Sean Genovese interview
HUCK talks to snowboard filmmaker and co-founder of Think Thank about their new film, Cool Story.
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HUCK: You are currently promoting your new film Cool Story. Could you tell me a bit about it?
It’s a kind of linear documentary of our crew’s 2008/2009 season. It still has all the 'parts' in it that a regular snowboard porn video has, it’s just presented in a different way. And the title is a play on a lot of the videos out now that insist on having all this talking in it. But they aren’t talking about anything really, just about how they got hurt, or how bad the season was, or how they had a hard time getting a shot one day, and blah blah blah... you get it… a cool story.
What do you consider to be the stand out part of it?
Man, I don’t know. I think everyone that worked with the video was able to film their best part so far. I have a skewed vision of the video because I know the personal goals that a lot of the guys were able to achieve.
There seems to be so many films nowadays, how do you make it different from the rest?
We just appease ourselves. I’m not sure if our video is a lot different, it’s still a snowboard video at heart. We try to keep it interesting.
Do you approach filmmaking differently from when you started?
Ya, sure, it’s like anything, it evolves, you get bored and try new things. The beginning was making a video just to make a video, we watched others and wanted to be doing that. Now we’ve done that and we can try to see where we can take it.
Filming must take away a lot of riding time, does it ever get frustrating?
Maybe sometimes. But filming and riding go hand in hand. The video is a whole project and it’s only as strong as its weakest section. So if I’m helping someone get a banger for their section. Whether I’m filming, packing the lip or throwing snow in the landing, I know that 'what goes around, comes around' and someone is going to be doing the same for me when I’m trying to get a shot.
Are you worried about the impact of illegal downloading on your films?
Yeah, those pirate kids… it’s a double edge sword. You want people to see the video and to some extent it’s a compliment that they want to take the time to rip it and put it on a site. But then we don’t have money coming in and we can't see the true number of sales and views to show the sponsors of the video. I’m sure it looks like videos are going downhill but I think just as many kids are in to them, they are just getting them online.
Some people are giving away films for free download. Are the days of selling DVDs numbered?
Naw. The days of selling crappy DVD’s might be soon gone… hopefully. There’s something to be said for actually buying a physical video, I think you subconsciously put it on a higher level than something that is given away. There will be less companies making actual DVD’s I’m sure, but the ones that are left will make a bigger impression on the kids that see them.
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Sean Genovese interview (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (2)
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word up geno