Its Getting Closer

This summer got away from me. I haven't been writing here, and I have had little time to shoot this film. I PROMISE it will be done by spring.

I am heading to Chicago and Indiana this weekend and hope to catch a show and do a couple of interviews. Chicago has a great music (everything) scene so I am stoked to see what the kids there are up to.

I am heading to Hawaii next week for a friend's wedding, so if there is anyone out there on the big island that would want to meet up and tell me about the scene, that would be fantastic!

I am going to start getting footage for this blog on my HD Flip so you guys can see some behind the scenes type stuff. I appreciate all of the emails and comments on youtube and I really want to get this thing done for the world to see!

To The Next Level

Life has been crazy busy as of late and I haven't been able to make it out to any shows for a bit. I am applying for a grant so that I can have a little bit more of a budget to finish this film! If anyone knows of any other good grants that support documentary filmmaking, or visual arts, etc please let me know! Thanks for reading this and just know that I am stoked to get a proper film out on this topic.

A Controversial Film?

Someone just commented on the trailer the other day saying, "I'd like to beat the shit out of the asshole making this documentary.."

All I can say is... let out your aggression in the pit man.

I can't believe this is so controversial... I think I am going to talk more about this hostility towards or against hardcore dancing in the film.

100,000 and Climbing!

We just hit 100,000 plays on YouTube over the weekend, that is reassuring to me to know that people will actually watch this film when it is finally done! Thanks everyone!

Rude People Are Silly

As I said before, I have read every comment posted on this video. I am guessing that maybe about 1% of the people who comment on it are actually reading the description, maybe its too long or something. I think it's GREAT that there is actually two sides to this topic... Ok maybe there is like 10 sides. There are the kids who dance and think I am misrepresenting them in the 2.5 min video, the kids who have something against hardcore dancing, and the people who were really into hardcore punk in the 80s and think this is absolutely rediculous.

Then, there are the people who really like it! I am glad that those people are out there, because they make me feel good :) The thing is that, like I said in my description on the video itself, the psuedo-interviews in this video were just some random kids outside a show that we went to on the first day of shooting for this thing! Nothing was planned. In fact, I didn't even know what hardcore dancing was! By the time I actually put this up on youtube, I had a ton more footage, and thought, oh well I will just throw this up to see if anyone out there would actually watch a film like this. Looks like they will, but we will see if they still watch it objectively after seeing these clips...

Anyways, what spurred this is yesterday a person commented on the youtube page that he would like to spit in my face if i approached him for this. Now I really want to interview him! I want to find out what his hostility is towards me. Is it that he hates hardcore dancing, or he hates the way I portrayed it in my obviously naive clip? Anyways, tylerXfatality, if you are out there please email me at itsahxclife@gmail.com and I would LOVE to interview you! Thanks.

A Better Looking Version Of The Trailer

Although I don't see this as really a trailer per se, because of the fact that It really doesn't represent where the film has evolved to up to this point.  It is really just a compilation of some comments from the first shoot we did back in August of 2007. 

Its a Hardcore Life Documentary Preview (Hardcore Dancing) from Chris Christensen on Vimeo.

How This Film Got Started:

Thanks for checking out the blog for the film It's a Hardcore Life (working title).  I thought I would start this blog because as the film is getting closer and closer to being done, I now, more than ever, want to open the film up as a community effort.  I think the best way to do that is to keep people updated on what is going on with the film.  I will be posting pictures, video, screen grabs, etc having to do with our progress with hopes that I can get some feedback on it.  

I guess I should start out by discussing how the idea to make this film even came about.  I have read every comment on the youtube "trailer" and am overwhelmed by the response.  I HONESTLY did not know before shooting this film that hardcore dancing stirred this much controversy!  The whole reason this film came about was because I knew NOTHING about this scene, or scenes I should say.  I was at a show in the summer of 2007 and saw a bunch of kids clear a huge pit in the middle of a crowd and start to punch the air, pick up change and two-step like it was 1997 and they were at a Reel Big Fish concert.  I looked over at my cousin Ike and said, man we have to learn more about this.  The next weekend we went to a show and interviewed  a bunch of kids on the street asking them what hardcore dancing was.  We didn't even know!  All we knew, is that it looked like a TON of fun!  Oh, by the way, that show was here: