I like modern filming. It looks sick but has downsides. Things can get so zoomed in it makes me nauseous to watch on my TV and begs to be watched on a phone or tablet. It’s hard to appreciate the era you’re currently in because you’re living it but I think these videos will have a style to them in the future we can appreciate.
I personally miss more lightweight cameras that moved. Everyone’s filming with that giant cinderblock camera so fisheye is planted most of the time. I miss the sense of movement smaller cameras like VX and DSLRs/mirrorless provide. Filmers were active which was fun on the sesh. rolling long lens and lines were more common. I just love the way skateboards move through space doing lines and cruising. It’s much more stunt and gimmick oriented now. HD 4:3 was fun.
The zoom in with a camcorder style now is throwback and let’s the filmer get a lot more clips when things get hectic. You’re not setting up tripods and getting angles which really places you in the action and helps when busts are a factor. Skaters are freed up and 1 filmer can get multiple dudes and b roll very easy. They can walk around to get other angles. They’re in the moment. It’s a welcome change.
VX it was hard to see because it was blurry and 480i. A lot of guys stood out by their style and spot selection. Videos kinda started looking the same with VX with the warm tones but it got better as time went on. My main complaint is that videos look so much the same now. The art direction is gone. It’s much more about fashion. What are you wearing in the clips and what tricks are you doing. Zooming in on little logo hits and footwear to show off product. I get it, sell stuff, but I miss the focus being more on the skating.
You just don’t see stuff like pyramid country, magenta, bronze, workshop videos anymore. There’s a lot less creativity in the editing. Videos blur together and give you this “everyone rips all over the world” feel. I’d like to see more art direction to help videos stand out. Editing is easy and cheap these days and there are tons of crazy assets and artists out there to work with. I don’t get it. Sure let’s dump all the footage with clean colors in a 15 minute part to some trendy music and no art like we did last time. Even the WKND skits were a nice mixup for me. Anything to break up the generic formula. Bag of suck, yeah right, zero videos, mind field, really sorry they all looked and felt so different from each other. Even something like frog gets me hyped because at least it’s different.
I’m glad we moved away from the Ty evans approach. It’s just not fun to go skate with a filmer setting up perfect angles and roll up clips and getting b roll like that. We don’t need all that camera gear and kick outs HURT when you’ve spent that time to set up. It would be cool to see some more vintage camera stuff going on but that got so played out. Also to note is the end of 16mm and 8mm b roll which also got super fucking played out.
More videos like that huf tour video please.