On the Road With the Fearless Vespa Modifiers of Indonesia
A proud subculture has developed in Indonesia around the crazy potential for modifications to the legendary Vespa scooter.
Director Marc Ressang is one of the few filmmakers to have followed the community closely and his awesome short “Rebel Riders” is our latest Short of the Week.
Here’s more from Ressang himself on how the project came about…
It all started about a year ago when my friend Muhammad Fadli published some photos about these crazy bikes in Indonesia.
After some initial research I could only find a couple of videos that were either short Instagram clips or dry broadcast news reports that didn’t capture the grit and exhilaration that goes with it.
It seemed like a lot of the interesting characters in the communities are notoriously hard to track down, so I visited an Extreme Vespa Community meetup to get an idea of what it's all about. Not knowing what to expect, we were received with open arms and people were proudly discussing the community and their creations.
I pitched the story to several outlets, but no one was interested in developing or producing a documentary around it. It was too good of a story to not dig in to, so I decided to do it myself.
With no budget, it boiled down to whatever I could pack into a large backpack (mostly a GH5 and Ronin-S).
Over the course of the year, I ended up taking 6 trips all over Indonesia to piece the puzzle together. It became my passion project — in between trips I would always be reviewing my footage, mapping out new shots, and doing more research to figure out how to put the viewers in the driver’s seat.
Short of the Week is our series dedicated to showcasing the best short documentaries available online. Get in touch to pitch yours.
