I picked up a used copy of Dogtown and Z-Boys on DVD this weekend. This is a great film, even for those who don't care about skateboarding. What blows me away about the film is the editing. As someone who makes their living editing video, I watched this three times yesterday, notepad in hand, trying to steal as much of the technique as I could.
As far as documentary film goes, you can't get more impressive than this. The use of still photos and archival footage is fantastic, and the story literally jumps out of the screen and skates around your living room.
Highly recommended.
Posted by colrus at September 8, 2003 10:31 AM | TrackBackseen it... like it...
i was suprised how much footage they had since the majority of the piece deals with the period before the boys hit the big time...
maybe they did the photo-pan thing for a lot of it, but did it so well i didn't notice...
Posted by: dwayne at September 8, 2003 03:36 PMYeah, how did they do all that with the photos? I think they used an actual camera to shoot them with motion, rathen than floating things around in After Effects or Flash.
Also, their website says about all the differing formats that "Crowder devised a way of working with Sonic Foundry and Sony Picture Works to solve this problem." Huh? Does Sonic have a video editor that handles multiformats well? If I use Final Cut and call Geffen Records can I do the same thing?
VBasically, does your DVD have any more info?
Posted by: cmwillis at September 17, 2003 10:09 PMi'm gonna watch the dvd again tonight, and i'll see if they mention anything on th commentary track. right now, the one thing i'd love to be able to do is what they did with the still pics...
Posted by: billcolrus@hotmail.com at September 17, 2003 11:35 PM
I watched it again, and Stacy Peralta said to the editor, "yeah, they wanted to do a bunch of it on the computer, and we made 'em use the joystick."
...Some kind of joystick attached to a camera. Ideas?
Posted by: bill colrus at September 18, 2003 11:04 AM