Check out this pic from the Keith Lyman Weeks at The Projects - CLICK HERE

This was behind a standard Xstar with no real added ballast to speak of. Talk about knowing how to edge……

You can still head out for the last Lyman week, emaul info@theprojectscamp.com

Grindwater Sports and the 2010 line of Shapiro Wakesurfboards have just launched a cool blog site for their 2010 range of boards. Early word from the Shapiro camp is that there will be an online store coming real soon where you can buy the best wakesurfers out there. We’ve tried the boards here for a while now, and nothing comes close to them! So go check out the new GRINDWATER SITE.

Shaun Murray has added to his family with a new baby girl! Very awesome stuff, congrats guys…….

I’m such a fan of early mornings! I hate waking up for them, but when i’m awake and ready to go, its my favorite time to shoot. There is something about the early morning that makes things look different, and its a time of day that most people don’t ever ‘wake up to see’. Being at The Projects means that i am lucky to have some pretty awesome morning views to shoot! The other day was no different, so i grabbed the camera and shot a bunch of handheld shots from just outside my front door - HERE

My Morning Florida….. from EnglishJon.com on Vimeo.

I put together a small article on shooting with Keuth Lyman for his very cool ‘Lyman Weeks’ happening at The Projects. Essentially its a all inclusive coaching week with none other than Keith himself. There is a huge welcome package in store for all the campers too. Check out the article here - http://www.englishjon.com/?p=219

So i put out some articles and reviews on some of the gear we use here and how to use elements of things like the Canon 7D camera. I will be writing quite a few of these style of articles over the next few weeks, so keep checking back into the site….

Here they are:

Zacuto Z-Finder Review - HERE

Canon 7D Picture Styles - HERE

Jason Kimball, something of a veteran in the extreme sports industy already, has joined up with Company Wake. We said a long time back that company brought a new image to the wake industry, and with Jason they will no doubt further this trend.

Check out the video of Jason HERE

Happy New Year to Justin and everyone at Company Wake….

Darin Shapiro will become the first wakeboarder to be admitted into the Waterski Hall Of Fame - a huge honor in our industry!

Read the official release here

So we now have a new logo here at TheWakePlace - the first of many new changes to happen on the site really soon! Thanks to Tony Teske for his hard work on the logo…

Yes, TheWakePlace has been quiet these past few weeks, we have been hard at work putting together new projects to bring to the site in the new year. We have always done things differently here, always focused on the riders and the riding. With the new team of brains working in line with the site, we have some crazy new projects on the way.

Shooting and filmmaking in general is always a process of events, creative events. Setting up cameras, riders, the boat or ski, the lake and the weather is all a special combination that needs to come together to make videos happen. TheWakePlace has been super lucky over the last 2 years with this process, but you guys haven’t seen anything yet! We have our best work in the can, ready to head out to you soon! We’re so pumped at this end, we can’t wait until it all starts.

So sit back, and keep it posted right here….

So its no secret now that we are using some new cameras here at TheWakePlace. Just today we had JD Webb, Andrew Atkinson, Kevin Henshaw and Colin Harrington out here and were commenting on the new gear. So its going to be a fun time going forward, we have some crazy things on the way.

Here is a little extra video from some early morning shooting at The Projects - http://vimeo.com/7375240

Its the most exciting time in the whole history of TheWakePlace! Not only have we just upgraded our cameras that we use here, but we have also moved our HQ to The Projects Wakeboard Camp in Bithlo, FL. What this means is way more content is now on its way to you guys, that is even higher quality, and way more frequently! Its going to take us a week or two to get things up to speed, so stand by!

So over the next few months we will be bringing you some articles on the gear i use here at TheWakePlace. We get a lot of emails from people asking how we do things and the equipment i use, so we figured it was about time we started to share a few bits of info.

