world movie premiere: dosage vol. 5

hot off the virtual presses. i just got out of the world movie premiere of dosage vol.5, big up productions' fifth installment in the dosage film climbing series. according to co-director josh lowell, he had finished his final edit just hours ago.

as is typical in this crazy climbing colorado town, the premiere tonight at the boulder theater was packed. the lowell brothers, josh and brett, introduced the film by calling to the stage a cluster of some of the world's most elite climbers. the nobodies included: chris sharma, beth rodden, paul robinson, jason kehl and daila ojeda. (a funny aside. before i realized who she was, i tried to take beth rodden's chair. good thing tommy caldwell wasn't there.)

josh lowell continued his introduction by expressing that his guiding principle in making and editing dosage vol. 5 was "no bullshit." i haven't watched big up's other volumes, but i kept thinking this guiding principle was code for "no story line."

from my perspective, one of the limitations with a lot of these climbing films is that they don't venture into any kind of cohesive narrative(s). all you experience as a viewer are short "physical" vignettes set to hip-hop music. maybe that's enough for most viewers. for me, it all gets to be a little mind-numbing.

in addition to the lack of a story, or even stories, there were other problems with the film.

for one, the film editing was often heavy-handed. instead of letting a good sequence play out, the filmmakers would cut scenes to match the tempo of whatever sound track was selected. while this approach usually works with music videos, it doesn't always work with climbing. i felt cheated at times; especially when watching some of the first ascents. the staccato edits did work however when showing sequences of climbers trying and failing with particular moves.

another problem with the film is that it seems to cover way too much terrain and way too many climbers. china, spain, arkansas, yosemite, colorado, and ny. we also see at least thirteen elite climbers. more isn't always better. i wanted to get to know these folks a bit more intimately.

in general, the film's visual styling was inconsistent. i think young film makers need to learn restraint when using all the fast and accessible digital editing tools that are out there. it's great to experiment; just do it with rhyme/reason.

i also want to briefly comment on a specific cinematographic technique that was used a few times. the approach consists of a slow clinical camera pan. while this worked with some of the climbing problems, like randy puro on drive on (v11), it often made me feel too detached from the climbing environments. during a lot of those camera sequences i felt like i was watching an odd pbs nature special on the deliberate movements of iguanas.

oh, one final thing. the female voicing over the "dose 1, 2, 3... " intersticials was a little too sexy techno club mtv for me. i didn't get it.

you might be surprised to know that there were things i actually did like about the film. sometimes really liked.

in the film section titled, "dose 2," there were some great scenes in the yangshuo area of china. there's a good long whipper under some limestone towers that was almost worth the price of admission. seeing the locals react was great too.

my favorite part of the move was "dose 4" in catalunia, spain. one of the things that was great? no music. instead, we're treated to the awesome motivational chants of spaniards saying "venga, venga, venga.." (come on, come on, come on ...) and climbers viscerally grunting. this is climbing film making at its most pure and most authentic. in this section we also see the awesomely futuristic sport/bouldering problem known as ali hulk (9c). and finally, chris sharma does his magic here by climbing us through estado critico (9a), neanderthal project, and golpe estado project.

the final dose in the film shows beth roden tackling some beautiful 5.13 one-pitch yosemite cracks. her ascent of meltdown (14c) shows why she's such a climbing rock star.

some final thoughts. dosage vol. 5 excels when it doesn't try too hard. it also shows some flashes of brilliance when it experiments visually. this is an ambitious film and i applaud the lowell brothers for going big. maybe with vol. 6 they will go deep as well.