by The Editors on January 26, 2008
California’s Central Coast now has it’s own surf movie about it’s own surfers with music from its own bands, thanks to filmaker Trevor Povah’s Lost in the Middle.
There’s kind of like this gap between Southern California and Northern California,” he said. “You have your Southern California industry with everything south of Santa Barbara and Ventura —San Clemente, San Diego and that whole surf scene. And then you kind of have the same thing going on in the Santa Cruz area, with a bunch of pros coming out of there and a bunch of film that has been produced.”
Povah’s idea: make a quality film featuring not only local surfers, but also local waves and music.
[Link: San Luis Obispo.com]
by The Editors on January 23, 2008
Yay! More X Games ads . . . and a bad photo of Gretchen. What more could you ask for on a Wednesday afternoon?
[Link: USA Today]
by The Editors on January 23, 2008
As seen on Transworld Business.
Burton Snowboards today launched Burton Studios on the iTunes Store featuring exclusive Burton videos and TV shows available for purchase and download (www.itunes.com). Burton Studios is located within the TV Show section of the store and allows viewers to purchase and download the most recent release of Burton’s team video “Thanks in Advance” and “Terje’s Season Pass” TV show. Each episode is priced at $1.99 and the entire “Terje’s Season Pass” is priced at $8.99.
We’ve been waiting years to pay good money to watch Burton’s corporate commercials and now, thanks to the genius of iTunes we finally can.
[Link: Transworld Business]
by The Editors on January 23, 2008
Skate and Annoy was nice enough to link up everything we need for an overview of Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park. It’s about skateboarding and being kids and hopping trains and a death. Check it.
[Link: Skate and Annoy]
by The Editors on January 21, 2008
Companies who want to extend their eco-cred are hunting far and wide for people who can help them look green even when they aren’t. Enter Eric Ritz. His company Global Inheritance has helped Fuel TV with their Swerve Festival and more impressively, helped the X Games squeeze onto the eco-marketing bandwagon. ESPN’s Chris Stiepock calls him a “solution-based realist.”
In fact, what Ritz says sets him apart is that he and his “Generation Y audience don’t see big business as the enemy.” Convenient, huh? And so commercial.
[Link: LA Times]
by The Editors on January 18, 2008
Kiss your action sports magazines good-bye again as Walmart decides to cut 1,000 magazines from the racks in it’s discount, mega-lo-mart stores, according to a story in the New York Post.
Most of the magazines are small, and more than a few of the victims are titles that have long since stopped publishing . . . However, virtually no major publisher was spared. . . . Wal-Mart, which released its official purge list on Jan. 15, is believed to be responsible for generating more than 20 percent of all retail magazine sales in the US. . . . Several titles owned by Swedish publishing giant Bonnier, which less than a year ago paid $220 million for 16 Time Inc. titles, are being left behind. Among them: Parenting, Ski, Skiing, Yachting and Salt Water Sportsman.
Put that in your action sports media plan and smoke it.
[Link: New York Post]
by The Editors on January 18, 2008
The athletes are probably saying it’s about time, but ESPN has decided to reward the athletes with a little more than nation TV exposure this year as they up the prize purse to $1 million, according to a story in the Aspen Times.
The overall prize purse is up 38 percent from last year’s, and the total purse for all X Games competitions to be held in 2008 exceeds $3 million. This year, X Games events will be held in Aspen, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Dubai and two other international markets yet to be announced. . . . “ESPN is committed to ensuring that the best action sports athletes in the world compete on action sports’ grandest stage – the X Games,” said Rick Alessandri, senior vice president and managing director, X Games franchise.
One meeelllioooon dollars, yes. They better get paid.
[Link: Aspen Times]
by The Editors on January 18, 2008
Shaun Tomson and Jeremy Gosch’s new film Busting Down the Door will have it’s world premiere January 27, 2008 at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara as part of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Combining awe-inspiring and often iconic surf footage from more than 17 surf films, such as Free Ride and Standing Room Only, with insightful and emotional interviews from the key players — be they Hawaiian, South African, or Australian — the film aims to do for the birth of modern surfing what the 2001 documentary film Dogtown and Z-Boys did for the origins of skateboarding several years ago.
While the whole, “do a film about yourself and future the legend” genre of surf movies is getting weirder by the year, this looks like it’s going to be an amazing addition to anyone’s surf film library. Click the link for all the background.
[Link: Santa Barbara Independent]
by The Editors on January 18, 2008
For a while this week Vans was getting credit for a new skateboarding game for Apple’s iPhone called Finger Fracture, however, someone pointed out to the editors at the Kotaku video game blog that all the screen shots for the “new game” were simply lifted from Tony Hawk’s Project 8 and Photoshopped on to the iPhone. Aside from being a complete hoax, what this really shows is how much play a skate/snow/surf brand could get in the tech media for launching a solid iPhone action sports game. Anyone listening?
[Link: Kotaku]
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by The Editors on January 18, 2008
Here is a classic case of conflict of interest: ESPN the Magazine is covering The X Games, a wholly-owned product of Disney/ABC/ESPN as an actual sporting event when, in fact, it is a made-for-TV action sports spectacle.
We’re glad that Gretchen Bleiler can get this kind of coverage (she’s only the fourth woman ever to be featured on the magazine’s cover), and she looks great on the cover, but please, isn’t ESPN doing enough self-promotion for their X Games brand already? Obviously, no one cares about any of this because all the coverage helps move product. Then why aren’t we happy about it? We’ll get back to you on that.
[Link: Center Daily]
California’s Central Coast now has it’s own surf movie about it’s own surfers with music from its own bands, thanks to filmaker Trevor Povah’s Lost in the Middle.
