Blood Road

Blood Road is a 2017 documentary film directed by Nicholas Schrunk and produced by Red Bull. It stars endurance mountain biker Rebecca Rusch, Vietnamese cyclist Huyen Nguyen and cartographer Don Duvall. The film chronicles the journey of Rusch traversing over on bicycle along the Ho Chi Minh trail to the site where her father, a US Air Force F-4 fighter pilot, was shot down in Laos 40 years earlier. It won numerous best of festival awards and a News & Documentary Emmy Award in 2018. Production The film was produced over two years, starting with an initial scout trip to Laos in December, 2014 with principal photography happening over 28 days in February/March 2015. The production team of six members, four of which were ex-professional athletes themselves, were limited to traversing on Honda CRF 250cc dual-sport motorcycles. Two crew members were injured in motorcycle accidents from the jungle terrain, one suffering a shoulder injury and another, a ruptured achilles tendon. The core production team collectively rode over 24,000 miles on motorcycle over the course of production. According to Andrew Fish of American Cinematographer. "The camera team used a unique combination of RED digital cinema cameras and Cooke anamorphic lenses to capture the film. Subsequent modifications were made to other smaller format action cameras such as GoPros to modify the lenses to fit the anamorphic profile.". They also extensively used the Freefly Systems MoVI gimbal which they affixed to motorcycles, drones, rickshaws and trucks. The film was finished in 4K with Dolby enlisted to audio-mix the film using Dolby Atmos technology. The on-screen graphics, directed by John Likens were of note for their creation from 8mm US Air Force footage, GPS points and OpenStreetMap data.