X-games Video Entry

Jordy Smith wins the 2013 X-games in a new kind of style. This year the X-Games tried a different format for the surf contest...video entry. With all the surfers traveling around the world, chasing swells, shooting video parts and competing in contests, it is hard for them to all be in one place at the same time for the X-games, espicially because the X-Games runs during the ASP World Tour which envelops the life of most pro surfers. So the X-games opted to have the surfers put together a video section for their entry this year. This allowed surfers from all over the world to put in entries and not be obligated to be in a certain place.  The group of international surfers traveled all over the globe to shoot for the X-games video segment.  This video clip is Jordy Smith's winning segment. For this video part Jordy got a X-games gold medal and a $50,000 dollar check.

Here is Jordy's winning clip

The world of surfing is constantly changing and evolving. With modern technologies and the new media, the way contests are held and how the best surfers are judged is being virtualized.  The modern day professional surfer is constantly on the move, moving nation to nation, wave to wave, without lingering to long in one or another.  Today the mediascape in surfing plays a large role in their lives, and effects their travels. It has facilitated a more kind of nomadic lifestyle traveling at will, but with the mediascape and all the latest technologies they can still be connected to the surfing world, for example they can still how up, virtually, for an X-games contest in California while surfing in Africa (where Jordy filmed most of his video segment) through things       like these video parts.

In my opinion, there are so much that goes into a video segment besides purely riding a wave.  The videographer, the editor  the camera angles, and the music all play a role in how the film is interpreted and judeged. Much of the pureness of surfing and the nakedness of contest riding is lost in the video contest that can be edited and reedited hundreds of times.  They can then take hours upon hours of footage and choose the best minute of surfing they've had from the last 2 months, it almost seems like cheating to me, but it sure does make for an exciting minute of surfing!

-Trenton