BMX UNION

Let’s talk about the “Alive & Well” DVD from Focalpoint!

If there is one guy who we don’t quite know how he manages to do everything he does, it’s Cooper Brownlee. Between his roles with Colony and Division Brand, he has always managed to put a lot of time into keeping Focalpoint going strong, keeping the scene down in Australia rolling along.

A few weeks back, the latest full-length video from Cooper and Focalpoint called “Alive & Well” was released and it’s a banger of a BMX video packed full of familiar faces. The video features full parts from Jake Deering, Sean Falkenstein, Alex Bolton, Kym Grosser, Pat Freyne and Jack Kelly, with mixes and a split section featuring Marius Dietsche, James Pease, Cooper Brownlee, Polly, Brad Anderson, Chris Whyte, Daniel Johnson, Jack O’Reilly, Jacman Hinss, Lachy Swanton, Tasman Murray, Jax Anderson, Chris Henderson, Kyle Fletcher, Matt Green, Jack Gruber and Alex Hiam.

If you aren’t going through that list and wanting to see this video already, you’re crazy because that’s some of Australia’s finest that all stacked clips for this BMX video.

Going into the video, we had a pretty good idea of what we were getting into. We’ve followed Cooper’s videos enough over the years to know that we’re going to get some really clean film work and pretty straight forward editing without a lot of extra fluff or graphics. We’re big fans of clean and simple, and that’s exactly what we got in this video. The film work had a good mix of long lens and fisheye shots without over doing it with the second angles for clips unless it was necessary. The video has a good balance for the footage and it makes it easy to watch without getting caught up thinking about how they could have done this or that to make it better.

When it came to the music, the “Alive & Well” video focused more on classic and laid back tunes from bands like Blood Ceremony, Sacri Monti, Uriah Heep, Blues Pills, Leon Russell, UFO, Electic Citizen, Omega and Mott The Hoople. We really liked the sound track for this since you can’t go wrong with the classics. If you like rap with your videos, you’re not getting much love in this one.

The “Alive & Well” video is all focused on the streets with a lot of rail and ledge destruction, ditches, banks and wallrides. There might be a skatepark clip or two mixed in there, but this is for the most part just grinds and lines. With a line up like the one this video has, you get a lot of different tricks and a good mix of styles in this, which helps keep things interesting from start to finish!

Overall, the “Alive & Well” video turned out just as dialed as I had expected when I saw the trailer for the first time. We were really stoked on the whole video, but Jack Kelly didn’t disappoint with the ender! The entire video runs a total of 54 minutes including the crash section that is packed with heavy slams and some good laughs, so it’s a decent length! It’s actually a lot of video for the price, since it is currently available for FREE with any order from the Focalpoint Webstore! Talk about a deal.

Check out the trailer below and you can learn more about the video over on the Focalpoint website!