Wakeboarding can be tough to shoot, most of the time you get one chance to get that shot or you miss it. Its kind of a similar thing to a wedding film, you can’t ask everyone to start again because you weren’t ready. So with that in mind, you need to make sure you are ready at all times when the rider comes down the lake. Anyone out there who has filmed Wakeboarding, or any extreme sport, will know that it can be tricky to keep a steady shot when the riders are moving so quickly in front of you. There is the vibraton from the boat, the rollers on the water, the driver turning, even the wind can put you off from getting that shot - not to mention dodging the water that can spray up from the sides and kill your camera. So one essential piece of equipment that we always use is a shoulder rig for the camera so we can balance the camera onto your shoulder to help stabilize it. In the world of shoulder mounts for cameras, you need to look no further than Zacuto…

Zacuto are a Chicago based camera hardware company that produce by far some of the best camera accessories in the world. What makes Zacuto unique, is that they just seem to make products that work, and work in the way that every filmmaker wants them to work. The Zacuto range of shoulder mounts are some of the best pieces of kit i have ever attached to my camera. Most other shoulder mounts will have you wishing it just had an extra feature here or there - the Zacuto rig is just perfect, and perfect for what i do with TheWakePlace.

Above is the Zacuto ‘Newsman’ Shoulder rig, attached to my Canon XH A1 camera. The first thing you will maybe notice about the shoulder rig is all the red adjustment knobs on the side and front of the rig. This is an early indication of how versatile and adjustable this rig can really be. One thing that is important with any shoot is to be comfortable with where the camera is, just so you can operate it as best you can. The Zacuto rig is designed to fully adjust to any position or situation you might come across.

It has a fairly simple structure, starting with the amazing Zacuto Baseplate. This is the piece in the middle that actually attaches to the camera. There is a slidable mounting screw to attach the camera to the baseplate, and a tripod moutning plate - allowing you to quickly go from tripod to shoulder in literally seconds. On the front there is a handle configuration (see below) where 2 rods are attached that lead down to the grip handles. Towards the back of the camera you will find a ‘Zoffset’ that attaches to one of the rods coming from the baseplate. What this does is offset the ballast pack and shoulder pad around 4-5inches to the right. What this allows you to do is still look through the viewfinder when the rig is on your shoulder.

You can see at the front that the handle mount is adjustable to pretty much any position you need it to go to. Even the handles themselves are adjustable around a ball and socket connection. The rods on the baseplate can move up and down too, so if you need that extra push forward on the handles, you have it available to you. The shoulder pad and ballast pack are one of the best features of this whole rig. Anyone out there who has filmed with a camera just in their hands will know that even the 10lb camera can get heavy after a few minutes of holding it out in front of you. What the ballast does is actually balance the camera over your shoulder. When you have a balanced camera over your shoulder, everything becomes smoother! Smoother pans, less vibration, less jump when you walk with the camera, just less unwanted movement period. It takes the pressure off of your arms too, so you can concentrate on getting that smooth shot rather than holding your camera out in front of you. Having all that camera weight out in front of you with a shoulder mount that just rests on your shoulder with no ballast, doesn’t really smooth out your shots at all. It takes some weight away, yes, but you’re still holding the weight in your arms. Most shoulder mounts out there don’t have this balancing ballast, so this is where Zacuto really stand out with understanding what filmmakers go through at shoots.

So what does this mean for wakeboard shooting? Well just like any shoot, if you want those stable smooth shots, then you have to make sure you are set up in the right way. As i mentioned at the start, you have to be prepared to shoot at a moments notice as and when the rider goes for a trick. Having the camera on a balanced rig allows me to be ready all the time with something that feels good on my shoulder and gives me full access to the cameras controls. I know that if the rider suddenly goes bigger, i can raise the camera up without worrying about the shot being bumpy and not as smooth as i need it to be. This is especially useful when shooting from a chase boat or something where the distance and angle that you’re shooting at aren’t always a constant.

In a recent shoot out at The Projects, i was standing 30ft up on a forklift. The platform was small and not 100% steady, plus i was zoomed in quite a bit. When you zoom in with a camera, the smallest movement by you gets amplified through the lens. So it is especially important to keep the shot steafy when zoomed, and this can take some practice. But when you use a balanced rig like this, it becomes about 50% easier to control the shakes and vibrations when zoomed in. I seem to zoom in a fair amount during most of the shoots i do, so using this rig allows me to get shots that might not be possible to get.

Above is the rig ready to rock on the forklift, you can see how it is balanced over my shoulder between the camera and the ballast pack.

