2005: A Gymnastics Odyssey

One of my earliest and most ambitious works. It was so long, that I couldn't print out the original (Windows movie maker requires it to be under 100 MBs). That really messed things up. I think I lost one unsaved version; and the length also threw off my editing skills- which I was most proud of at the time, and which took up most of my time. The footage at the end doesn't synch well with the music, but at one time it did. Ah, well. Since I couldn't fit it all in the way I had envisioned, I dissected it into 2 movies- the second one being incomplete, as at that point I just gave up on the project, being dejected from the ending of the first one.

The theme of course, is based on 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I think is the ultimate sci-fi movie. Tedious, mysterious, religious, technically sound, it is perfect...from the dawn of man to his next evolutionary stage. If you have never seen the movie, you will miss out on some of the parodying in this video.

Here's what I originally wrote for it:

2005: A Gymnastics Odyssey (Rough Cut)- Building upon the audio clips of the ultimate sci-fi religious movie experience, I've paid homage to Kubrick's work and originally had in mind to show the evolutionary progress of the gymnast; instead, I ended up simply piecing together video clips to choreograph them to the classic Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Blue Danube Waltz. It's interesting to see how the movements sometimes look as if they were made to go with the music. I wanted to tack on Thus Spake Zarathustra again at the end, but encountered problems, as somewhere along the way, I threw all the synchronization of movement to music out of whack; so I decided to just print this version out before I lost it from tampering. At around 12 minutes and over 100 MBs, this is the longest piece thus far. I was hoping for an epic where I could just throw in every photo and video clip I have from these past 2 years.

and

2005: A Gymnastics Odyssey Part II (Closing Credits)- Was made because I could not fit the length of this using Windows Movie Maker; so I had to splice it in half, rather than lose it. It's a bit incomplete, but I definitely wanted to include it, since I filmed a staged scene of me tossing one of the "firecrackers" up into the air to parody the most famous movie transition scene ever: Moonwatcher tossing the bone-club- man's most primitive tool- high into the air....it tumbles through space to transition into a spacecraft, thereby catapulting us from the Dawn of Man and into the future of the human race. Here the "firecracker" transitions into Greg Demer bouncing on the trampoline.

2005: A Gymnastics Odyssey




2010: Gymnastics Odyssey Two

What Kind of Bat Likes to Tumble?

How about....an Acro-bat?!?

The Adventures of SuperGymnast

SMGC Goes to Magic Mountain

Actual event took place October 16, 2005.

"Glory Days"

Another one of my early video experiments...

This is from a videotape, filmed March 27th, 1992. I believe it was the PAC-10 Championships in Stanford. One of my better ring performances. I was never a top gymnast. Having started the sport late in life (I was 16, and had no idea there was an entire sport built around the idea of flipping), I was fortunate to be on the team at UCLA (One reason why this blog kind of bleeds blue and gold). More than half of my teammates were Olympians and Olympic-calibre. So I was content with occupying the bottom rung of the ladder. Furthermore, I focused primarily on rings and floor. Rather than devote myself to all 6 events, I thought I'd stand a better chance of competing if I just spent more time on these two events.




I got pretty strong after doing major rehab therapy on my right shoulder, from arthroscopic surgery. Strength was the only thing that I had going for me on rings. I think I had a record of 7 or 8 cross pull-outs; I could do about 4 one-arm pull ups with either grip direction, and over 50 pull ups. I think my record was 54.