Our Westerns 2006 Open Story is now available for download (and streaming). The short film tells the story of our open team at this last years' Westerns Championship in Boulder, CO. It follows the boys through Saturday pool play and into the outcome of Sunday.
It is available in 3 different versions, with 2 in HD:
Westerns2006Story (ipod video - m4v - 347.4MB) - 640 x 360
Westerns2006Story HD (mpg4 - mov - 1042MB) - 1280 x 720 (STREAMS)
Westerns2006Story (divx video - DivX - 291.7MB) - 720 x 400
Westerns2006StoryHD (divx video - DivX - 858.6MB) - 1280 x 720
Update: the film has now been dowloaded more than 437 times and pushed over 99Gigs from my host server!
The film has generate a bit of controversy. Some of this has come out in the comments that have been added to this post and as I stated in one of the comments, I would like to make it clear that this video is our story and both the challenges and frustrations that went along with it are part of that experience. I hope that you can watch the following and see it for what it is worth. And though our disappointing finish at this last years' westerns can be attributed to the specific games against Lakeside and South Eugene, our collapse is ultimately our own responsibility and blame solely lands on us.
Friday, October 27, 2006
CHS: Westerns 2006 Open Story - HD Added
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19 comments:
promote Luke's awesome videos, digg the story on digg.com - click here for the digg page.
hey i finally got the chance to watch the whole video, very awesome. this type of comprehensive coverage of all the games is just great, especially with throwback footage to past westerns, completely awesome.
if you love this kind of work, or hell high school ultimate, promote luke's video on digg, just click the "digg this" link beneath the post.
awesome.
Thanks for the positive feedback. I am a bit concerned the impact that this video will have on future players as they look at particular teams. Most especially I would like to make it clear that this video is our story and both the challenges and frustrations that went along with it are part of that experience.
There were dicey moments, mostly in the Lakeside game, and as such there is the possibility that Lakeside players will feel uncharacteristically protrayed. It was not the intension of this amateur video maker to create or instill bad feelings towards Lakeside, but the nature of that particular game was heated and was close and was frustrating for both sides. Lakeside happened to come out on top and as such contributed to the demise of Churchill as this last years Westerns. But, ultimately, the responsibility of our loss and frustration and any bitterness rests in our hands. Churchill lost that game and then their next to South.
We are excited about this coming season and in many ways i hope that this video gives us finality while also reminding us of what we need to do differently in the future. Every video that i make (that last two of which have been much longer in nature and tell a story rather than just a highlight) have been made for our team. Because there is such a lack of high school ultimate video out there, and even less that is free to download, I hope that our videos give opportunity for others to see the potential, the struggles, the dissapointments, the victories, the great moments and bad...
I am highly debating putting the amount of time it took to produce something of this size and length ever again. You might just see highlights video this year... but, maybe not even that as I didn't even bust my camera out this weekend at Cold Fusion and instead elected to just shoot stills.
Once again though, the games of previous seasons don't really matter. The teams of previous years are always going to be different. And the legacy a team leaves is sadly done more with their words and spirit than their victories and classic achievments.
i had trouble playing it on my Mac because of the ".txt" extenstion, but it worked as soon as I changed it.
weird that it had a .txt extension... in the directory it has the .m4v extension. i wonder if anyone else has had difficulty with this.
hmm, it worked fine for me?
when you mouse over the link what does the file extension say there? for me it still says .m4v
are you guys using internet explorer? if its an older version it might try to block it as an unrecognized format or something, idk.
if it still wont work, id get firefox. loves it.
(for those who havent seen it yet, its very worth your time to download, its an awesome video great soundtrack)
divx version now available. it is slightly smaller in file size (292MB vs. 347MB) and slightly larger in format (720x400 vs. 640x360).
let me know if this format works better for some you.
My only comments are that every single one of those marking fouls is a legit call. Guess what guys, when you wrap your arms around the thrower and touch them as they try to pivot, that's a foul. Stop bitching when it gets called. Also, that "strip call" is HORRIBLE. You dropped the disc, it was not as strip. Turnover.
RE marking fouls:
there were 7 marking fouls called by the same player during one game. During the previous 2 games and 4 after there were not a single other marking foul called on any of our players. Does this mean that we played lower quality teams early in the tournament who didn't call anything on us? Does this mean that this particular game was more competitive and our marks got tigher and thus asked for the foul? Does this mean that we loosened up on the mark after this particular game? Or, does this show that a particular foul in ultimate was used extensively in this particular game? It is common concern among many players at the club level that marking fouls are unfairly used and give too much advantage to the thrower who uses them. The UPA has recognized this concern and has made steps to change the ruling in the 11th edition.
Looking back on the footage, I know my bias was heard in my description of the foul being 'ticky-tack', but the footage also doesn't lie in how it used a few times to draw in one of our players when the count was high.
RE: strip call
The official call made on the field was a foul I believe, but i don't remember and when I was on the field I heard mention of a strip called. At the time I didn't think it was a strip and felt the only call could be a foul. The reason why I state it is a strip in the film is that looking at the footage shows that lakeside's Daniel Ross's left leg comes in contact with Greg Meshniks fore-arm as he is falling to the ground. The contact from the leg pops the disc out of his hand, not the contact with the ground. Even so, the contact from Daniel Ross on Greg as he is going up in the air is what caused him to land so badly and thus a foul would have merit. Looking back, i should have just stated it was a foul call, since the disc goes back to the player who threw the disc rather than stay with Greg if a strip call had been upheld.
