(Explanation after the links)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-vcFdrYa2s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn6GWRk2_0M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JE6TQqBke4
(http://www.youtube.com/user/MakeLikeaMonkeyLLC/)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...d-the-olympian (Already funded)
The short version: This is a film project based on the concept of comparing the struggles of a painter and an athlete from one of the Olympic disciplines (Specifically Olympic weightlifting). It aims to look into the lives of two people who have the same relentless dedication to two completely different pursuits. It also aims, in a way, to bring the sport of Olympic weightlifting to a more mainstream audience, and hopefully to therefore make it more popular, particularly in the US, where I'm led to believe the Oly lifting scene is rather small in comparison to that of other countries. For this, they'll employ an actress who is trained in painting, and one of the top male Olympic weightlifters in the US.
I have no idea how the eventual feature-length is going to be handled, but apparently the initial pitch will be with a short employing no dialogue. I'm a bit skeptical about that given the aims of the overall project, and if the short film is successful I'd personally still like to see something more conventional for the feature film, considering today's mainstream audiences.
That said, being myself a recreational weightlifter with a passing interest in visual arts and a fair bit of love for the 'iron game', I'm very interested in this and hope it succeeds in popularizing both, hopefully (Although it'd be quite a long shot) in a similar vein to the effects of the 1977 bodybuilding docudrama 'Pumping Iron' (Which made fitness into a mainstream pursuit and launched Schwarzenegger's film career, as well as firmly setting competitive bodybuilding inside popular culture).
On the other hand, I know that many people might dislike weightlifting and/or painting, for whatever reason, or may be indifferent to them and to what goes into the lives of those who focus on them, so I figured I'd ask for opinions here. We have the art sub-forum, which gets a lot of traffic and some very high-quality art, and the old fitness thread showed that there are at least a few of us who are into various physical activities, weightlifting included, so I'm hoping that there'll be at least a small measure of interest in this, but what about the rest of you? Does this create any interest? Does anything put you off the film project? What is your overall reaction to it?
Thoughts plz.
