Make it or break it

[Query]

This has nothing to do with skating - it's a soap about gymnasts. But for those who find intriguing the hypothetical sneaky antics of evil athletes, parents and coaches, it's kind of interesting.

http://abcfamily.go.com/abcfamily/path/section_Shows+Make-It-Or-Break-It/page_Detail

Two episodes (including pilot) have shown. You can watch the others here, if you have Flash and Microsoft Internet Explorer

http://community.abcfamily.go.com/watch

P.S. Let me change that. Internet Explorer crashed on me while watching this. Use Firefox. I can't make it work from Opera.

[IceSkateRuth]

I just started watching it yesterday! The show is good so far, and I love Gymnastics (It was my favorite sport before skating ;)) so I'm really interested in it.

[TreSk8sAZ]

I was really looking forward to this, but I'm highly disappointed in the show (two episodes so far). Some of the gymnastics are terribly fake (you can tell some of them were computer-generated or added in later). To me, it's kind of like taking figure skating and putting in spotlights, etc. It's just not that realistic (I know, it's not supposed to be, but still - they don't have to go that far out of reality to make it interesting). Plus, the ultra-high drama just to make a show is annoying - elite gymnastics is dramatic enough by itself.

I'll keep watching a couple more episodes to see if it gets better. I do like some of the characters and some of the other aspects of the show. So we'll see.

[Isk8NYC]

This has nothing to do with skating - it's a soap about gymnasts. But for those who find intriguing the hypothetical sneaky antics of evil athletes, parents and coaches, it's kind of interesting.

http://abcfamily.go.com/abcfamily/path/section_Shows+Make-It-Or-Break-It/page_Detail (http://abcfamily.go.com/abcfamily/path/section_Shows+Make-It-Or-Break-It/page_Detail)

Two episodes (including pilot) have shown. You can watch the others here, if you have Flash and Microsoft Internet Explorer

http://community.abcfamily.go.com/watch (http://community.abcfamily.go.com/watch)

P.S. Let me change that. Internet Explorer crashed on me while watching this. Use Firefox. I can't make it work from Opera.


It's probably not your computer. ABC Family's website and video viewer is wonky and they don't test new videos well. (They need Jazzpants to show them how it's done right! It's a Disney subsidiary, Jazz - maybe they have openings.)

I'm boycotting that station since they cancelled Kyle XY abruptly, leaving the series ending on a cliffhanger, but thanks for the post anyway.

[Query]

Some of the gymnastics are terribly fake (you can tell some of them were computer-generated or added in later).

I've never done gymnastics, nor do I much about video animation, but I don't see what you are talking about.

I slowed down the gymnastic sequences, and the only thing I see is motion blurring - which should be there, because they are doing close ups of fast moving bodies, probably with ordinary video equipment, not something that takes the exposure down to a few milliseconds. In other words, the frame to frame motion is quite fast, and if the entire frame period is used in the exposure, blurring must occur.

I was watching it from a high quality recording made from cable, not over the internet - so perhaps Isk8NYC has a point if you watched it over the internet. Fast moving sequences don't survive high compression very well. Just look how messed up most of YouTube videos look.

It does look impossibly difficult to me - but so does the real thing. And the video sequences are quite short, which certainly means they can reshoot each part if the athlete messes up, and try to combine them.

Remember, these are supposed to be some of the best athletes in the world - so the moves should be very very hard. Presumably the only people who might be able to do such moves the way the do them in the midst of a long routine are the best in the world - who can't appear in a running series on TV because of time constraints, and possibly because of anti-pro rules of the sport. They probably use retired gymnasts, either to act or as body stunt doubles. So I fully expect the TV people to use every video trick they can. At the very least, combining short video sequences of what the athletes can once in a while succeed at.

What do you see that makes you think it is computer animated? If it is, I'm amazed animation has gone that far.

Anyway, I think it's a neat show. Some of the people behave badly - but that is somewhat believable. Think of cop shows. Most real world police work is supposed to be boring and routine - most cops never draw a gun in the line of duty even once in their career. If cops got daily into the situations we see them in on TV, they'd be dead in a few weeks or months. They exagerate just a tad to make it more interesting.

[Query]

(About the police work thing. A soldier just told me the military police in the middle east struggles get into armed conflict far more often. Which is a good deal of why they always need more soldiers. He said SWAT team members do too.)

It would be hard to make an interesting soap opera about ordinary skaters who behave well. It also helps to make them better at gymnasics than anyone they could really hire for the job, sometimes better than anyone could be.

Also, as is usually true with shows about high school kids, a lot of the actors are a few years older than they are supposed to be. Especially Emily (played by Chelsea Hobbs), who doesn't look high school age at all. At her age (24), how many gymnasts could still make the cut?

Maybe what you are noticing is that they use body doubles. AFAICT from Wikipedia, none of the actors are mentioned as being gymnasts.

[TreSk8sAZ]

Sorry, I guess I used the wrong word when I said computer-generated. I didn't mean it was animated like not showing real people. What I was talking about was mainly in the pilot episode. The one that I remember as being the worst (and I'm not bothering to go back and rewatch it) was Emily's beam routine. The gymnastics (one of the back combos) didn't look like they were actually performed in front of the background they had in the shot. Sorry, but there were a couple of things that looked pretty bad to me and a lot of the before an element and landing shots aren't great (i.e. you don't start a back handspring quite the way the actress did).

I do understand that these are supposed to be elite athletes. The moves they're doing are pretty standard for junior and up (possibly slightly lower than that as well if it's a talented gymnast and they're at a level that allows the moves), and our Olympians are doing harder things than the show is. Again, that's to be expected since the Olympians aren't on there.

That being said, the gymnastics stuff has gotten better and does now actually look "real." The show has gotten better in the last few episodes.