Blacklist

Just watched the DVD, damn do I feel let down. Guess I should have read the review on the homepage first.

I know how ya feel.....it was like watching behind the scene's.......worst money ever spent, that vid could have been SICK......

So.. is it not worth getting at all? Or was it jus different?

I am not a ripper or anything but I go and pick up all of the new flicks and this video sort of bummed me out...all the hype for nothing...I dont know how those guys could have let this video slip through the cracks...It should have been insane with the riders that they had out there...there has to me more to it than what we know about...

Bess - Read the review on the homepage of this site, he nails it in my opinion, its exactly what I thought about it.

I thought it was a great vid. It's a unique insight into what happens when you mix a bunch of different riding talents and backgrounds. Put all this into a surreal setting (Lake Powell) and you get this video. No, it's not a typical video with pros riding on their private lake in FL, but I think that was the point. What Cadmium and Sidewayz bring to the screen is always incredible and unique......editing, music, lifestyle, etc. Just an opinion on the other side of the fence.

JL

Fluid - Yes thoes are good points, but when I spend 25 dollars on a "wakeboard" video I do not want to see more than half the movie being filled with irrelevnet non-sense. I bought it to watch wakeboarding. Sure they showed some, but for what the movie could/should have offered (could have easily been one of if not the best movie out) I was pissed cause I just wasted 30 bucks.

That seems to be the new trend. Crappy, less though out action sports movies. I guess we can attribute that to the fact that making a professional looking movie is so easy now. the big film companies are going under or feeling the pressure of all the little guys with a vx2000. Now with so many video releases a year there isn;t as much new stuff to go around. Or people are getting lazy.

Back in the late 90s there was only 4 companies putting stuff out. sidewayz, Bump, FLF, 416 films.

Now theres like 20.

Good point.
That and it's easy for the small film makers to advertise within a tight wakeboarding community especially with the popularity of the internet.
There's definately a new generation of boarders and videographers out there.

i enjoyed it...some pretty good images of my favorite riders...

remember, that footage is almost two years old...

i relate to the dissapointment...but why?

what didn't you like jessup?

Pete - I didn’t like the fact that I paid $30 for a wakeboard video, and I only get 13 minutes of wakeboarding in a 25 minute movie. That’s ridiculous!!! Sure its a different and unique style of making movies, but i could really care less about their lifestyle. Of course the riding that was shown was awsome, but youd think after putting up all the money to get thoes guys out there, you would think that they would want to show what came out of it. I don’t know, just after the movie ended I felt angry in a sense.

Yeah, I'm feelin you guys on this one. There is nothing worse than dropping some coin on a crappy video. I've bought my share of worthless videos in the past.

It's interesting to see how our expectations of a "good" video can be so different. For me, I get bored of the riding only videos. I like to see the character and personal style of each of the riders. Some of my favorite riders in the past have turned out to be such tools! I owe it to vidoes for straightening this out.

On that note, if you guys like off the wall videos, then check out Captured. It is an incredible collection of still photos (some video too) through the eyes of a great photographer. Very artistic with some old school tunes laid down. Shawn, don't get this one......you won't like it.

Have a good Christmas!

JL

I think it would have been better and longer is Justin Stephens or Ronn Seidenglanz had edited rather than putting it off to joey meddock for editing. The are both real good at putting together movies that are fairly long, whereas meddock just started making videos. The riding in it was not bad, i enjoyed drew and thomas's wakeskating the most, but it could have been alot better for all the time it took to put it out, i mean the footage is over a year old. Still better than alot of other videos i've seen.

(disclaimer: i wrote the blacklist review that's featured here on wakeworld)

matt, i'd have to disagree that joey's editing was the problem. i highly doubt the decision to make the video 25mins long was based on his editing style. in fact, i think he did a good job of putting together what he had.

i must confess however that i can offer no alternative theory at the moment (other than what i half-jokingly said in my review -- that maybe a part II is in the works). perhaps justin (who has occasionally posted on these boards), will chime in as to why the short version.

but other than it's length i think it's an well-shot, well-constructed vid. perhaps the cost of telecining/editing/printing more of the film was prohibitive, especially if they thought it didn't add anything. perhaps more of the footage didn't look as good as planned, or for some reason wasn't considered good enough to make the cut. i don't know. im sure dvd pressing houses charge more for longer dvds - perhaps a good price-break point is at the 25-30min mark and that's why we're seeing that length.

