The "Why Was Youtube Hiding You From Me?" Award goes to elite gymnastics montages.
EGM/@lauren_stevens2 has had her account for over a year but I only found it 3 or 4 months ago. She has some great montages, a few that have over 20,000 views. I think my favorite is this Katelyn Ohashi montage. It has mostly American Cup footage and does a great job reminding us how she had an excellent senior debut. Now, we'll wait to see what her next step is as she returns from injury.
Video That Took the Gymternet By Storm
Last year, we had a few fun montages that took the gymternet by storm. This year, we've only had one, but so many gymnasts shared it which made it pretty remarkable. Gymnasts from Alison Taylor to Parkettes to Talia Chiarelli to both Jordyn Wieber and her mother have shared Anna Burnsy/@AnnaBurns's montage. My favorite moments, "He who says he can and he who says he cannot are both usually right" cue Anastasia Grishina at the Olympics. My favorite part is at 2:15 and includes my favorite quote, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us." I also liked this quote: "Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours of beating on your craft." The last minute is amazing. This montage definitely deserves it's almost 200,000 views!
Elite Gymnastics- Why do we fall?
Montages of 2013
Effects
Meet Recap
Requests and Most Improved
Made By Me
I made 2 requests for montages throughout the whole year and the montages that were made were perfect, so thank you!!
Aliya and Nabs || Let me be your Ruler
SuperGymmie/@SuperGymmie
I'm pretty sure I tagged SG in this request because Royals by Lorde seemed like the kind of song she would like - sultry but something about that song makes you feel invincible. It was in the lead up to Worlds when I first fell in love with the song and thought that Aliya Mustafina and Tatiana Nabieva would be the perfect two athletes to be featured. They're a dynamic duo that really couldn't care less what you're up to or what you think of them. Unfortunately, Nabs was injured so we didn't get as much footage to make a post Worlds montage.
The Fierce Five - MADE IN AMERICA
EmmsDream/@EmmsDream
The song is by a group called Cimorelli. They're 6 sisters that started singing covers on youtube and recording videos against a wall in their house. They've moved on now to a full record contract, VEVO and all, and original songs. This is one of their songs and I thought it would be perfect for some sort of Team USA montage. EmmsDream was able to make it into a video for the Fierce Five and it's perfect. All of this was made using iMovie which I find really impressive (had no idea you could do the letter overlay in iMovie).
Looking back on 2013 and the montages, I think it's appropriate that we do a recap of the meets. We started off with the American Cup with Katelyn Ohashi, Simone Biles, Victoria Moors finishing 1-2-3 respectively. Then, we went on to the Individual European Championships where the Mustafina vs Iordache rivalry escalated and Roxana Popa and Giulia Steingruber began to steal our hearts. Florida won the NCAA championships in April and we were lucky to have great live footage of the EYOF and Universiade. Then, the US elite season started to pick up and selections were made for World Championships. Quite a year! SuperGymmie made a recap of the entire year including other meets like Massilia and British Espoir Championships.
American Cup Gymnastics 2013-Alive
2013 Euros AA Montage - I Still Have a Soul
For those of you that loved the Beauty of Gymnastics montage, this is a montage for you. Lots of the slow motion clips from the European Championships are used here and as the music picks up, so does the intensity of the gymnastics that we watch.
Florida Gators Gymnastics - War of Inches
Chris Saccullo made a great edit to Al Pacino's Inch by Inch speech from the movie Any Given Sunday. Full quote can be found here. Coach Rhonda Faehn and the Gator gymnasts loved the montage so much, they played it at their banquet.
"You find out that life is just a game of inches. Because in the game of
life, the margin for error is so small.
European Youth Olympic Festival | Apparatus Finals Men & Women
We saw the showdown of the future stars of Romania vs. Russia but we also got a preview of what Great Britain will bring to the table, not only in WAG but also in MAG. Sports2Visuals, the same group that produces The Hard Way to Success documentaries, was there with some high definition footage and some great montages too.
To kick off this year's montage review, I wanted to look at a few of my favorite effects that we saw in montages.
Team Italia. Cherry Waves by CSaccullo
Effect: Apparatus Overlay
Think this is one of the first videos where Chris started to overlay gymnasts on the same apparatus. How appropriate that it was beam for Team Italy. Many of us have waited for Carlotta Ferlito to make a major beam event finals since she turned senior, especially after medaling at European Championships. That finally became a reality where she was joined by teammate Vanessa Ferrari at the past World Championship beam finals. Italy isn't a team that typically gets much montage attention so it was nice to see an Olympic montage of these athletes.
We Got the Fire
by AshleyakaFlipper/@ashley_flipper
Effect: Slow Motion
I'm a little biased towards this montage because it includes a song by Ellie Goulding. The video features television footage of US Nationals and slow motion was used to highlight the different skills that the gymnasts were performing. There were contrasts of regular speed with portions of the same clip that were slowed down or sped up. It reminded me of the Doha footage which is some of my favorite footage for that exact reason. There were also some epic faces that were highlighted - one being Mykayla Skinner after she successfully landed her Cheng and Maggie Nichols at the start of her routine.
Katelyn Ohashi - Shine
@usateamfan1/DakotaLaand
Effects: Slow Motion in Perspective
I feel like we got stuck for a while in seeing skills highlighted as black and white. I like what DakotaLaand did here by highlighting the skill by finding video from a different angle and slowing it down. It made it pop that much more. You see it with her beam skills - the arabian and leap, along with the layout full later on in the montage.
McKayla Maroney || Night
SuperGymmie/@SuperGymmie
Effect: Unknown
SG tried some new editing skills at the beginning of the montage and it turned out great! I'm not sure what to call it - there's some split screen but also a gradual fade to black and white...
Any great montage effects that you enjoyed? Which was your favorite of the one's above?
Social media can actually be quite lovely. This week we got an update from two gymnasts who are working on new skills.
Mykayla Skinner is working on her triple double - three twists two flips! In the interview I did with her last month, she informed me that this isn't a skill she's just playing around with (Sights Set on 2016). She hopes to add this to her routine.
India McPeak is an NCAA hopeful from Ireland. She's consistently been at the top for Ireland gymnastics and was selected to attend the World Championships. Here she is working a full twisting back tuck on beam.
On a funny note, I found this post on vine. I've never had a tweet shared so many times so many gymnasts must share this frustration. (The audio is off so check that your phone audio is on or click the volume button in the upper left corner of the video on your computer. Link)
I still laugh when I watch it.
