Afterlife: Brandon Semenuk drops new film days before he defends his ARA Championship
A fortnight spent building features, practicing jumps, chasing light, and waiting. A lot of waiting has accumulated into Brandon Semenuk’s newest Freestyle video. Located deep in Alberta, Canada farmland, the landscape drops out and you’re transported away from feedlots and truck stations down into a miniature version of Virgin, Utah.
Just 10 miles outside of Brooks, Alberta, and directly south of the Dinosaur Provincial Park world heritage site lies a beautiful vista of otherworldly barely touched terrain. This is where Red Bull runs Outliers, one of the only two North American locations on the Hard Enduro tour and also where Semenuk invested the peak weeks of his Fall riding time to create Afterlife.
The American Rally Association (ARA) two-time reigning champion and four-time Red Bull Rampage winner’s October is a logistical landmine as he found himself pulled between the end of the Rally Car season and the premier big-mountain freestyle event.
In 2022, Semenuk balanced the two and released a video exploring the struggle called “Balancing Act”.
In 2023, instead of having a week in between Rampage and the Lake Superior Performance Rally (LSPR); the final race of the ARA season, both events were held the same weekend of October 13-15, 2023. While it was a hard decision to not compete at Rampage, having the opportunity to create Afterlife on a piece of land that Semenuk has long had an affinity for helped the dual-athlete with his decision.
Instead of Semenuk, his dig crew, and his camera crew spending September in Utah building and planning jumps they had the chance to take to the Badlands and create.
Semenuk had the idea for this project years before he found the land to shoot it on. In 2022 he found the right land and made a deal with the landowners to shoot on the property. But with that there was just enough of a time crunch that Semenuk and his team felt that it would be better to push off the project one year to give it the window that it truly deserved.
“Last year, this property came up it was the right fit for this project that we wanted to do but felt a little rushed so we decided to push it a year and give ourselves some time," Semenuk told Auto Racing Digest in between a morning and evening shoot last September. "We could make sure that the landowners understand what we’re doing and everyone’s happy. It’s a big project and we [didn’t] want to rush it and feel like we left something on the table.”
The Crew, The Shoot, and The Concept
Luckily for the crew and semi-unluckily for me, the first few days of shooting were extremely productive for Semenuk and his crew, with each morning and evening light new features were shot and practiced while the dig crew powered through each day. There were just a few remaining features to be shot by the time I made it to Alberta just a day after covering the inaugural SuperMotocross Final at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
With so much done, two of the builders, Justin Wyper and Kane Boyce were able to head back to civilization and get going on other projects and competition and only Evan Young, the lead, remained.
The largest drop, featured around the :55 mark of the video, a few smaller features, and B-roll remained. Here is where the storytelling part of the video also came into play.
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During a major windstorm that halted production, I sat in the truck with filmers Isaac Wallen and Nic Genovese as dust swirled around the vehicle and we dove into their connections to Semenuk and views of the project.
Nic Genovese grew up around Semenuk in the same industry and the same town and has been documenting Semenuk’s events since the early days.
“It all goes back to this idea that time is temporary and this idea that at some point we will all go back to the dust," Wallen said. “We’re in this location where some of the craziest and biggest ever dinosaur bones have been found in the world. It adds this cool element of how everything eventually settles and goes into this organic state.”
Wallen first met Semenuk when he was around 16 years old in his hometown of Santa Cruz, Calif. where Brandon tends to escape the Canadian winters. They became riding buddies and years later once Wallen had started to cement himself as an action filmer, he started working on projects for Semenuk in his early 20s.
Wallen, Genovese, and the rest of the crew have a unique opportunity when working with Semenuk, through the creation of his own production company, Rad, is able to hold on to more creative control than others in the industry. Much of this also comes from the carefully dug-out niche Semenuk has built for himself.
“There's never been an athlete that's produced and created all this content on his own," Wallen said. “He's the one that organizes the whole thing, which is something that I feel like no other athletes have really done.
"He comes up with all these locations and crazy ideas, and he spends all the time at his house learning all these tricks and thinking up all these features that he can do those tricks on and it's stuff that no one's ever done, so he's just fully pioneering the entire thing.”
Added Genovese, “The shoots allowed him to be his full creative self. He’s now able to express himself to the fullest. The events were really good for him to shine and get all the experience and credibility but this is what he wanted the whole time.”
“It’s almost like the contests were steps to get to this next thing where he can fully do what he wants to do and show what he’s interested in,” Wallen chimed back in. “It’s crazy, he’s not just a mountain biker, he's one of the most creative dudes I’ve ever met. He’s an artist.”
Why Brooks, Alberta?
While technically the site sits closer to the same town as Patricia, Brooks is the slightly better-known city. And by known, I mean by long haul truckers and those in the cattle fields. The rural nature of this land brings to question why here and why now?
Once I saw this property, it was so unique and so cool. It carries a lot of the aspects of good riding areas and good building areas, but in its own unique form. We knew it would be good but it would also be different, so that when people watch it, it won’t be ‘This looks like Virgin, Utah' or other popular mountain biking locations.
"It felt like a no-brainer," Semenuk said. "It opens up the doors for a lot of things that you don’t find everywhere and obviously, the landscape is really beautiful. If we can capture it at the right time of year and the right light you can bring this cinematic vision to the vision I had for the riding project.”
The vastness of desert spaces is often scouted by freestyle riders to attempt their tricks and film videos but this land, outside of Outliers, has been practically untouched. Plus its northern and inland location brings different weather and light patterns than viewers are used to.
Semenuk and other riders have filmed a plethora of videos along the British Columbia coast where he’s located, or in the mountains and valleys of the Utah desert, but Albert provided something different.
“It all goes back to this idea that time is temporary and this idea that at some point we will all go back to the dust,” Wallen said in explaining the video concept, “We’re in this location where some of the craziest and biggest ever dinosaur bones have been found in the world. It adds this cool element of how everything eventually settles and goes into this organic state.”
“The light is incredible, since we’re not on the coast anymore and (because) we’re inland, we get these really colorful sunrises and sunsets,” Semenuk explained, “There’s a river with the fog in the morning and certain aspects that you can’t always bring in. In BC [British Columbia], when you’re in the forest, you can’t always capture what’s going on behind the trees -- but here it’s so vast.”
The night before I left back to the U.S., the remaining members of the crew sat around the Patricia Hotel, a small inn and restaurant, where the crew had become staples over the last week. In-between bites of roast beef and storytelling, it was disproved that the next two days and nights would have limited wind and lead right into the huge September Full Moon, known in parts of the world as the Harvest Moon, the Corn Moon, or the Barley Moon as is the first moon after the Autumn Equinox.
With the film’s themes of cycles and life and death, it was decided that the team would stay a couple of nights longer to capture shots of Semenuk riding against the rising full moon.
Now four moon cycles later, we're ready for the start of the ARA season this weekend as the drivers and co-drivers take to Sno*Drift Rally in Atlanta, Mich. On Friday and Saturday, Semenuk will begin his trek to defend his title with co-driver Keaton Williams and attempt to collect a hat trick of championships for Subaru Motorsports USA.
They will be rejoined by former teammate Travis Pastrana in the second WRX ARA24 Subaru entry as he returns to the series full-time along with co-driver Rhianon Gelsomino. It appears that Pastrana will be ready to race after his off-season knee surgery.
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Authors Note: Thank you to Brandon Semenuk, Red Bull Canada and the Alberta crew of Evan Young, Justin Wyper, Kane Boyce, Isaac Wallen, Nic Genovese, and Toby Cowley for allowing me to observe the creation of Afterlife.