Sheffield Doc/Fest 10: TIME TRIAL: Hypnotic Perspective From The Saddle (& Interview With Filmmaker Finlay Pretsell)

All the different coloured jerseys of the Tour De France have been worn by only one British cyclist and that’s David Millar. It’s an impressive record and a great hook for a filmic profile on the athlete. Finlay Pretsell’s mesmerising Time Trial follows Millar as he races to the end of his career but it’s no hagiography.

Time Trial review

Taking place after Millar’s doping scandal, there’s the risk of being sensationalistic but Time Trial isn’t that either. Rather, Pretsell’s vision for his road cyclist film is a stunning kaleidoscope of sound and image that fully immerses the viewer into what it’s like to be in the races. It helps that the filmmaker himself has had experience with professional cycling. His shrewd understanding on how to capture the sport for the screen is fully realised. Time Trial is virtual reality without the headset.

Naturally, the immersion does require some introspection from Millar we’re following so we’re introduced to the man with a talking head. He’s completely dejected, his posture and facial expressions displaying the difficulty of baring his soul. He speaks of completing four Tour de France’s but admitting that he only wanted to do one. “I made mistakes, I doped, I cheated. But that’s not me. That’s part of me.” He’s self-critical, and critical of the sport, to an extent that the honesty and frankness is somewhat refreshing.

What’s more refreshing about Time Trial is the original framework in which it tells a story of cycling. We delve heavily into the minutiae of the sport. We hear the conversations, mundane and profound, that this world class racer has with others on the track. The exhilarating first-person perspective for large stretches of the race could convince any skeptic to pick up the sport if only to enjoy the unique serenity of openly travelling at high speeds around gorgeous landscapes. The synchronous ambience of nature and humanity are recorded through closely placed cameras around the bikes and the cyclist.

Pretsell enters surrealist territory when he starts playing with time and music. Slow motion is effectively employed in conjunction with inexplicable experimental instrumentals. Painterly images take precedence on screen during these moments as opposed to the realism of the rest of the film. Above all, these brilliantly unorthodox scenes represent the mercurial mind-set of David Millar post-suspension. Time Trial is hypnotic and elegantly put together – that’s especially remarkable for a documentary about a disgraced man. It may be the ultimate cyclists’ movie.

Interview with Finlay Pretsell

I spoke to Finlay Pretsell about the journey from the pitch to premiere journey at the Doc/Fest, the cinematic appeal of the film and the reception it’s had from professional cyclists.

Musanna Ahmed for Film Inquiry: As I understand, Time Trial was pitched at Sheffield.

Finlay Pretsell: Oh yes.

Can you tell me about the journey from pitch to premiere?

Finlay Pretsell: It was a long journey. We came to Sheffield in 2012, to the MeetMarket, and pitched it to loads of different broadcasters and then decided we were never gonna go with any broadcaster. We decided to fund it via other means, which was a good and a bad thing, but the experience got the message out about the film.

You have a distinct vision for this film. It’s a very original cycling film. Did that make it a hard or easy sell?

Finlay Pretsell: It was always a hard sell and still is. Everybody would be wanting some conflict between David, the main character, and somebody else but there wasn’t such conflict – that would have been a fabrication. I think what people also struggled with was thinking of a film with one single guy. It was a challenge to see that as a longer film in a way. It was considered a risk.

How about selling the idea of a film to the man himself, David Millar?

Finlay Pretsell: I made a film many years ago, a 12-minute short, called Standing Start which was about Craig MacLean, an Olympic cyclist on a velodrome. I made sure David got a copy of this by hook or by crook because I wanted him to be potentially involved in Time Trial. That was about 10 or 11 years ago. He saw Standing Start and we arranged to meet. I said, “Do you fancy doing something similar to this short film but in a longer piece about road cycling?” He was up for it. He has a vision on how he comes across, and what the potential is of what we could do with the film, so he went along with it.

That’s interesting because in the talking heads, he clearly is dispirited. How did he feel about telling all for the camera?

Finlay Pretsell: He was good about it. I think when he watches himself now he finds it quite difficult to view himself in that way but I think he wasn’t ever precious about how we made the film. He was always quite interested in doing something different instead of something run-of-the-mill where people would be talking about how good of a cyclist he was and what he could have been and what he could have done to make things better. He was keen to see my vision and put full trust in what I wanted to do.

I can see that because he’s so frank and honest and that must have been the result of a strong trust between the two of you.

Finlay Pretsell: Yeah, definitely. It wasn’t easy with us both, you know. We had our difficulties all the way through and over 10 years you grow up, you change, you have stronger ideas about certain things and people. That gets in the way sometimes. [laughs]

You really zoom into the world of cycling for a perspective that many people won’t have seen the sport through before. We listen to the sort of conversations they have when cycling and we see it all from a first-person perspective, to speak of a couple of examples. What were you aiming to achieve by capturing these fine details of the sport?

