Back behind the lens

I spent the last weekend up in Arcata working with Helen Wilson on her upcoming Greenland rolling DVD. I'm doing the filming and editing for the project and it has definitely been a great experience being able to simply focus on the filming and not the paddling. I managed to stay dry to whole weekend without even getting my boat off the roof of my truck - while that may seem like a negative to some I feel I have plenty of paddling in my life and I try to enjoy the opportunity to do things outside a boat. When I'm filming my own paddling it creates a constant struggle between the paddling and video that ultimately is good but sometimes tiring. Being able to concentrate on just one of those often leads to more relaxation.

We plan to get Helen's video out by May so we have a lot to accomplish in a short time. We did the bulk of filming this weekend and sorted out the structure of the DVD. It is going to be a roll video for everyone - not just experienced Greenland paddlers - and we got lots of great footage to include. Helen has been teaching rolling clinics across the country (and the world) for a while now so she has the class structure down cold and we just had to translate that experience to the video. The main thing was to show clearly exactly what she does so people can use the video to teach themselves - it's often the difficulty of finding (or affording) a good instructor or rolling partner that keeps people from learning and mastering the art. This video should give folks a virtual partner that allows them to start from scratch and work their way up to some very cool advanced rolling.

I haven't had time to do any real editing yet but here's a taste of the good footage we got: