Mixed formats come together for skateboarding feature - Post News - Brief Article

Post, Oct, 2002 by Marc Loftus

VENICE BEACH, CA -- The Sony Classics documentary Dogtown and Z Boys chronicles the lives and trends of teenage skateboarders in the 1970s, as well as the sub-culture that grew out of it But creating a feature film from archival elements -- some being homemade videos -- presented director/original Z-Boy Stacy Peralta and producer Agi Orsi, based here, with challenging format conversion issues.

The creators called on Madison, WI's Sonic Foundry to help out, using its C2 process to make scenes edited in video -- made from new and old 8mm, Super 8mm, 16mm, Super 16mm and 35mm film elements -- look and behave like scenes edited in film at a consistent 24frame-per-second standard. Sonic Foundry also used its proprietary, 60/24 technology to digitally convert half of the movies raw video footage, which had been shot at 30 fps, into 24fps.

LA-based freelance editor Paul Crowder cut the 91-minute project on an Avid 9000 with 120 GB of storage using low compression. The film print was generated from Crowder's 24p master. Crowder; who's worked with Z-Boy Peralta on two projects in the past, also created a number of edited sequences that don't appear in the film for use in the DVD, including a reunion between the skaters which took place at a Sundance Film Festival screening.