1) Start/Stop Button Anxiety

How many times did your press it? Once? Twice? Do you feel lucky, punk? Do ya?

When the button to start filming is the same as the button to stop filming on your helmet cam, there’s always that worry that you’ve just shot 18 minutes of dull chair lift ride, and missed those powder turns on the one bluebird day you’ll have all year.

2) Snow, Mud, or Other Crud On The Lens

The joy of knowing you’ve just got that future viral hit where your mates tail whip turned into a nuclear slam, only to find out that your helmet cam was caked in mud, and that biblical slam will just go down in A&E folk lore.

3) Floor cam

At least when there’s crap on the lens you can blame your mates, a furious mother nature, or bad fortune. But when you got home and realise you’ve angled your helmet cam towards the floor and a days worth of footage is lost, you want the world to swallow you up.

4) The Designated Filmer

A bit like being the bass player in a band, as a filmer you do the hard work without which there is no film, but it’s your mates on screen that are getting the virtual knickers thrown at them.

You’re making your mates stars, and you’re just the staff. And it gets worse if you try to wrestle some of the glory away. Dare to put a ‘Filmed by…’ credit on your edit, and you’re sure to anger the trolls who’ll soon be reaching for their Factor 50 Angry Comment book.

5) Selfie Stick

You invest in a pro-level hand held POV stick to get those fluid looking follow-shots, only for absolutely everybody to refer to it as a Selfie Stick. Worse is when your Aunty Jean inboxes you asking to borrow your Selfie Stick for the Women’s Institute trip to York. Some people…

6) The Eternal Pack Horse

Along with your hand crafted, brushed titanium selfie stick, as the designated camera man you always end up having to cary a backpack full of equipment around with you.

Of course, as soon as your riding buddies see your bag, you immediately become a dumping ground for all the stuff they don’t want to carry, including water bottles, hotel key cards, mobile phones, and that French Dresser that Weird Mike just can’t leave the house without.

7) Kids On The Jumps

You’re finally up the hill or in the park, you’re about to drop in and get that footage of your buddy hitting that huge booter. The light is spot on, you’ve got the perfect angle, and… and… and then there’s some grom’ just sitting on the feature, eating a bag of Quavers.

Like this isn’t bad enough, you know his furious dad is seconds away, ready to go nuts because you were riding in the same postcode of his irritating little sprog.

8) Descent From The Rats

Akin to a farmer who looks like your man from Time Team shouting “Gerroff my farm”, should you dare to set up at the side of a feature to film a future internet melting trick, it’s never long before a bunch of park rats descend to give you abuse.

And the worst part is, you know that as soon as you’ve gone, their own baggy clothed filmer will be there, in your exact spot, getting footage of his own.

9) Photographic Sabotage

You’d think photographers would be kindred spirits of the filmer, but these aggy art house wannabes just love walking into your shot. Come on guys, we’re playing for the same team here!

10) On Your Knees

Ah, the glamour of being a filmer. Your shot may well perfectly capture the golden light of sunset bursting through the trees and lighting up the sides of the mountain in a scene that would make Albert Bierstadt envious, but the reality is, you’re probably kneeling a gutter full of eight week old dog piss and cheese-vomit to get it.

11) Missing the shot

Your friend has been trying to hit a monster trick all day. It’s the closer of an edit, and it’s been a real labour of love. You’ve both been at it for hours trying to nail this footage and finally, just as the sun’s going down, he nails it.

And somehow… for some reason, you manage to miss it. You fell asleep. You were distracted by a passing bear. You were abducted by aliens. There’s never a big enough excuse to stem your former fiends anger.

12) RIP Battery

All too often, your homies will take so long to get their run right that the curse of the iPhone will hit. Whatever camera you’re using, your battery will only last so long. Without power, you’re nothing. Take a spare. Take two. Take them all. No batteries, no film. No film, no viral fame. Miley Cyrus won’t date you then, will she?

13) Operation Thankless

You get in, stoked from your day of filming and you’re eager to get to your footage uploaded. Every time you’re out filming, you kid yourself that it’ll magically happen in the blink of an eye.

