Blacklist is a video all about one trip to Lake Powell by the wakeboarding and wakeskating world's most progressive and well-known riders. If that sounds familiar, it might be because it's the same formula that was used for one of the best wakeboarding films of all time, Mayday.
Instead of FLF who produced Mayday, Blacklist is a collaboration between a trio of the sport's top video people in Justin Stephens of Cadmium Films, Ronn Seidenglanz of Sidewayz, and Joey Meddock.
Concept
As mentioned above, Blacklist takes the following group of riders to Lake Powell for a houseboat trip and films all the action:
Randy Harris
Brian Grubb
Gregg Necrason
Parks Bonifay
Shane Bonifay
Chad Sharpe
Drew McGuckin
Danny Harf
Erik Ruck
Thomas Horell
Scott Byerly
Shawn Watson
As you can tell from this list, that is a lot of wakeboarding and wakeskating talent all in one place at one time. Set against the beautiful and unique backdrop of Lake Powell, these riders build some obstacles to create "Powell Park" where they grind, slide, and ride all day long.
The atmosphere is not competitive, and you really get to see these guys all having fun on the water pushing each other and doing some things we all do on houseboat vacations like screw around, build bonfires, and dive off the roof.
Cinematography
The cinematography in Blacklist is good as there are multiple angles of just about everything that goes down on the water, and it's shot by pros of the sport.
Length
Blacklist is just about 30 minutes for the movie itself, and is a mix of riding, interviews, and craziness. However, the DVD bonus extras contain longer riding segments for many of the riders so you can just check out straight wakeboarding and wakeskating, and it makes the whole DVD much longer. The bonus extras also contain trailers of most of the films Sidewayz has distributed in the past couple of years.
Music
The music in Blacklist is pretty good and is mostly lesser-known artists like Ming and FS, Greyboy, Snapcase, and T-Cisco. It's upbeat and fits the video well.
Riding
Unlike Mayday, Blacklist doesn't have official segments for each rider. It's more of a freeflowing mixture of wake riding, obstacle action, interviews, and off the water clips. A lot of the good riding is featured in the DVD bonus extra at the end called "Ride Along". We'll cover some of the highlights here:
A big step up rail was built up from a pool, to a flat bar, and then a metal handrail down from that. It was a pretty crazy setup, but most of the riders pull off some impressive stuff. It also provides some outstanding wipeouts where there is a lot of mud involved.
Randy Harris steals most of the riding show with his gigantic tricks with long grabs, and tons of style. He takes everything very high, and way out into the flats. Some of his highlights include backside 720s and 540s way out, a huge Remix off the double up, big graps, and a Shifty Rewind 360 with a nice grab.
The wakeskating is good with some rail over land action, an ollie land gap that Byerly conquers, and some kickflips from McGuckin and Grubb. They also put a rail on the houseboat which the whole crew sessions. Thomas Horrell has a nice segment in the bonus section.
The Pointless guys all represent will with their usual brand of rail mastery and huge spins and inverts. One particular funny part consists of Parks and Ruck betting on what kind of reaction Chad Sharpe will give after he falls each time.
Bonus Features
Blacklist has DVD bonus features which consists of random footage, extra riding segments, and full trailers for the following films:
Byerly Documentary
Welcome (Hyperlite Team Video)
Metronome
Boombox
Running With Scissors
All or Nothing
Sfumato
Underestimated
Delta Sessions
Red Bull Depth Charge
Invisible Cinema
Rating
Blacklist earns points for taking the best riders and going to a great location in Lake Powell. The scenery and vibe is much better than the typical video which tends to be shot on the same lakes we always see in Florida. It's also cool to see some different rail types due to the terrain they have to work with. It might have been nice though to get a bit more wakeboarding action broken down by each rider in the main movie. Overall, Blacklist earns 4 out of 5 stars.
