Hey, I'm Levi Allen. I'm an adventure filmmaker.
This is Florence, the adventure van. The idea of living and traveling in a
vehicle and kind of having this like adventure platform that you could take
places definitely came from when I was a kid. My dad had a VW Westfalia van and
we'd take that on surf trips. My first kind of adventure vehicle was the
classic small pickup truck and the car, but the ideal in my head was always
moving towards like a larger van, expedition platform. For me the value of
a vehicle has always been, "where can you go and what can you do with it?" Was kind
of searching for about a year, stumbled on some small used car
dealership. I'd had just enough cash to buy the van. The first like six months that I
lived in the van was just like bare cargo van with like some plywood and a sketchy
foam mattress. I realized this dream I had of like outfitting it to
perfection was not actually conducive for what I was trying to do at that time
just make a film so I had to simplify my vision. Make it sort of
accommodating, but a majority of the time's going to be spent outside of it
anyway. It's going to be the home base so let's just be okay with how it is right
now and be grateful for a roof over my head and move on from there.
Okay so my van is a 2004 Mercedes Sprinter. It's the longest wheelbase and
highest height model. One of my actual favorite upgrades of the van that I've
done so far, one of the most expensive ones, was actually to the outside and that's these
knobbier BFG KO2 tires I put on. They're kind of a little bit overkill for a van
but it helps make up for how much this van doesn't do well off-roading, but I
like taking it up like mountain roads and stuff like that. So in stage one of
the van I was living in the van in Vancouver and I needed it to be as
stealth as possible, but now the van is kind of moving into stage two of its
life where I'm using it kind of on adventure productions and I'm not
living in cities as much so I'm kind of getting ready to morph it more into
where it's more obvious that it's an adventure rig. So I'm thinking about
putting some windows in it, thinking about giving it a paint job, a roof rack,
and all those kind of things, but that's kind of further down the road. Right now
it's still kind of in a bit of a stealth mode where it's hard to tell someone lives in it.
What I like about this is right when I open the door I try to have all the bags
that I want to access for filming within arm's reach of kind of the door here
because I found I was getting in and out a lot when I had the gear further back
into the van. So I try to keep the most necessary filmmaking stuff kind of as
close and within arm reach. Each one of like my bags I try to make sure that
oh people are going to hate that I don't have lens caps on but, oh well. Yeah
I try to just kind of keep everything in the same places and that just really
helps keep things organized, but then also here this is where I, it's actually
it's a, I mean it's a cooler, but I keep my food in it so this is also where
I'll kind of take this out and cook off it. This is a table that folds in the
middle and changes height. Often what I'll do is leave this here in the van
kind of up against the wall here so I can prep my camera gear inside.
Underneath in back against the wall I've got my inverter, which is just a 750 watt
inverter. Back here I've just got two golf cart batteries that are isolated
from the main battery. One day I'll get solar, but that day is not today. In here
I just have like basic slacklining gear and things like that.
I've got ropes around and in the van, which comes surprisingly helpful especially if
you ever get the van stuck. The walls kind of look sort of finished and I
essentially just took slats off pallets and just like fastened them to the wall.
This is super bare-bones purely just for the aesthetics of making it look
slightly finished and I'm a big fan of the cabin vibe. My dream's to have like
that cedar tongue-in-groove that's become a little bit trendy with
van stuff. I just love the way it looks and I think it looks like a cabin, but if
we look on the roof or anything like that like it's I just really threw it
together in about a week and I'm surprised it's kind of lasted this long.
Over here just like a really basic light LED strip that I threw up in there. Kind
of up here on the bed area we've just got like a six inch foam
mattress that is about a queen size. Like this is where I have my clothes just in
a duffel back here. That's where I keep my clothes. This is one of my camera bags
that I take out. It's really nice to have a place for everything to go and this is
kind of like the generic catch-all because sometimes
you just need a place to put things because when you start driving stuff
just goes everywhere in the van. It's like super basic in the sense that
there's no shelving, there's no anything like that. Definitely the dream one day
is to kind of have those shelves at this height all around and add a bit more
like kind of permanent storage areas, but for now it's been serving me really well
to just like have everything in like cases like this. So stuff like my monopod
and tripods and things like that that I'm using all the time, these don't
necessarily like have a place so they kind of get just left around so there's
like stuff like my motion control time-lapse ladder like it's fantastic
but it's kind of a pain in the butt to pull in and store somewhere so I often
will just put it on the ground here. Things like my hiking poles. And then up
here we've got upgraded captain chairs of some kind that I pulled out of just
an SUV in the record lot. Someone made this for me, gave it to me. I always say
life's better when you make stuff. I also got my sailboat. I really like sailing
and this is kind of like my land yacht so I like picturing it that we're going
on some sailing adventures. So the back is the part that I'm most
embarrassed about it's my messy garage but I put in this door, off one of the
Sprinter vans in an auto wrecker. I got one with a window because my other door
was bent and janky. Inside here, this is kind of just where the catch-all of
everything goes. The bed structure itself is just a basic 2x4 frame raised off the
side ledges of the van and then kind of like anchored in through the walls. My favorite
sport to do myself is actually mountain biking, being able to carry bikes inside
the van is pretty important to me. I left a bit of a space in-between where the
bed ends and where the end of the van is because I thought I might want to prop
bikes up in here. I'm realizing I don't do that as much as I thought I would so
I might actually move the bed back in the next version of the build. The dream
would be to have like a big drawer that could pull out on this side and then
have like a water tank and kind of other things on that side but just haven't
gotten there yet.
We don't realize but we're like constantly telling ourselves stories
about our own life about what we can and cannot do, where we came from and the
opportunities that are ahead of us. Try to find out what those are so that way
you can actually challenge them because once you like see a different way of
going about it, it's weird to say it, but it like makes the hardships fun like
suffering is completely optional. Hardships, barriers in life, conflict, all
that stuff is all a guarantee. Every little piece of that like you don't have
control over those things, but suffering through them and like just drudging
through them, that's totally a choice. I don't feel the right to tell someone
else that they have to change their perspective, but I truly just feel that
suffering's optional. Hardships are a guaranteed. You can just find so much joy
in overcoming them and that's like so much fun.
There's something like really liberating about knowing what the worst case
scenario is and like visualizing that in your mind, keeping that aware as you're trying to
like make these decisions in your life. And for me some of those nights spent in
the van sleeping on the cold metal floor of the van and I just remember some of
those nights of just feeling like if this is the worst like this isn't so bad. That
just like changed my perspective entirely where I just felt so grateful
to have a tube of metal to sleep in and that just like has shifted the entire
perspective of how I'm making decisions for the future. I just know if everything
goes to crap I can just sleep in a van out on a forest service road. I can hit reset.