! Ha ha. Like most kids my age I had a signed poster of him on my wall doing a turnbar for years, so to spend the last three years travelling and documenting his life on the road has been amazing; definitely proud to call him a mate.
ST: Have you any advice for those budding filmers
JB: Don’t bother, just focus on your Instagram followers. Ha ha! Naa, I think the best thing you can do is just try and surround yourself with a decent bunch of mates/riders who like having fun and just go from there. If you aren’t having fun and enjoying it from the off then there’s no hope really. In the early days, don’t be afraid to ask questions to more experience filmers, as most of the time they want to help. Same with riders, don’t be afraid to drop them a message to see if you can film with them, they will be just as keen as you to create content, most of the time. Oh yeah, turn your mic on too, that’s always a good one.
ST: What’s in the future for Steel City Media? Collaborations? Upcoming projects?
JB: Last year didn’t really stop after the World Cups/Champs ended. You might have seen two of the edits that came out recently for Hope Tech, to coincide with the release of their long awaited crankset. That was a tonne of fun making both of them, and I can’t say enough good things about Hope Tech as a whole, everyone should take a leaf out of their business model at some point. It’s been ‘go time’ on the planning front for this year when it kicks off properly at the end of March out in NZ, (I actually just landed in Auckland now so if there’s some epic jetlag spelling, my bad!). Basically it’s all looking good and super busy, with the whole year pretty much booked up all the way through to September already!! Boosh.
ST: Where is MTB film-making going?
JB: Seems to be the big question at the moment. I’m usually the first to say that people’s attention spans are getting smaller and smaller in terms of how long they’re watching edits for, but then I went the other way last year and made TIP episodes between 18-22 minutes long.
I think there’s basically this gap right now, between watching a quickly between 15secs – 2 mins long and going 10min+, anything else basically landing in this no-go zone. You’ve always got 15 seconds on the loo, or whilst at work, and for those longer pieces people will make time for it later if they think it’s going to be good.
What I do miss though is waiting every year to buy a bunch of dvd’s of full length films. I used to save up and buy the latest Clay, Rankin and NWD film each year and it makes me sniffle that you can’t do that anymore. It’ll come back around and I would love to do something full length at some point, but I think with the amount of amazing instant/free content floating around, you’re going to have to get your thinking cap on to create something people are going to buy en masse.
Cheers.
Joe
@SteelCityMedia
So there you have it, an interview with the man behind the lens. We wish Joe/Steel City Media the best of luck this year with all his projects and can’t wait to see the edits that come out. Cheers Joe 🙂