LeBron James x Canyon Bikes – Find Your Freedom

Two years after LeBron James invested in Canyon, the brand wanted a film about what a bike actually gives you. Not speed, not spec: freedom, and the way it lets you cross the lines your circumstances draw around you.

The through line was his own childhood in Akron. Director FILFURY put James on the stoop of the house he grew up in, and built the film outward from there.

The house is in Akron, Ohio. The shoot was in Los Angeles. And the point of the scene was not a house that looked similar, it was that house, because the whole emotional argument of the film rests on the audience believing they are looking at where he actually came from.

Synapse scanned LeBron's actual childhood home in Akron and rebuilt it as a real-time environment. The scanned house was played on the volume at LA Center Studios, so the stoop James sat on carried the geometry, proportions and detail of the real one rather than a set dresser's approximation.

Because the environment was live in Unreal, the surrounding world could evolve through the film without a location move, holding the idea that the same rider keeps finding new ground.

Find Your Freedom launched on 31 July 2024, marking two years since James's thirty million dollar investment in Canyon through LRBR Ventures.