Pete chats to John Bailey, one half of Vision Ramps, a Scottish company who have been behind the scenes in some of the most recognisable videos to date.
John and George of Vision Ramps are proof that the process is very much as interesting as the end result. While spectacular viral videos are themselves amazing, the sheer hard work, creativity and did we mention elbow grease that goes into making them a reality is worthy of the same adulation.
Pete had a good old chat with John Bailey about where Vision Ramps came from, where it’s taken them and what’s on the horizon.
Who is John Bailey?
A bike rider from Penicuik, Scotland. Director of Vision Ramps and Loading Bay Skatepark in Glasgow.
What’s your background in cycling?
I guess I’m a BMX rider now. Very amateur, although I did go through a spell of doing some demo stuff. The last few years living with some rad MTB riders has inspired me to get back on the big bikes again, which I’m having loads of fun with.
What’s your background in the cycling industry?
Riding bikes loads and wanting to be around them all the time was where it started. I worked in bike shops, on and off, from when I was 17 until 24. Through skateparks, I found a place where the industry needed some work and an opportunity to maybe make a difference.
Riding facilities in general are so under-developed in this country, from uplift cycling centres to bike lanes in cities, we needed to wise up. There’s a wealth of British cycling talent out there and very few facilities to let them reach their potential.
How did Vision Ramps come about?
Vision Ramps was born in 2011. It’s conception followed a series of random events which started for me in 2005…
I have cut about on bikes since I can remember, I got my first proper mountain bike when I was 12. My friend Paul Vallis taught me how to drop off curbs and I remember thinking it was the most fun ever. A couple years later when we’d shredded every curb in the mean streets of Penicuik, we took it to the woods. Over the next few years we created what would become ‘Penicuik trails’.
As these trails started to grow, I started to ride BMX more and more. With this new found interest in BMX came a new obsession with skateparks, I would travel all over the country with my friend Barry to ride Livi, Perth, Saltcoats, or any of the other rad little spots in Scotland. Eventually we thought, we need our own…
With the help of my Dad, we started to petition for our own wee skatepark in Penicuik. A couple years down the line and we had secured funding from Midlothian Council. They called upon legendary BMX trails rider Dave Sowerby, who was also an all round incredible digital designer, to design the park.
At the first design meeting for the park, Dave drove past our trails. His trails spot in Melville had recently been ploughed and he asked if he could start digging at ours. This is the BMX equivalent of Steve Pete asking if he can come help you build some trails. The answer was obviously yes!
A couple years later the skatepark in Penicuik was finally built. Well worth a visit too, Dave did the most incredible job. Ironically, just before it’s completion I moved out of Penicuik… great timing!
I moved to Edinburgh for University and here I met a group of riders that I rode and partied with for the most amazing few years. Among these riders was Scott ‘Shorty’ Malcolm. He asked me to get involved in some fundraising for Edinburgh’s first indoor skatepark. He introduced me to a dude called Ken Smith. Ken and his business partner Dougie Graham orchestrated these fundraisers and eventually had enough money to get the skatepark going.
In a premises in Ocean Terminal, over looking the Firth of Forth, a few of Edinburgh’s local BMXers volunteered to build a compact skatepark which was designed by Dave Sowerby. Among these volunteers was a cat called George Eccleston, as a fellow student at Edinburgh University, we had crossed paths already and rode together a fair bit.
The render for the Grit Orchestra set.
During this build, our friendship flourished. I can’t really describe how awesome this experience was, we had built our own hang out where we would spend almost all of our time for the next couple of years. After the park was finished George and myself started to work there. This proved to be quite a distraction from our education, and led to my decision to leave university, but it turned out OK I guess.
About a year later, one of the skatepark partners Dougie decided to open his own skatepark in East Kilbride. With a little more research and bringing the experience gained from building our first park, myself and George, led again by Dave Sowerby, built EKpark in East Kilbride.
At the time this was one of the most professionally constructed parks in the country, and got quite a bit of attention. A few weeks after we had finished the park, the phone rang. It was a dude from a concrete skatepark company from London who wanted us to build them a timber skatepark. We put a proposal together and agreed to build the park. During these negotiations he mentioned in passing, oh you are a Ltd. company aren’t you? We replied, we can be if you want us to be. We spent the next few weeks panicking together a company and that was it, Vision Ramps Ltd. was real.
Do you specialise in a certain material, or have a favourite?
We specialise in timber parks, but also make some wild metal contraptions, with the help of the mega talented Crawford Campbell. Concrete is also going to make an appearance in our portfolio this year so watch this space…
Photo by Fred Murray.
How many people make up Vision Ramps and what do they do?