The whole rig can be taken to bits too. The baseplate, rods, handles, Zoffset, shoulder pad, ballast….. everything! So what this means is that you can adjust things around depending on what you are doing. Again, this goes back to the rig being versatile with its adjustments. This comes in very handy when shooting from helicopters or planes. In a recent helicopter shoot we had a smaller helicopter to use, and that meant that there was less room in the cockpit for me to move and set up to get the shot. So i was able to break down the rig by removing the ballast pack, allowing me to still get the steady shot. It worked perfectly - whenever you are in a confined space in a boat or a helicopter, its sometimes hard to maintain control over the equipment. But having that option to break down your gear to something more manageable is such a great option to have. The whole system is very quick to set up and take down, there is no timely construction - especially if you are just using a camera and the rig (with no accessories).

So overall, making sure you can adjust to different environments and scenarios is an important part of shooting wakeboarding. The Zacuto rigs are, in my opinion, the best shoulder support in the world. From how they are designed to how they actually work, they are pure filmmaking tools. The effort that went into this shoulder rig has allowed me to improve the quality of the videos on the site, and i can now plan some new angles and ideas due to having the increased stability.

One of the biggest pieces of advice i can offer people who are filming wakeboarding, is sorting out some sort of stabilization for their camera. It will allow you to get better shots and make you end video have more of that pro feel to it. As with any product, there are good and bad examples of them. Zacuto are the best example of a camera rig i have come across, and i think that i will still be using this exact same set up in 5 years time….

So check out Zacuto.com for all their products and all of their amazing video series on filmmaking

JP

Isn’t it pretty cool how we have the whole season of riding, and then towards the fall we have all these new tricks being landed for the first time. Steel Lafferty nailed the first wake to wake 1080, Rathy killed it with his back 1080’s, and more and more riders are getting these tricks on lock down. Its a cool time for progression….

Lets talk about Aaron Rathy for a minute here. I remember being in the boat shooting with Matt Rini in Clermont, and we were talking about how Rathy was the best rider on the water in the world - people just hadn’t seen what he was capable of just yet. Aaron Rathy is a determined and ‘hungry’ rider, hungry to win titles and prove his potential from all the hours he has had behind the boat. Matt Rini would tell me stories of how Rathy would literally take 2hr sets of getting hammered trying to learn new tricks when he was young. Its that dedication and self dicipline that now see’s Rathy at the top of the tree in our sport. So congrats to our new King Of Wake…..

Moving on from there, we have the other riders who are still pushing it like crazy. Dean Smith made me laugh on his Facebook just today, joking about how he is going for early retirement after watching Harley Clifford ride. So there are a whole bunch of riders still pushing it even with the competiton season over - very cool!

The girls are still going strong too, who would have ever thought that we would see girls throwing consistent S-Bends in competition? Well Raimi and Dallas are now regular throwers of them, and we have recently got word of other tricks being pushed by the girls - more to come soon on that one. But after a hard forght year, its good to see that Dallas came out on top as Queen of Wake - especially after we witnessed her progression through things like her S-Bend this season. Hats off to Amber with her heel 720 too, taking best trick at Wake Awards…..

So its been a season of progression in some areas, and the changing of the guard at the top of the competition scene. It will be good to see the Australian tour and what riders continue to push through the winter. Rest assured that we will try to capture as much of it as we can….

JP

So from time to time i make lifestyle videos of places i go and things i get upto. Its pretty cool to capture it all and throw it together in an edit to some cool music. I have quite a cool collection of videos from the places i have been and the things i have done.

So last weekend saw a hurricane push a swell into the Florida surf. We headed out to the beach with Darin Shapiro and Jeff Weatherall to see what the waves were like. They weren’t all that great, but i still managed to get a bunch of shots of what was going on. Filming into the sun was a new one for me, but it was cool to see the colors you could get from it.

Anyways, here is the video - http://vimeo.com/6297660

JP

This week see’s the start of the Surf Expo week. For those of you not in Orlando, it is the craziest week in the industry for most companies and riders. With all the 2010 product on display, its going to be interesting to see which direction the companies are taking for the new season. The last year hasn’t been easy for pretty much all the companies, but its good to see that all of them are making that trip to expo and gritting their teeth for another season.

From what we’ve seen so far, most of the new boards are either getting stronger with slider bases and new material lay ups - Or, they’re super light weight set ups that feel like nothing on your feet. It will good to see what Slingshot and Company bring to the show, and what sort of ‘flex’ technology the other board companies bring to the table. Ronix and Hyperlite are the ones for me to watch this year, from what i have seen of their new lines they are taking steps forward even with the bad economy.