However, back in your room, with your laptop open, the realisation that this is going to take two hours hits. What seems like a lifetime later and you’re good to go.

14) Good To Go You say?

Hang one a second! Good to go? Now you’ve uploaded your rushes, you have to sit through hours and hours of – let’s be blunt here – rubbish, before you get to the goods. Even if you’re out filming the words best, you still have to sit though hours of crap to get just a few seconds of usable footage.

15) Your Friends Suck

You’ve grown old uploading your footage, and sitting through the hours and hours of riding awaiting those gems that will get the internet stoked on your film. And then the sad reality hits that you’re friends aren’t Danny Hart or Nicholas Müller. In fact, you’re friends are terrible.

16) Wild Goose Chases

Despite the fat you know they’re woeful, your mates insist that, at one point, they dropped a steezy tail whip, or a super stylish Mellon grab. You sit there and trawl though six hours of footage three times in a bid to find this mythical creature. Never will you hate a human more.

17) ‘WARNING: A Fatal Error has Occurred’

After you’ve spent an eternity uploading, viewing, and piecing together your footage in a rough edit, you move your cursor gingerly towards the ‘save project’ button only for your world to fall apart. With a sickening ‘dumph’ noise, you screen suddenly goes black.

Your computer has crashed, and taken with it hours and hours of work. You prey to gods you don’t even believe in for a miracle that will bring it back. But this is terminal. It’s always terminal. Time to start again. Or, more likely, spend the rest of the evening crying.

18) Timbuk-three?

Sick of staring at the same four walls as you slowly edit your future masterpiece together, you decide to take your set-up to the bar. After all, that’s where your riding pals are already four pints deep, so why shouldn’t you join in?

Here’s why: Because it’s inevitable that some dork will come over and ask ‘What processor are you running there mate?’ or ‘what lens did you shoot that on?’ or some other painfully nerdy question.

It doesn’t matter what you answer, they’ve got something better, newer, faster, and 18,000 times more expensive in their set up. Console yourself in the knowledge that their laptop crashes, just like yours. They all do. Laptops hate us.

19) The Unbanable Song

With your banger footage in the can, you want to find the right soundtrack to set it to. However, all of the good stuff has these annoying legal rights attached to it, and the internet wizards at YouTube know when you’ve just ripped Bangarang and whacked it on. Finding an unbanable song can take longer that the search for the wholly grail.

20) Lost in Music

When you’ve finally found the right, suitably obscure song, you copy the pro’s and edit to the music. In doing so, you hear that song something in the region on 8,000 times a day.

By the time you’re done, not only do you hate the song, you’re convinced it’ll be the soundtrack to your inevitable Toblerone-fuelled breakdown.

21) ‘Song?’

Having put your edit on line, you wake up the next day to find your inbox full of notifications from YouTube. You’ve had 18,435,685 comments. You think you’re an internet demi-god. You rush to your laptop, only to realise ever single one is somebody monosyllabically asking ‘Song?’.

22) “Needs More Dutch Tilt”

Your edit done and up online and it’s time to reap those sweet, sweet rewards. Only, instead of praise (and aside from the above ‘song?’ requests) you get some dudes desperate to critique your work.

And by ‘critique’ we mean rip it to shreds. “Could use more slow-motion’ reads one, directly before another insisting that you’ve used too much slow motion. You’d be annoyed if it wasn’t for the fact you do it to every other film maker online yourself.

23) The March Of Technology

After spending yeas learning your craft, getting just the right angles, filming in just the perfect light, spending hours editing your rushes into the perfect film that even sort of pleases the internets meanest spirited trolls, somebody comes along and invents a camera and an app that will make your edits for you while you enjoy a post ride beer with your pals. Shhh! Don’t tell anybody. If we all keep it quiet, they’ll think we’re geniuses!

TomTom’s Bandit Action Cam, one of the most user-friendly on the market, is available now. Read our first look review of the camera or Win a mountain biking or wintersports holiday in Whistler courtesy of TomTom Bandit.

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