Red Bull Ride n Style 2012 San Francisco from FIXIEFAMOUS on Vimeo.
Ricky Bobby once said, « if you are not first; your last. » I full heartily believe that. I hate when an event goes down that I wasn’t able to attend and I have to wait a week or two for the edit to drop. It’s a hard life covering contests, people who aren’t in the industry don’t understand; so I’ll break it down. Contest filming is all about endurance. You have to start out the day with a big breakfast, because chances are you are not going to eat again until the contest is over. A food break could cost you a vital clip. Next you need at least 4 camera batteries, and trust me they will all run out by the end of the day. Same goes for memory cards, you are going to fill 5 memory cards easy, and right when the finals are about to start you will be off in a corner on your laptop dumping footage so you can get some more clips. When your in the « shit » shooting close ups look to your left and your right because on both sides of you are other filmers snaking your shot! Boothby lays down a backflip; sick; but 3 other filmers just got that same clip from YOUR same angle. So what is a filmer to do. A good contest filmer knows the answer; YOU SKIP THE AFTERPARTY! I know it’s hard to turn down free booze and hanging out with your friends/pros, but trust me when I tell you the hangover you wake up with tomorrow takes all your momentum out of the editing process. That’s why edits take a couple weeks to come out, the filmers are recovering and basically slacking off. Filmers will tell you, « a good edit takes time. » Your not getting paid to produce the next macaframa film, you are filming a contest! Which means your edit should consist of only the bangers, be under five minutes, and a lot of riders are not going to make the edit at all. That’s the life of a contest filmer. You wanna enjoy a contest, either become a contest photographer, or a writer. Trust me when your out on the course dodging riders you can glance over to the VIP section and your staff photographer and writer and drinking free beers and enjoying the show.
Either way you do it for the love, and for me I’ll stay up all night after waking up this morning at 7am to pump out some form of edit. So when everyone wakes up tomorrow hung over their heart drops when they realize their is already an edit out. Even worse every clip in their edit you will have already scene a week ago in mine. Shit this whole writer thing is pretty easy, why do we even pay these guys at all?
Sure I’ll drop a full edit of the contest re-capping everything in a couple of days, but this edit is already 5 minutes long, how much more do you want to see, better yet if you wanted to see more than 5 minutes why didn’t you just go to the contest?