Worth a first mention is Dave Sowerby. Without Dave there would be no Vision Ramps. As one of the company’s co-founders, he was the designer and team leader for our first few parks and taught George and I the basics of CAD and sketchup, our most important tools.
When we set up Vision Ramps, Dave decided not to take an official position within the company, instead focusing on building his reputation as one of the best BMX videographers in the world and his role as Creative Director at BSD Bike Company, but he continues to offer us valuable support.
George Eccleston is co-director. We split pretty much everything day to day, George does a lot of the accounting stuff which I’m very grateful for. Everything else, design work, customer relations, tendering, etc., we split 50/50.
Then we have Jake Walters, who has worked for us for four years now. He is a BMX rider from Huthwaite. We built a skatepark next to his house, he volunteered everyday and worked his ass off. We gave him a job right away. He’s potentially the best ramp builder out there just now.
Crawford Campbell handles the more complex metal fabrication projects we get involved with. He can make metal bend in crazy ways using just his hands, allowing us to build giant hamster wheels and other crazy contraptions, a few good examples of his stuff are in Kriss Kyle’s Kaleidoscope.
Then theres a network of really rad ramp builders we call on all the time, Lewis Scott, Sean “Chubbs” Mckay, Joerg Stucke, Graeme Gibson, Ryan Alcock, John Forrest and Matt Warren to name a few.
You’ve worked on some pretty big projects, how were you involved in:
Danny MacAskill’s Imaginate
Imaginate was a pretty big turning point in my life.
During my time in Edinburgh I met a pretty rad cat called Danny and we started riding together, he was a trials rider, which was a little awkward, but I soon got over it.
Before Vision Ramps, and between stints as a ski instructor, I worked in bike shops, and for a glorious few months had the pleasure of working beside Danny in a cool wee bike shop called MacDonald Cycles. It was here that our shared love for bikes, lycra, Judas Priest and YouTube flourished.
Eventually, Danny, Dave, George and I ended up in a flat together. During our time here Dave broke his leg riding and started filming the then ‘wee deal’ Danny Macaskill. I helped shoot various clips, whenever we had time; before work, lunch times or after work. Dave sculpted a masterpiece ‘April 2009’ and the wee deal fluked a few million views on the YouTube.
Then followed a flurry of amazing opportunities for Danny. A phone call from Ellen Degeneres was one of the most useless/hilarious ones. A sponsorship opportunity from Red Bull, however, was a little more interesting to him. This was the turning point for Danny, it allowed him to become a full time professional mountain bike rider and with this deal came the obligation, and privilege, to produce online ‘viral’ videos for Red Bull Media House.
Photo by Fred Murray.
‘Way Back Home’ another Dave Sowerby masterpiece, was the first of these Red Bull produced viral videos. Due to its success he was given a good budget to produce a concept video. After months of deliberation and half concepts, ‘Imaginate’ was born. Every creative bike rider out there has taken their pen, or mobile phone and rode it around a table pretending its a bike, finding lines through their coffee table skatepark or trail, this was the seed from which Imaginate started to grow.
Danny approached us and asked if myself and George would like to help out. We had a few skateparks under our belt at this point and had the confidence to take the project on.
After searching the UK for the perfect space to create this beast, we stumbled upon an empty warehouse while out riding in Glasgow one day. The old transport museum at Kelvinhall. It was in the middle of what looked like a refurbishment. We snuck in the back door for a snoop around, looked perfect. A week or so later we met with the facility manager a typically enthusiastic Glaswegian, and for some weird reason he thought it would be a great idea to let some punk bike riders trash his museum for 6 months. ‘Yaldi’.
I moved to Glasgow a week later.
We figured out a rough plan with Red Bull and Danny and started to build some random objects for Danny to ride on. The most fun few months of riding I’ve ever had followed. We had our own warehouse, a bit of money and endless ideas. Danny’s as fun to work with as to ride with, limitless enthusiasm, insanely creative ideas and complete disregard for your safety as he makes you try everything he does, being forced in to doing a loop the loop and dressing up as a toy soldier are all in my job role apparently.
Over the next few months we filled the place with jumps, blocks and an airbag. Danny learned an insane trick a week and a video started to come together. Add a tank, an F1 car, a 14ft loop the loop and a lick of paint from the talented Davey Mack and we were ready for Stu Thomson to come in and do his thing.
A pretty intense couple of months of filming followed. It was a rollercoaster; injuries, illness and some self inflicted stress hindered Danny’s progress. He smashed it though. 70 million views? We’ll take that.
Kriss Kyle’s Kaleidoscope
So in the spring of 2015 Red Bull UK approached us about a potential collaboration with pro BMX rider Kriss Kyle, a good friend of mine and George’s. We couldn’t say no. Best BMX rider on the planet and support from Red Bull, sounded like a good wee recipe for stunts.