Finlay Pretsell: The main thing for me was to try and transport that experience to the screen, to show people what it takes to do that sport. Cyclists I believe will enjoy it but I think even people who don’t watch cycling will get it and understand what it is. You hear about Armstrong, Wiggins, Froome and, as a non-sports person, you can kind of understand why they do that. They’ve got fame, money, the will to win, etc. Somebody like David doesn’t have any of that and that’s something that people haven’t seen either.

You achieved that through heavily immersive sight and sound in conjunction. Can you tell us about the sound, both the music and the ambient soundscapes?

Finlay Pretsell: John Sampson or CJ Mirra, as he likes to be called, and Dan Deacon, the American composer, worked beautifully well together. It was a seamless collaboration despite John being in London and Dan based in Baltimore. The sound is another character in a way. You never hear it like that watching cycling on television. It’s a sport on TV, you watch for who wins and who loses, and who cheats and doesn’t cheat. So, getting the ambient sound was part of the immersion for capturing the experience of cycling and transporting the viewer. We experimented over many years by changing microphones and placing them on different parts of the bikes and bodies.

I imagine a big part of the decision not to go with broadcast is because this is a film clearly meant to be seen in the cinema, seeing the way you utilise image and sound.

Finlay Pretsell: Totally. I think it will work on a small screen too with headphones or a good speaker but we always imagined it for the theatre. I worked with Martin Radich, he shot the film, and we spoke a lot about how we can create immersion for one room with a large amount of people. The soundtrack is so big too!

Were there any existing cinematic influences in creating the aesthetic?

Finlay Pretsell: Nah it’s pure original. [laughs] Not really though but I think maybe someone like Jørgen Leth who made really interesting experimental films as well as cycling films. Herzog is also a huge inspiration to me but this is nothing like a Herzog film. I’m really forgetful so if I see something I love, it disappears. To mention pitching again, people love references but I could never think about that and I don’t know if that’s just because I’m forgetful.

It did remind me a little bit of another Scottish documentary…

Finlay Pretsell: Careful. [laughs]

The one about the Scottish singer who sung A Girl Like You…

Finlay Pretsell: Oh yeah, The Possibilities are Endless, about Edwyn Collins.

That’s the one!

Finlay Pretsell: I saw that actually, yeah. I saw that when they pitched it many years and we did talk about it. It has a similar immersion of image and sound.

You’re in Sheffield and there’s lots of good alternate reality programming going on. I feel that this film is suitable for virtual reality. Was there any conversation, or any ongoing talks, about adapting Time Trial for the VR format?

Finlay Pretsell: No. I remember we talked about 360-degree cameras and that was just… that was many years ago and technology has come a long way since then. I like the idea of something that could sit in a gallery or some other installation setting and I think it could work but I just wanted to make the one film in this one theatrical way.

Besides David himself, have you had feedback from other professional cyclists?

Finlay Pretsell: A couple. Adam Blythe, professional cyclist from Yorkshire, watched a couple of clips a few years ago and was very excited about it. David is keen about professionals watching it because he thinks that it gets across exactly what it’s like in one of these races. From his point of view, it may be biased but somebody independent of him, Dutch pro cyclist Laurens ten Dam, just watched it. He did a whole set of Instagram stories saying, “This is the film to watch if you want to know what it’s like to be in a race.” He said he was laughing his head off but also completely depressed and terrified by the whole thing.

Sounds like your film is to cyclists what Spinal Tap was to rock stars.

Finlay Pretsell: Yeah, exactly! [laughs]

Since this film took many years to make, is there anything else you’ve worked on recently or working on?

Finlay Pretsell: I just made a film called Norfolk which I co-produced with Time Trial cinematographer Martin Radich. It’s a fictional drama made in 2015. I’ve also co-produced various other films but unfortunately didn’t make a short film in between my other shorts and this film. I would have liked that but this became all-consuming. It’s a massive passion project but it also took over everything in my life. [laughs] Not that it should do that, but I think it should take over you.

When a film takes over to you to that extent, do you feel at the end of it that you’re done with the subject matter or do you want to continue exploring the cycling world?

Finlay Pretsell: I do have the intention of exploring something related to cycling if not within the world of cycling necessarily. Professional cycling is an impenetrable place, getting all that access was exhausting. It’s difficult to tell a story in those constraints and can be difficult to tell a story in a different way. It’s more of the human condition I’m interested in exploring than cycling itself now.

Time Trial will be released in UK cinemas on 29th June 2018. To keep up with the dates of screenings elsewhere, click here.

Film Inquiry would like to thank Finlay Pretsell for his time and insight.

Doc/Fest 10 is a series of combined review and interview features for ten films seen at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival 2018.  You can view the rest of the features by clicking here.