One of the things that struck me while putting together yesterday’s post about a handful of movies available for download was just how much things have changed with regards to climbing media since I started climbing some 12 years ago. The days where a couple of hour-long movies would be released on VHS each year have been replaced with a world where there is an almost limitless supply of climbing videos being released each day on the internet, often for free.
Like most of you I’m always a fan of free things, but I also respect the effort that goes into shooting and editing videos. I’ve tried my hand at it a few times, and all I could think of throughout the entire process was just how much of a pain in the ass the entire process could be. Lugging a camera and tripod around, figuring out a place to set it up, actually climbing, realizing you had the camera setup wrong, climbing again, lugging the camera around some more, and then trying to edit it into something coherent once you get home. Not exactly easy.
This is why I have no problem supporting the sundry commercial projects that are out there like the ones I mentioned yesterday. Spending less than the cost of a day pass or a tank of gas to the crag to help support people out there working hard to put together what are generally pretty high quality products is a pretty easy decision. If you’re not psyched after watching a trailer or reading people’s reactions to a project on websites or The Facebook though then you can just wait for the next video to come out. These days the wait shouldn’t be too long.
All that said, I’m always psyched about free videos which is why I always enjoy trying share some with you each week. Here’s this week’s slate of videos:
[starrating template_id=50 rows=6 select=’videos’ excerpt_words=0 publish_date=’range’ publish_range_from=’20110806′ publish_range_to=’20110812′ min_votes=1]
Yep, I remember well the days of firing up the VHS player at Adventure Rock and choosing from up to 10 different sweaty palm inducing classics. Oh how times have changed…
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Making a quality video of a sport route is a challenge. A trad route, huge pain in the ass. A boulder problem? Casual
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Free film content is a mixed blessing. You rarely get anything for nothing and a lot of the new ‘free’ films are effectively sponsored adverts. The athletes and film makers being paid to produce the film. Yes it is great to have the film than not but it restricts creative freedom. I ran the Kendal Mountain Film Festival in the UK and now have a film download website http://www.steepedge.com and both try and support the climber and film maker by giving it a commercial benefit. If climbers only watch free content then the long tradition of creative films will die. Brian Hall – Steepedge
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One of the main purposes for operating on a free platform at LT11 is because of the reasons you listed above. There are hundreds of film makers out there and nearly all of them are offering video content for free. Even if we sold the videos we make and had sponsors on board to help offset the cost of production we would still only be making pennies an hour for the work we put in. For example, the hours that Carlo, Jordan and I put into The Swiss Account would have only earned us a couple hundred bucks a piece after over 2000 hours of combined effort, shooting, editing, and promoting the final product.
We find that it is a better promotional tool for our brand to “advertise” with our videos rather then have people spend hard earned cash on a product they may not like. We make money at LT11 as a production company creating commercial content for clients and the climbing movies we make are a great promotional tool to help us get future jobs in the market.
I’m really happy to hear the great reviews of the videos we make and it’s even better to hear the bad ones! We are hoping to stir up the scene a bit and our free videos offer high quality HD video with a little something extra that most free videos cant.
I cant imagine a single individual that is making 1 or 2 climbing videos a year can possibly survive off the sale of those videos alone. just something to think about!
Jon
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