Yes, he "used" your illegal positioning (See XIV. B.) on the mark to his advantage. Good for him. Next time don't set up illegally and you won't get called for a foul. I would say the results of your other games is mostly A) high school kids don't know what fouls are with a bit of B) you were marking too tight this game. Don't act like you weren't gaining an advantage by marking tighter. You say to yourself "if I mark tighter, it will be harder for him to get a throw off" well the tradeoff is you get fouls called on you because you are restricting throws. Easily avoided by taking a step back, but you didn't want to give up your advantage. Like I said, don't complain. If you read the 11th edition, you see that they have not made it illegal to make the calls that he made, but to set up as close as your guys were setting up. What they have made illegal is to call a foul on thrower initiated contact with a legitimately positioned stationary defender, however "In general, any contact between the thrower and the extended arms or legs of a marker is a foul on the marker."
If you read the strip rule, a strip is DEFENDER INITIATED contact with the disc. This is clearly not what happens. Your guy flails the disc around and bangs it off is leg. This is not a strip. Even a foul call is pretty dicey. Your guy creates the contact as much as the defender, what you have here is incidental contact, and your guy just drops the disc. Turnover.
i'm curious what team you play for alex peters. you have put in a great deal of time defending a particular team and position.
i still maintain that the fouls called by Lakeside (though legal) were completely isolated to one individual. though this individual was one of the biggest sources for Churchill's frustration, one could argue that Churchill also had its' own antagonist in senior Ethan Smith-Gillespie. though his aggresive callahan came after a few marking fouls had already been made, his spike raised the tension level and competitiveness. it was also what seemed to bring upa observers into the game, not greg's foul call on daniel ross.
and in regards to the upa observers being there (though you didn't ask), my only regret is that they were called in on a complaint on us. Had I (or jeremy cram for that matter) known how dicey the game was going to get I think both of us would have requested upa observers from the beginning. the game had a lot riding on it as everyone knows who has seen the film.
i was frustrated that they were brought in with the perception that Churchill was in error. After last years' observers being part of every one of our games on Sunday, it was frustrating to have the assumption placed upon us once again that were in need of help to run the game fairly.
By the time the observers showed up I had taken a quiet seat on the sidelines and watched my players battle it out on their own. That was probably a good thing in many ways but I still feel frustrated that a few calls near the end of the game didn't seem to be resolved the right way. I don't have perfect memory and I wasn't close enough to the action to know who called what, but there seemed to be some critical times where the disc landed back in the hands of a lakeside player when maybe it should not have.
But, the game is over and there is no real use arguing the finer and rougher points of the game. I have presented the game and our other games in the best clarity I could. I give props to Lakeside for doing so well this last year and hope them the best as they rebuild for the coming one. My players have moved on and put this behind them much more than I was able to since i had the footage on my computer for the last 4 months. I feel that my attempt to move past the event has actually drawn me more back into the situation with the completion of this film. But that is alright. I'm not loseing any sleep over this and i'm not frustrated or angry anymore.
Alex Peters plays for AMP in Philly, so don't worry about him being biased here, he's just giving his honest (and, though I haven't looked carefully enough), probably correct commentary.
Luke, in response to this comment:
"It is common concern among many players at the club level that marking fouls are unfairly used and give too much advantage to the thrower who uses them. The UPA has recognized this concern and has made steps to change the ruling in the 11th edition."
My perception of this (I'm not on the rules committee here) is that the reason the marking rules are being changed is that defenders initiate too much contact and for the most part throwers can't call it without stopping the flow of the offense. It's the defenders that are taking adavantage of the rules, not the throwers.
I have not yet seen the video and can't comment on whether or not the calls in question are or are not legit.
-Kyle
you could very well be correct. in my limited club experience i have seen it used the other way around more often, but i have also played on a lower level club open team (darkstar) and not against elite teams as often.
as for watching the video, an HD version is now available in DivX format and will shortly be available in mpg4 when i can finish encoding it.
enough with the marking foul arguments. some may have been necessary and some looked like crap, what it comes down to is the pick call. who made the call? there is not doubt in my mind that there was no pick. i wasnt there at westerns nor am i picking sides, i just feel if we are pointing out bad calls and or bad commentary, personally the pick call is most mind boggling to me.
not to mention that it turns the whole game around.
I agree
Mac Schneider of Lakeside made the call. I have watched the video and I think that is is a pretty questionable call, however if you pause the play correctly, we can see that he is indeed on the opposite side of the stack to start, it is unclear whether he is obstructed and therefore he may have taken the game from Churchill. However, to be fair, Churchill does get the disk back and then turns it over, so it is difficult to say, but it is a huge point in the game, obviously.
Jeff, MO
lakeside won the game legit. It was sorta a dick move luke to call drews fouls ticky tack and shit. they were fouls. I think that lakeside was the better team then and should have won that game.
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