Bespoke Motorcycles YouTube Series
We documented a series of bespoke motorcycle builds, including a bike for Joe Wicks (The Body Coach)
The Brief
Thornton Hundred Motorcycles are a world-class bespoke motorcycle design and manufacturer based in Buckinghamshire. Jody, the founder had built an impressive online following primarily through Instagram, but had also had success through a self-made YouTube video documenting the build of a Honda SLR650 Scrambler. This video had achieved millions of views on YouTube which instantly showed Jody there was a gap on YouTube for this type of content. As Jody had already been working on incredible builds for notable personalities and celebrities, he looked to take on a video team to bring this YouTube series to life. And that’s where we came in!
The Shoots
Due to the nature of the bike building process, the shoots were often scattered, involving 2 – 4 hours of filming every other day over the course of 4 – 6 weeks. These shoots would often take place at the Thornton Hundred HQ, but sometimes venturing to other locations for certain parts of the process including the rolling-road tuning in Silverstone, or the custom seat design in the south of the country.
The content was intended for long-form YouTube viewing, and to maintain the engagement, so it was important to heavily feature Jody as the main spokesperson to carry the narrative of the content. It also reinforced Jody as the founder and ambassador of Thornton Hundred Motorcycles. We opted for a YouTube vlog/documentary style, which meant that interviews were predominantly handheld or shot on a gimbal, which helps the content feel more down to earth and engaging.
For the supporting footage, we used a variety of handheld and gimbal shots and, of course, a lot of slow-motion. At the end of each video, the finished bike montage was always the main event, so we’d often turn up the cinematography dial and get to work with creative angles to showcase the bikes at their best. In one particular video, of Joe Wicks’ Triumph T120, we pulled out all the stops to create a beautifully lit environment involving smoke machines, neon lights, and more, just to make that video extra special.
The Edits
These projects had weeks, sometimes months, of footage to cut through. This meant that the editing process was rather intense and required a lot of time working on the structure of the videos. It was important to showcase the level of detail that goes into the builds, but at the same time ensure that the videos were snappy and only show the essentials. It was a collaborative process with Jody to identify the key components of a build.
We’d created some assets for the YouTube series including an intro sequence for the series, as well as some graphics for locations.
To promote the videos further, we always created short teasers to go on socials to drive traffic to the long-form YouTube content.
The Result
The result of our collaboration with Thornton Hundred Motorcyles is a series of videos on YouTube that have surpassed over 4 million views, enabling Thornton to grow significantly. Since our collaboration, Thornton has grown from Jody as the only person in Thornton, to a full team of experts and a state of the art workshop facility. Our videos, to this day, are some of the most viewed videos on the Thornton Hundred Motorcycles YouTube channel.