Red Bull had some pretty serious ideas about budget for this one. They got RSA (Ridley Scott Associates) in to produce it. Yeah the same dude who made Alien, Blade Runner, The Martian and the first ever Apple Mackintosh commercial. Safe to say, we laughed out loud. They brought in Art director Ben Scott (no relation to Ridley) to direct the film.
We were brought in to realise Ben’s concepts, we worked with Kriss and Ben over 2 months to design a pretty strange looking wee skatepark.
Photo by Rutger Pauw.We managed the construction of the set and offered production support during the filming. We had a team of 10 that absolutely killed themselves for 8 weeks to build it. Shouts to Jake, Crawf, Joerg, Lewis, Alex, Ronald, Chubbs, Spenny Em and Scott.
Again it was a wild time, we built some ridiculously big contraptions, I think Kriss would agree that we tested him for sure. Kriss and Danny definitely share one amazing talent though, they can really accurately tell you what they can do, every set up was on the absolute limit of Kriss’ riding. Some set-ups took hours of attempts, but over time he would land it, perfectly.
It was a really short shoot time, 10 days in total. He had to do two tricks a day, with tens of thousands of pounds worth of camera equipment and lights to set up for each trick. A production crew of 30 people stressing around you is a weird atmosphere for a BMX rider from Stranraer. Again Kriss killed it. Super professional, just got the job done.
A few folk watched this one too. So thanks to them. Its on the Youtube if you haven’t seen it yet. It also opened some pretty big doors for us professionally, so thanks Red Bull UK and RSA.
Cirque Du Soleil
In November 2015 we received a seriously cool e-mail, I legitimately thought it was some kind of wind up. It was from a dude called Jean-Damien Climonet (JD), he works as a talent agent for Cirque Du Soleil, who are a circus based in Montreal, Canada. My parents introduced me to them when I was young, and I have been obsessed with them since! Myself and Danny would watch videos of theirs all the time in the bike shop.
I was however unaware that the company had just been valued at $3.5 billion and had 2500 employees in a giant Willy Wonkae-sque facility in Montreal, Canada.
JD had seen Kaleidoscope and wondered if we would be in to getting involved in the creation of a new Cirque Du Soleil show. Still in disbelief I said yes and a few Skype calls later, myself and George were on a plane to Montreal for our first creation meeting.
We designed a ramp set up over the next few months, and carried out a workshop at CDS with a few seriously talented BMX riders to see if it worked. It went rather well and they decided our set-up would become the finale to their show ‘Volta’. I saw this show premiere 2 years later in April 2017 under the big top in Montreal, it was pretty rad. Volta is on the road for the next ten years worldwide, so catch it if you can.
Since then we have become involved with two further projects for CDS, which we will put up on Instagram when we can.
Grit Orchestra Hydro Show featuring Danny Macaskill and Ali Clarkson.
During a trip to Argentina in 2014, while filming for Danny Macaskill’s ‘Epecuen’ film, myself and Danny were lying on a crash mat under the stars while our fixer for the trip Manuel cooked up 10 different meats on the BBQ.
Myself and Danny share a very similar taste when it comes to music, because of this its a rarity that there’s not music on while we’re hanging out, be it on the balcony of our flat, or by a random salt lake in Argentina. Some years before my dad Brian had introduced me to a Scottish musician, the late Martyn Bennett. His albums ‘Grit’ and ‘Bothy Culture’ became staples in my music collection. A song called ‘Blackbird’ was on one of my playlists.
Danny was super in to it and we thought it might fit well for the film. For a few reasons the song ended up not working for that film, Danny is super particular about the music in his films, one reason I think they are so popular.
The song went in to his top secret list of film ‘potentials’ and later that year while filming for ‘The Ridge’ the song came back to mind. It worked perfectly, Martyn himself is from Skye, meaning ‘Blackbirds’ huge Scottish sounds paired seamlessly with the Skye landscape.
The Ridge went down pretty well! Danny’s riding was ridiculous as standard and Stu Thomson’s editing was on point as always.
So, fast forward three years and Danny gets a call from Donald Shaw, director of Celtic Connections, a Celtic music festival based in Glasgow featuring celtic music from all over the world, 2018s festival featured something like 300 artists. Among these artists was the GRIT orchestra, who were performing some of Martyn Bennetts music.
Donald asked Danny if he would like to ride his bike during the show. Danny asked me about it, we both agreed it would be a rad thing to do, especially as our parents are such big Celtic Connections fans.
