Be-mag.com has not only expanded their online magazine into being print! Their first video is now out.

Filled with excitement of finally receiving the long avaited video from be-mag: Visual Symphony, I put the video in the VCR. Since this video is one of the first to actually bring the whole world of rollerblading together, and have footage from all over the world, I wanted the review of it to be something a little more special. Because of this I gathered a few fellow skaters to watch and judge the video with me.

The video is generally slow paced, and doesn’t quite pump you up for skating. It follows the trend that more and more videos seem to follow: focusing on the artistic element in showing skating through editing.

Having two video editors in the crowd, Jonas Hansson and myself, we might have been more critical than the most. As the video started out, we were all reminded of the preview teaser from the enlightment section at be-mag.com, and we quickly agreed that it was a little over-edited. The fast blinking, full of effects were a little too much for us. Although we didn’t like the editing style, the tricks were tightly syncronized with the music. The quick drum’n’base intro song combined with high standard skating pumped us up – it seemed to turn out great afterall.

After a while, the song faded into the BMC2 Texas song by DJ Shadow. The editing theme at the same time changes, but is still based on many effects and glimpses of the tricks before they are shown – but finally, after a while, the disturbing flickering is replaced by straight tricks without any effects. Ahhhh!

While this song is playing, Jeff Stockwell (USA) and Vasily Schpraga (ISR) are having mini-profiles. Jeff Stockwell skates a few rails and curbs in his ordinary convincing style. What I liked to see was a new face: Vasily Schpraga. Although his skating can’t match the one of Jeff Stockwell, it is still interesting to watch – a little more speed would have been prefered though. A thing that we all noticed was that some of the footage seemed to be reused from the Kizer video “Outsiders”. A major flaw, considering the amounts of footage be-mag had received from contributing videographers around the world.

Immidiately after follows Lonnie Gallagos, which seems to follow a more settled editing style. Unfortunately this section too features a slow pace music sound track, although the editing fits the music and the skating better. Watch out for the Robert Guerros 10 kink soul as seen in the be-mag print.

Richie Eisler from Canada has a full section, which fully shows his high-tech skating abilities as well as more stunt-like skating. The track is now hip-hop, which with it’s faster pace boosts up the video. A full minute of his section is given to one rail, which in this case works great. He does full cab soyales both ways, truespin topsoyales both ways, and the craziest – negative fishbrain both ways. Crazy!

Next up is a is an all mixed section with the, by now in all skate videos, mandatory 80’s rock song. I enjoyed seeing this random section, which I felt was in shortage in this video.

The Jochen Smuda section is crazy – it truly shows that Europe can match the skate level of the one found in the US. Look forward for this section. It’s one of the highlights of the video!

Next up is the Fridolin Eelbo profile. By now it’s not a secret that Fridolin is sick – and so is this section. The only flaw was that we all had seen some of the footage before. I guess that’s the bad influence of online video sections – but else than that, it was more than enjoyable.

When I read about this video on the net, it seemed that Dave Paine’s guest edit was the sickest shit, but I have to disappoint you guys by saying that it was problably the worst part of the video. I think that Dave Paine got a little too inspired by the Hawaii section in his recent BMC3 – VG18. It’s way too over edited. I don’t believe that there is one trick in the section that hasn’t been added some sort of effect. When you watch it, you just can’t stop laughing, cause it’s so ridiculous. It might have been the harsh critisicm of two video editors watching it at the same time that produced this opinion – if you have another idea, then please post it below.

That’s it! – The video ends after Dave Paine’s edit. I had hoped that there would be a section after the credits – I needed something to make up for the disappointing Dave Paine edit.

Except from Dave’s guest edit, the video is generally sick. I was satisfied and glad to see so much skating from so many different places around the world. It is easy to see the hours of editing and creating invested in this video, which might have led to the video being a little over edited. – This is a trend which most new videos follow, and I sincerely hope that future editors will look back and rebel against this trend. There is no doubt though, that the video is eyecandy.

Alhtough our criticism is harsh, the video does have some extremely good moments, which is why I would say that this video definitely belongs in your video rack. The level of skating is top notch, and can match the one of Videogroove videos. It’s one of the better videos out for a while!

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A comment from the director and editor of the video: Riley Maruyama:

hahaha, dude everything about my editing of this video is true. i love that you are honest in what you write, cause its so important to know what people really think about products, or else nothing will get better :D it was my first video to be distributed, and i tried too hard. it was so crazy sitting in my basement realizing people across the globe would see this, and i didn't want to come across as "just another video"... i really wanted to leave an impression and to let people see something that they might not have seen before.

i really wanted to be different in the way things looked, in some points it worked, but in others i shot myself in the foot :P like richie eislers section and the circles, and the whole intro (i hope you didn't get epiletic seizures). it was way too much to handle for the eye, but it hasn't really been done before. it was cool to see how some people loved it and some people hated it

it was a first, and deffinately a learning experience. with this video we had to work with both ntsc and pal formats, along with different varieties of video quality, like minidv, digital 8, and hi8. so what you see most in the intro is really me hiding the variations of unbalanced color and qualities of the footage with over editing.

hahahaha

the next project is already in planning, and all the feedback i read is being put to use to make videos that you guys want to see :)

take it easy guys

- rm