Wednesday, April 20, 2011

The Power of the Camera (The Good Side)

by Crazy Ivan

The first time I ever saw the power that a professional video crew had on STWAKOJ we were in Tampa, Florida filming what would eventually become "Enter the Myach", our martial arts spoof/skate video.  We needed a video to play at stores that carried Myachis so we just found a film crew and hired them to follow us around for a day.

We didn't want to do anything too crazy right off the bat so we started the day off with me and former Myachi Master Big Dog mock-fighting with freestyle Myachi while riding on top of the Myachi Mobile in traffic.




And before you ask, yes that's really his hair (though mine was computer animated to make it look that short).  Anyway, while we're filming that video and many other clips we captured that day I was in constant fear that we were going to get arrested.  I mean, there has to be a law against what we're doing in that video and if there isn't there really should be.

But through it all the power of the camera made it all work.  For some of the shots we got we had to go on private property but when we asked everyone said yes because there was a camera crew behind us.  A couple of times we had to block off traffic on the sidewalks and on the streets and on no authority except the authority that having a camera crew with you offers, we did it.  Nobody questioned it.  They just saw the camera and said, "Oh, they must be with TV."

The camera crew, needless to say, has more impact in Tampa than it does in New York City, but it still draws people like moths to a flame.  Myachi Man and I used to joke that we should just hire a full time camera crew to follow us around.  They wouldn't even have to record anything, just turn on the lights and point the camera at us and people will line up to play.  Sales would probably double everywhere we went.

Now, obviously you need a pretty state of the art camera to pull this off.  People don't line up if you're pointing your iPhone at the action.  But when you have a $6,000 camera there and a dude holding a boom mic, you're set.

We saw yet another example of this yesterday.  They were filming for some [redacted] at [redacted] and they wanted [redacted], [redacted] and [redacted] to be in it so they brought their cameras and set them up at [redacted].  They hung out for quite a while and the whole time, it was nonstop Myachi madness.  I mean, it's always Myachi madness there, but for each member of a camera crew, the madness increases exponentially.

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Alright, so I read back over that last paragraph and suppose it doesn't mean much.  Since the entire article is about something I can't say much about just yet I guess you could just say that this article is a shameless plug for a later article where I reveal what they were filming and what, exactly, got redacted.

Enjoy the suspense...
...Oh, and never play Myachi on top of a moving vehicle!

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