The venue was pretty nuts, the SSE Hydro in Glasgow. As the biggest indoor stage in Glasgow with a capacity of 13,000 it was a rather large space to fill. In the following weeks, myself, Danny and Donald developed the concept and stage design. Filling the role of creative director for the show was a scary one, but it ended up being one of the most rewarding things I have ever done.
With only 3 days to build the stage in the venue, and a day to tear it down after the show, we were up against it.
A 90ft x 30ft high plywood mountain was our backdrop, while a diamond shaped stage laden with rocks and tree trunks let Danny entertain the crowd up close. The mountain was used as a 3 layer projector screen which let us animate the show through various backdrops.
The show was a real battle to put together, Danny was in the later stages of rehab for a shattered knee cap. The show was cancelled in December two months before the show, then reinstated a couple days later. We decided to take the pressure off Danny we would get Ali Clarkson, Danny’s trials riding team mate with Drop and Roll Tour, to help out.
Together they put on a rad show. After arriving on the stage via rowing boat, Danny managed to manoeuvre through the obstacles with ridiculous ease, despite the injury restricting his movement so much he couldn’t even pedal standing up.
Ali stepped in and did all the flips and spins you would expect from a Drop and Tour show, pleasing the kids and adults alike. Danny rounded off the show by cycling up the steep slopes of the mountain to the base of the inaccessible pinnacle, before scaling the ‘In-pin’ with his bike on his back, which seemed just as scary as on the In-pin itself.
Danny, Ali and all the Vision boys behind the scenes killed it. The crowd were stoked.
What did you have to sacrifice to get to this stage?
Ah, I wouldn’t say anything really, it’s flipping hard to run your own business sometimes. It’s also the best feeling ever. We have worked with some of the coolest companies in the world, Red Bull, Gopro and Cirque Du Soleil among the highlights for sure. We meet rad people all the time that like to ride bikes and even some that don’t.
Did you have day jobs that you had to give up?
I was a ski instructor before this, miss the mountains a little sometimes, but now when I’m in them, I’m not working so I enjoy them even more.
Are you working alongside to make ends meet?
No, Vision has been George’s and my income for the last 7 years. We do random little projects sometimes which are outwith our normal scope, bespoke music festival stages for example, but this is for fun rather than to subsidise our work.
How make or break is the company for you?
It’s all we know now. We have our own skatepark on the horizon though, which is exciting.
Have you done any work previously that helped with Vision Ramps?
Yeah, working in a skatepark helped for sure. Here we learned what skateparks needed, both to set up and to function. I think that’s valuable insight we can give our skatepark clients. We’ve also just started working with the GB Olympic ski and snowboard team, my background in skiing helped tie this all together.
How did you learn what you needed to know to get your own company off the ground and the work coming in?
Google man, great wee website. You just need a goal, everything else is on google. Everything.
Where next for Vision Ramps? How do you plan to go about getting extra helpers etc. etc.?
So we have some cool shit going on just now. We are working on two new projects with Cirque Du Soleil, as with most of our projects though it’s hush hush for now. Our first project with them ‘Volta’ started touring the world last year, that was a cool moment. Catch it in a city near you soon.
We are also talking with Red Bull about a couple projects, one which drops this year with a wee Scottish lad, I’ll keep you guessing which one.
Then our most exciting/scary new thing is opening our own park in Glasgow this year called the Loading Bay. We’ll be making an announcement about this in a few weeks time.
With these new projects comes some new talent. Cain Martin (@caincreates) is a rad digital designer/bmx rider who has been doing a bunch of animation stuff for us recently which is really opening doors for us on the creation/ planning side of our more adventurous video projects.
We also plan on expanding the team a little for Vision Ramps and the Loading Bay, so if you’re rad and love bikes get in touch at [email protected]
Anybody to thank at this point in the Vision Ramps journey? Long suffering spouses/parents/friends?
Of course! Lots!
Our parents who have been awesome!! Its a weird wee job to support your sons through. My wee sis Jen! Dave Sowerby for starting it all. Chick Mailey who just helps with everything, all the time! Danny Macaskill for opening a few doors along the way and continuing to give us the opportunity to work with him now he’s a big deal, and for just being all round rad guy. Duncan Shaw at Drop and Roll Tour for taking us round the world to build ramps and ride bikes. Anyone that has passed on our name. Jack Plowman, Tom Sanders, Ben Leyden, (loads more!)
All the rad people across the UK that are taking the risk of opening indoor skateparks for all of us to enjoy.
The dudes at the big companies that let us do rad things… Matt Bhol at Red Bull UK, Jen Long at GoPro, Jean Damien Climonet, Marie-Helene Martineau and Germain Guilimot at Cirque du Soleil.