Unless you get into a different format like DVD 9 the cost to press the discs is the same. And with the quality of today's encoders it's easy to get 2 hours of video on a DVD 5 and not lose any quality. I haven't seen it so I certainly don't want to comment on it's artistic virtues but if it was shot on film than perhaps you're right about the telecine costs (not to mention the cost of developing the film itself.)

I was really disapointed when i got the video. I was really hyped up to see it. You would think that with all those riders together, that they would push each other to do things that are more than ordinary. Nothing that they did really made me stop to watch it again. It seemed like the mood in the whole trip was slow and depresing. Thats my opinion. It was an OK tape but not for 30 bucks.

Some observations...
first and foremost- those of you who feel let down because of all of the hype: quit complaining- you are the people who believed the hype. I'm sorry that you didn't particularly care for a video that you willingly paid 30 bucks for, but thats the way it goes sometimes...

I find it interesting that some of you believe that moviemakers are slacking off. It makes no sense to me that anyone would slack off since more and more people are making videos. Why would anyone slack off and create a badly thought out video if you or I could make something just as good. I doubt anyone is getting lazy.

Scott,
I don't think anyone goes out of their way to slack off but these guys do have budgets and they pretty much know how many they are going to sell. Also I don't believe the top WB video producers are getting the sponsorship $ they used to. Add to that the proliferation of "regional" vids like My Side, Scrubs and ours, which dilute their market also, it only makes sense that this may be happening. I haven't seen it so this isn't really a comment from me on it's quality but just kinda based on everyone's reviews.

When all you get is hype about the film, what else are you supposed to believe? They were trying to say it was something like a modern day mayday and when people think about the original mayday, they're obviously going to be excited about this new film. Quite frankly, blacklist was far from mayday, and I'm sure i'm not the only one that feels that way (outside of the fact that they were at powell and they basically had the dopest riders). And I don't think it's fair to say that people should stop complaining--they have a right to speak their mind and quite frankly, it might help other people really think about whether or not they really want this vid.

Unfortunately, I too was disappointed. There were only a few scenes that I really wanted to watch multiple times and overall, it really wasn't what it was built up to be. I liked the extra section when the wakeskaters were trying board transfers; they looked like they were having so much fun together and that's what it's all about. It was also funny seeing randy get sucked down in the mud and then pulled under water. Overall, randy had the best riding and I'm pretty happy with the wakeskating because it's hard to get a lot of footage to watch nowadays. Byerly did a fakie bigspin in one of the extra sections and it wasn't cheated as much as the one in metronome. But after that, I can't think of anything I'd die to watch.

Oh yeah, I think it's bad that byerly, randy, necrasson, and thomas were able to go on this "second mayday trip." It's good to see that they're all still killing it.

The end.

I bought BLACKLIST and DELTA SESSIONS today.I like DELTA alot better but some of those guys were going off in BLACKLIST(wish I could ride half that good).I dont know if it's true or not but I was told that blacklist was filmed in conjunction with the X-BOX wakeboarding game filming.But I dont know if this is true so maybe they (XBOX) picked up some of the bill.But if thats the case I would expect more out of it.Hey I really enjoyed DELTA SESSIONS though.

It was an xbox trip.

electricsnow...how do you know it was an xbox trip?

didnt they paint/stencil xbox on a bunch of stuff?

yes, it's also mentioned in the pulse section (p.144) of the latest wakeboarding magazine:

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quote:

over a year ago, the biggest software company in the world brought 12 of the best riders in the world out to lake powell for five days of riding and houseboating.

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(Message edited by deepstructure on December 28, 2003)

It was originally put together to get footage for the Byerly Xbox game, but I believe that game has since been killed.

Heh, I believe the quote was, "Put off indefinitely."