Will there be any new pro model boards? We hope to see a few more, there are some riders out there who deserve them and its going to be good to see it come around. Its going to be good to see where binding technology is going too, i’ve seen the new LF Ultras and can’t wait to get the rest of the line in my hands.

We will be there with the cameras as always, so we will bring you the coverage we always do. So stay tuned and get ready for some cool new gear. After Expo is done with we will resume our normal schedule of videos, to say we have been busy would be a huge understatement….

JP

So we are starting to wrap up our filming with Rusty Malinoski. Its been almost 6 months since we started shooting, and the last few days have seen some epic stuff captured on camera. Just to give you an insight to what you can expect, we headed to Rustys yeaterday to see what else we needed to get on film. We headed out and set up on the lake for Rusty to hit up some double ups, and it didn’t take long for Rusty to land FOUR 1080’s in one day. Rusty has these so clean its almost sickening to watch, he has put in the effort and is now getting the rewards.

Added into that, we set up a shot in a certain way that meant that Rusty needed to ride with 100% precision. Every hit Rusty made he was on target, getting some insane shots! Its crazy to watch that level of riding up close, and pretty soon you will all see what we have been keeping under wraps….

So we are now back from a 6 day trip across Michigan with Stoke International. We headed to Detroit with Tony Carroll to meet up with Nick, Booko, Andy, Ryan, Jarret, Chad and everyone else on Stoke. It was a killer time and we have lots of footage from the 10 or so locations we hit. From Wake Wars in GR Michigan to the local lakes up North. Good Times all around and we have one killer video on the way…..

So on Friday last week we flew up to Michigan to catch up with the guys from Stoke International for a 6 day film. We are pretty much hitting up half the state and riding and filming at all the lakes that are around. This weekend saw the Wake Wars event in downtown Grand Rapids, put on by the guys from Step Up Productions.

Colin Harrington, Tony Carroll, Austin Hair and a bunch of other pro’s have made the journey up here for the event, and so far its been a good first day. Tony Carroll boosted off the kicker to take the day 1 top spot with ease - day 2 today (sunday) will see everyone pull out all the stops to take the win.

We will be bringing you some of our footage from Michigan in the coming weeks. So far, we have some killer stuff. Stay Tuned…

This weekend is the Florida Wakesurf Championship on Lake Ivanhoe. Darin Shaprio will be on hand over the weekend with his full line of signature boards for everyone to get up close and personal with. The boards are the closest you can get to a surfboard behind the boat, and have really have some amazing development behind them. If you’re heading down then make sure you check them out…

This Friday we are heading to Michigan to meet up with the guys from Stoke International for a 6 day filming binge. This is going to be epic!

Details to follow…..

This weekend we saw a huge amount of history being made in female wakeboarding. Dallas Friday not only took her 6th National title of her career, but she also landed an S-Bend behind the boat in competition. Not only that, but Dallas also landed a 270 transfer on the transfer box in competition - another first! Dallas is well known in the sport thanks to her track record of wins and other achievments. The Nationals was a result of a new effort from the Floridian, who went above and beyond her normal training schedule to show the world that she is still at the forefront of female wakeboarding.

So about 4 weeks ago now, a plan was set for Dallas to make an S-Bend behind the boat. Behind this plan was the coaching genius of Mike Ferraro, making sure Dallas did everything she needed to do to make the trick without getting hurt, and to make it first time! Dallas had a rigourous schedule to keep up with - it included riding at the Sesitec System 2.0 cable, McCormicks Cable in Tampa, Working with Ryan Jones at his trampoline gym, riding with Mike, and ofcourse filming all the major steps. Its fair to say that we were all shocked by just how hard she worked at this trick. She never missed a beat, and even dod more than what was on her schedule to make sure she got it done in time for nationals.

With this new mindset and ability to put herself through a tight schedule, i think we haven’t even begun to see what Dallas is really capable of. For now, she will be staying at the top of her game. Lets see what the other girls have in return. The next event with the girls could be interesting….

Darin Shapiro has his own line of signature Wakesurf boards. Darin is an obsessive surfer, and put out his board to the public this summer. Every lake we go to it seems that kids are scooping these boards up and ripping on them. Performance Ski and Surf now stock them, so do BuyWake and many many more stored out there! We have just hit them up on his lake and they are by far the best boards we’ve stepped on behind the boat. We will have video coming soon of what we got upto, but until then check out the GrindWater Site and the Store….

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Time to get wet!!