Carving the Mountains from Juan Rayos on Vimeo.
Now that we are in the thick of this whole Grad School experience all sorts have work have started to come down to us, and well we have to get it all done. So I wanted something this week to inspire me to push myself and get stuff done. What I ended up finding might seem a little different, but to me is inspiring. Being very much into sports I always like to see people doing something that I know if I put the work into mastering it I could do it, but I never found the time. One of these activities is skateboarding, and the women in Carving the Mountain are damn good.
It’s not street style skateboarding like Tony Hawk its long boarding down a hill, going fast and doing some tricks that look like they should be done on a wave in the ocean, not on blacktop. What I really loved about this was how steady everything was despite the motion. Rolling along down the hill with a camera is no small feat and it is done well here, though I have no idea of how. Capturing the rider’s point of view was essential to this piece so as to really give the feeling of skateboarding with them as they pull off all of their tricks. This video is essentially GoPro used to some of it’s best effect most likely. It would be difficult to get a normal DSLR or video camera to be as mobile as it would have needed to be.
There is also a certain amount of fearlessness that is needed to do this stuff at high speeds. No fear of getting hurt and banged up, just the thrill of being able to do it. That is what I think we all need a little of right now, maybe me more than others, a sense that anything can get done, and have no fear to step out of your comfort zone.
This is one of those videos that makes you ask yourself why you don’t skate anymore. They float down the path so effortlessly. I really enjoyed the variety of shots that the filmmaker used for the intro of this video. I would have liked it if he would have also shot video footage of them passing him by on the road to give us a little perspective on how fast they were traveling.
Holy smokes, this is awesome!! Someone want to teach me how to skateboard?
I was wondering what the camera setup looked like…anyone have any idea what they would have used? They got good audio without any motor sounds, so I’d be interested to know what the camera operator was sitting on/what the camera was mounted on.
Wow Brett, this is pretty amazing. I felt like i was skateboarding with them because of the camera movement and speed, and still wasn’t shaky. It would be awesome to watch this in 3D!