The Berrics Push Editing Contest

There is a contest that was put on by a skate company called The Berrics. The contest, called the Push Edit, asked those participating to download some footage of skateboarding and re-edit the footage into a video. There were no directions besides this. Participants were allowed as much creative freedom that they wanted.

I've been working with action sports filmmaking since I was in the 8th grade. I've done both snowboarding and BMX bikes, but never skateboarding. However these different types of action sports for the most part had a pretty straight forward recipe. This involved weaving lifestyle shots with scenes of tricks being performed. The focus of the film was on the tricks, as these represent the most interesting thing in an edit. Here's an example of one of my short edits that I made two years ago: 


Reverse Apathy from Wendell Frink on Vimeo.

To me, this is the way to go with action sports videos. It gives a nice combination of lifestyle and trick shots, with a majority of the clips being of tricks. With the Push Edit contest, many contestants entered in their films but emphasized lifestyle shots in slow motion, heavily edited trick shots, or had more lifestyle shots than trick shots. This really took away from the part that mattered: the skaters performing their tricks. Here are several examples:



The Berrics Push Edit Submission from Andrej Bucalo on Vimeo.



Now I'm not knocking these individual's ability to edit, just commenting on the fact that these videos are emphasizing the wrong parts of the video which make it difficult to follow and less like a skate film.

Panasonic DVX200

Browsing NoFilmSchool today after not reading the site for well over a month I discovered that Panasonic released a camera called the DVX200. This camera is a successor to the DVX100, a 4:3 CCD camera released in 2002. At its time, the DVX100 was the first camera to support progressive scan video recording at an affordable price. Since then other cameras have been released, such as the HPX500, the HVX200A and the HMC150, which were released in the 2000s.

Several years ago I owned an HMC150 that I bought after saving up for over a year while working at a NAPA Autoparts store in my town. I loved that camera. At the time, I was shooting action sports videos of my friends snowboarding and riding BMX bikes. The HMC150 served a versatile tool for the type of filming I was doing. Action sports filming is a run'n'gun situation. Many times we would arrive at a location and after a few minutes of scoping out shot locations begin to film. Content was key, the more the better (as always), and we never wanted to miss a moment. The first video I have posted above is a edit from footage I shot during one year for my friend Shane. His video was being shot when I bought my camera and is the first one that I shot part of with my HMC150. The second video was made about a few years later. By this time I had become much more adept at using the camera.

The release of the DVX200 is important because it brings 4K quality video recording to the build style that favors action sports videos as well as documentaries as well. Most 4K cameras are not built for run'n'gun style shooting as they require a monitor and a complex setup that is suitable for studio work in a controlled environment. Sports and documentary filmmaking involve quick setups, the ability to zoom easily with a servo zoom motor, attachment of shotgun mics with onboard XLR ports, as well as other features, such as ND filters. All-in-all I'm excited about this camera.

The Art of Flight

Yesterday, I watched The Art of Flight (2011) on Netflix. This movie, directed by Curt Morgan, stars snowboarder Travis Rice and friends and highlights riders from the Red Bull team and others  as they take on unknown territory around the world and conquer the biggest mountains known to man. I've never snowboarded and the last time I went skiing was when I was about 13 years old but this is one of my favorite movies. The cinematography is amazing and there were many risks during the filming. For example, the riders ventured to a mountain in Patagonia that was known as a place "where the devil lives" and they only had forty minutes to make a run before the helicopter gas ran out. The crew had to film quickly and on the way back, they had to swim across a freezing river to get back to a safe place where the helicopter could pick the up. The riders invent new tricks and some get severely injured along the way. The film is amazing and although you may not appreciate snowboarding, you will appreciate the cinematography and the riders' stories about why they do what they do. The soundtrack includes many epic, full sounding songs that allow the viewer to feel the adrenaline that the riders experience. The movie took three years to make and it is one of my favorite movies as of yesterday.

I used to be an avid skateboarder, although I wasn't any good, and I religiously watched skateboarding movies. I stopped skateboarding when I realized everyone around me was getting better while I was the same and I switched over to filming my skilled friends. It's extremely difficult to film skateboarding because sometimes, you only get one shot to capture the trick and everything has to be perfect. Like The Art of Flight, some skateboard videos can be appreciated for their cinematography and directing even if you don't like skateboarding. Below are some of my favorite skateboard video scenes...

Lakai's Fully Flared Intro

These are some of my good friend's videos he filmed/edited. I hope to collaborate with him at some point in the near future.
https://vimeo.com/53915756 (skiing)
https://vimeo.com/30449234 (longboarding)

Olympic internship

So its finally almost here.  Time to get going on the application for the NBC Olympic internship.  Pretty excited personally.  This was a huge reason I came to Ithaca College was to get a good chance of being apart of the 2014 olympics in Sochi.  I cant even think of an even more incredible experience.

So the reason I am getting all excited is because today was the first informational meeting.  Alumni and students, who just returned from London 2012, came and talked about their experience.  While I am not 100% sure if NBC or broadcasting/studio production is the exact career I want to pursue, I still believe this experience would be a life-changing one.

Also, I feel the situation is perfect.  Its in Russia (probably one of my top 5 favorite countries for whatever reason).  Number two, its in the winter which means snowboarding, skiing, luge, bobsled, and who can forget curling.  Some of the most underrated sports right there, and what comes with these events? The best athletes in the world.  Put all this and the overall hype of the olympics in one town, and give me a job in the field I love, well consider me on the first plane out of here.