"12 O'Clock Boys" Documents Dirt-Bike Riders in Baltimore Clip: "12 O'Clock Boys" A preview of a scene from a film directed by Lotfy Nathan about the people who ride dirt bikes on the streets of Baltimore. They gather usually once a week on dirt bikes of all varieties, cruising down the road, engines revved, wheelies popped as they turn the streets of Baltimore into an urban playground. They are called the 12 o'clock boys, and they are the subject of a new documentary of the same name opening Friday. They are also seen as a menace by some in the city's Police Department and as a danger by some residents. For the film, the director Lotfy Nathan documented the group on and off for several years, ultimately framing its adventures through the eyes of one young rider, Pug, who admires the group so much he wants to join. The rides are seen from handlebars or from overhead. There are hand-held shots and virtuosic, slow-motion footage of wheelies so vertical they reach 12 o'clock on a virtual dial. Mr. Nathan tried to capture the riders" exhilaration, even with sometimes dangerous methods. "Looking back, I probably wouldn't put myself in a lot of the situations that I did," he said during an interview in New York. I was exploring the city, and there was an adrenaline rush with the whole thing. "12 O'Clock Boys" is a documentary by Lotfy Nathan about Baltimore dirt-bike aficionados who gather once a week to ride en masse. Noah Rabinowitz/12 O'Clock Boys The film began as a project in 2007, while he was a student at Maryland Institute College of Art. He witnessed the riders a few times, saw them as a mystery and thought he might film the effort of finding them. "I just went out onto the street and asked, "Who are these guys?" As soon as I asked, people had something to say about the group. He was initially intimidated. "I'd heard all of these speculative things, like people saying that they're drug dealers or a gang or something like that," Mr. Nathan said, but added, "They were really just a bunch of kids showing off and trying to have fun." Mr. Nathan wanted to record the aesthetic quality of the ride experience, and that goal morphed into a larger story about how the riders feel they are perceived and how some of them see riding as an alternative to drug dealing or other criminal paths. The director Lotfy Nathan. Oscilloscope Laboratories "When I first started explaining the project to people, I wanted to bring on board, I would say "we." But there really wasn't a "we" for a long time. It was just me. Friends helped out occasionally, but the turning point came when he contacted a faction, the Wildout Wheelie Boyz, whose videos have a large audience on YouTube. One member, Steven, helped Mr. Nathan get a better vantage point. "I took him to the action, showed him who to record and a different way of recording," said Steven, who would not disclose his last name in an interview or in the film out of identity-theft concerns, speaking by phone from Baltimore. He drove Mr. Nathan in a truck among the bikes and encouraged him to thrust himself farther into the action. One such effort involved Mr. Nathan's hanging out the window while Steven held on to him. "Our footage looks like it's from a bike," Steven said. It's raw, and it's upfront ground zero. As the project grew and added crew members, the shots became more elaborate and artful. The cameraman John Benam brought his experience with National Geographic Television and Film, as well as a camera that could record a high number of frames per second to create dreamlike slow-motion images. Dirt-bike riders on the streets of Baltimore. Using bungee cords, the crew strapped Mr. Benam inside a metal cage in the back of a truck while, Steven navigated the vehicle among the bikers. But that wasn't the only challenge. There was also the police. In one sequence, helicopters hover and patrol cars monitor a group ride but refrain from a high-speed engagement. While the riders" activity - obstructing traffic, say - might be illegal, the police, the movie claims, have been told not to engage in high-speed chases. Asked for an assessment of the riders, Eric Kowalczyk, director of media relations for the Baltimore Police Department, said: "If people want to ride dirt bikes, if they are registered - which they have every opportunity to do - they're licensed, they're insured and they're riding in a safe manner, we're absolutely going to support the lawful activities of any group around any associations." Mr. Nathan certainly had his own run-ins with the law. Two bicyclists perform in tandem the signature move of the dirt-bike riders in "12 O'Clock Boys," a documentary by Lotfy Nathan. "Dealing with the police, I had to be really adaptive," he said. One day, I would play a naïve college kid who didn't know any better. The next day, maybe I would say I was with HBO documentary films. Mr. Nathan and Steven received court summonses for "filming illegal activity," but Mr. Nathan said they were thrown out. Biking-group dangers were catapulted into the spotlight in New York City last fall when motorcyclists chased down and beat a driver after he struck one of them, and an ex-policeman and a rider in the film recall the death of a rider in a street accident. Mr. Nathan said he had mixed feelings about the 12 o'clock boys. He spent time filming a family who lost a relative to an accident with the riders, and, he said, it gave him a different perspective. "The dangers of the group itself was always very apparent to me, and I would feel conflicted about it," he said. I never wanted to make an issue film. I wanted to make something that felt personal. He said he filmed interviews with the police and city council members as well as with those who find the dirt bike riders a public threat, but that footage did not make it in. Ultimately, I felt that stuff is understood. You can watch the news and get the police perspective. He includes sound bites from radio shows and television news that offer criticism, but in interviews, he decided to focus on the riders" lives. That was more valuable to an audience, because it is harder to find out.