What do you want to see in climbing films?

johnL wrote:I can't believe I of all people am saying this but this thread reads like all climbers are a bunch of immature sexist douche boys.

wow you haven't gotten that from the rest of the forum?

devkrev wrote: onsights tend to go pretty slow.

Yeah, but editing out the down climbs to the rest would fix that. I just want to see more tense going for it and more big falls. Watching a close up of someone elvis legging while placing and still making the onsight is what makes my hands sweat.

Without Dan Osman any vids are pointless. He knew how to be a showman. I really cannot imagine the mentality of those who want to watch someone fiddle-fuck around with gear for a trad vid.

trad,
closeups of holds,
fa's and onsights,
footwork,
falls

music is tough because you can't please everyone but an attempt could be made to score a climbing vid like a movie in a way that conveys the effort, anxiety and fear of the climber.

hearing the climber breathe, grunt, curse, etc also helps.

i don't mind having the climber provide commentary on the hold/moves done in sequence.

area specific vids would be cool too.

For a change, what about an intervention type show of broke-ass climbers (tore-up from the floor-up) neglecting their responsibilities, while drinking, and smoking pot. An intervention will be done as soon as the climber is heading out the door with all his (or her) road-tripping, and climbing gear. We'll pick an overly dramatic, and disgruntled non-climbing wife, (or husband) and/or parents who can't understand why their child would choose to bum around, and risk their life in climbing, and possibly throw in a highly annoyed boss who catches their employee surfing climbing sites, like MP all day.

Disclaimer: I don't watch TV but have caught glimpses of reality shows when suffering on the stair stepper at my gym.

The people at the gym, and couch potatoes will watch, if climbers don't!

Tony B wrote:I thought Scarey Faces was great because it had history and a current story. More like that...

i agree, probably my all time favorite as there is a good story and some fun side stories. if you could combine this sort of thing with a ton of good looking, friendly babes, you'd go platinum. maybe even ultiminium.

Some how and some why. Doesn't matter to me whether it's bouldering, sport, or trad, I like to see how they're doing it, the footwork the holds, the gear placements. I like to hear why they do what they do, both in the small (why this hold) and the large (what motivates them, why climb, why this climb).

My vote is for super techy alpine ascents. Let's see some cutting edge die hard alpinism at its best!!!

Something with a bit of substance. For good examples check out the "Long Ways" film with Johnny Copp and Micah Dash. Also check out Masters of Stone III/IV (whichever one has Kauk climbing Magic Line and the Dano tribute) - Eric Perlman had the formula dialed.

What I would not want to see? Bros cranking out V-difficult or 5.absurd sport, all the while navel-gazing about how "committing" it is. More trad, more alpine, more weekend warriors getting it done. Boldness trumps difficulty almost every time, with the coupling of the two being most impressive.

In no particular order...

• More background information on the featured climbers themselves
• Less robot sex music
• More alpine climbing and expedition oriented features
• New locations
• More action from places closer to home (NRG, RRG, North Carolina)
• Weekend warriors getting at it

The Reel Rock film tour seems to blend a lot of elements together and make a large portion of the climbing demographic happy. For what I consider a really awesome feature, look no further than Ueli Steck / Swiss Machine.

I'm not a huge fan of the V-hard, 5.ridiculous sends. It just doesn't translate well into my climbing language, is all. I'm not saying movies should stop being made about hard climbs, but it does seem that a large number of features released recently are focusing more on the single pitch difficult sport or trad, and even more on bouldering. I expect it's considerably easier (and cheaper) to film these than to go on some 3 week long expedition to some frozen waste land.

I've been on the jury for the Boulder Adventure Film Festival for 5 years now and have probably screened a thousand movies. What makes a great movie, regardless of the subject matter, is simple: It's the story.

If the story isn't compelling; if you don't care about the characters, mission or cause; if you can't remember the names of the characters, or if you don't want to watch it again, the filming, editing, soundtrack and production values are irrelevant. BTW, a good director/producer can create a great film that you want to watch over and over, without a single line of script. Here's a great example from last year's circuit that continues to amaze me. I've watched it a dozen times and will watch it dozens more. And there's not a word of dialog and you don't know WHF the skier is. It doesn't matter.

youtube.com/watch?v=G5dOB3V…

Unfortunately, most of the films we screen start with the cameraman, go to the editor then end up with the screenwriter. Don't fall into that trap. Sure, start with filming but as soon as ou get back, find a great screenwriter to guide the editor.

Fortunately, we've got a lot of great film groups around here who know how to tell a story through film. Michael Brown at Serac, Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen at Sender, Renan Ozturk at Camp4Collective and Cory Richards. If you see a film by any of these guys you can be sure that there is a well-told story. Check out Cory richards, Cold, if you haven't already. He came back from GII with a bunch of footage shot with a Canon DSLR at -50°F and immediately took it to Anson Fogel and Pete Takeda for, respectively editing and scriptwriting. I knew it was going to be great within 10 seconds: any movie that starts with grim footage and the line, "What the fuck am I doing here?", I just know, was going to be good. Watch the trailer: forgemotionpictures.com/fil…

Just my 2 cents.
Mal

That street skiing film is pretty damned good. I downloaded a copy of it when it came out.

more alcohol-inducement

Top roping! Hard core top roping with lots of slack and inexperienced belayers!

No really, I like picture-es alpine climbing and sketchy trad. I dont want to encourage soloisit and boulders and sport climbers make me look fat and lazy.
Sometimes I wish there was movies about other weekend trad wannabees sketched out, 3 feet above there last piece on a 5.5 in the Valley.

arborhead wrote:Sailing

+1

Mike Lane wrote:Without Dan Osman any vids are pointless. He knew how to be a showman. I really cannot imagine the mentality of those who want to watch someone fiddle-fuck around with gear for a trad vid.

and plus one that too

I find climbing vids generally boring and/or heavily rehearsed and contrived. I would rather watch an amateur GoPro POV footage of some sick powder skiing than another run of the mill professionally edited climbing movie.

I really like what Sender films has done. They have a great sound tracks, great filming and they really tell a story not just about the climbers and community but the climbs as well. I find I watch Sender films over and over and barely even touch the others.

So more trad, alpine, ice, documentaries, community.
Less Bouldering and sport especially like everyone said 5.impossible.

It's just a preference but watching people boulder and sport climb on TV is like watching golf or tennis. It's really kinda boring.

But whatever it must be, agreed on the closeups. I can watch people climb from a distance for free near my house.

Some of these comments are disturbing. The ones that read like "I wanna see decking/falls on r/x routes" remind me of the hordes of people who swarmed Roman colosseums looking for blood.

A movie about hard mixed and ice climbing would be cool. Maybe with some history as well. And I don't mean all the bolted dry tool sport climbing, its about as exciting as a bouldering video. Definitly less robot sex music, I would dig some classics. It would be sick to watch someone hooking their way up a hard mixed sketch fest to Cream or Hendrix or Zeppelin.

Watching strong climbers grunt as they slap the rock on a V15 with techno/dubstep playing in the background gets boring after about 2 minutes. I prefer something watching that is both hard and dangerous. Sketchy gear placements below the crux, long fall potential, and free soloing on hard routes are always nice. As long as the climber doesn't get injured, watching big falls are always pleasing.

TRAD

I want to see the most unique trad lines out there, not just another super-human pulling on tiny holds or climbing a thin crack. I want to see awful offwidth (hats off to wideboyz) and scary runout traverse leads. and some leg shakin slab first ascents