Vía Augusta · Cycling documentary

Challenge

Cartagena City Council tendered a documentary about the cycling experience along the Vía Augusta, the road the Romans built from Cádiz to the Pyrenees and which today is a bike route crossing half of Spain. We won it and delivered it end to end: research, script, direction, shoot, music, post and delivery.

There was a trap in the brief. A tourism film is easy to solve with pretty shots, a drone and a voiceover listing monuments. Nobody remembers or shares that. We proposed something else: a film with a lead character, an arc and an authored tone, where the heritage shows up because it happens to someone, not because it has to be shown.

What we did

Four months of pre-production before a camera came out. Historical and cartographic research on the road, digital scouting of the sections with real potential, a geo-referenced map of sites and landmarks, and a search for real people whose lives are still tied to the road. Out of that came the script, with Lucía as the lead — a traveller riding the route — and the archetypes she meets along the way: the stonemason, the potter, the boy repeating his grandfather’s legend.

We narrate in “future voice”: Lucía tells the journey from afterwards, already back. That gives the film its introspective tone and lets the voice say what the images can’t. Before shooting we built a sound mock-up with voiceover and atmosphere over key scenes to validate the pacing. If the pacing doesn’t hold in the mock-up, it won’t hold in the film.

Alongside that, the part nobody sees: 45 scenes broken down one by one, and permits. Shooting the Vía Augusta means requesting access from the Andalusian regional government for the Itálica archaeological site, from Castilla-La Mancha for Libisosa, from the Tarragona Film Office, from the councils along the Ruta Bética Romana, and from Cartagena’s culture, tourism and heritage departments. Each site with its own file, deadlines and conditions.

Twelve shooting days from 22 July 2025, organised in geographical blocks so we never rode the same road twice, with a fixed six-person in-house crew. In Cartagena: the Roman theatre at dawn with empty tiers, the Molinete at sunset with a drone, the Santa Florentina market in full swing, the Ruta de las Fortalezas with the sea behind, the ARQVA museum, the Casa de la Fortuna and the milestone on Plaza Bastarreche. Schedules pinned to the light: 6:00 call for sunrise, last block wrapping at 22:30.

In post: edit, colour grade, sound design, an original score and an animated closing map, plus the 2’ short cut and the two reels from the same footage. Four pieces from a single shoot.

Result

A 14’25” documentary in 4K delivered in September 2025 and premiered publicly in Cartagena that November. It is the longest and most authored piece in our catalogue: fourteen minutes that hold up without a single tourist caption.

Credits

• Client: Cartagena City Council · Tourism Office
• Funding: European Union – NextGenerationEU · Spanish Recovery Plan
• Production company: On White (Seville) — full production
• Shoot: 12 days · Cartagena, Itálica (Santiponce), Libisosa (Lezuza), Ruta Bética Romana and Tarragona
• Crew: director, DoP, art director and writer, producer, camera assistant, production assistant
• Post: edit, colour grade, sound design, original score, animated map
• Deliverables: 14’25” documentary · 2’ short cut · 2 reels
• Year: 2025