Melrose Hardware presents Bloom, the first promo video from this new Midlands-based hardware company which you can find below after a short review of the content within written in the film student style.
The promo languidly kicks itself with a black and white montage of incidental shots, crowded streets, slow motion shots of people jumping onto boards and the like interspersed with footage of a rose slowly blooming. This black and white betrays an influence from the Italian neorealist school of filmmaking in its use of chiaroscuro, which directly translates as ‘playing with light’. After nearly a full minute, we suddenly see the blooming rose transformed into colour – its deep red shade traditionally symbolic of danger, but in the context of the previous scene’s ‘playing with light’ the viewer can perhaps take this as a playful sense of danger, something which neatly summarises the act of skateboarding itself.
The petals finally open to disclose the flower’s pollen, just as the fledgling company has opened itself, via this promo, to let loose the skateboarding put to film by the company’s current team; namely Charlie Arlett, Ryan Guinn, Cam Linford, George Malsher, Carey Rushton, Vince Sadowski, Will Thompson, Jake Watt and Jacob West. However these names are not revealed until the end of the promo, offering a pleasing sense of disclocation – an enjoyable sense for the majority of viewers of not knowing who we are watching perform skateboarding tricks, thereby removing any preconceived notions of what tricks we can expect next. From the outset, the highly modern sounds of instrumental trap music infer that we are in for skating which takes its cues from the vagaries of current skateboard trends and, indeed, within a few seconds ledges have been wallied and steep 90 degree banks have been impossibled in to.
A quick cut to found footage of a dimly lit row of monitors, presided over by two anonymous figures, firmly places us as a voyeur peeking into the world of these skateboarders whilst similarly giving a knowing nod to the highly monitored Panopticon in which we try and capture the intensity of attempting high risk skateboarding manoeuvres before the inevitable security or police intervention.
As the video progresses, flowers bloom at ever increasing speeds to match the rate at which tricks are racking up and spots are repeatedly pollinated by skateboarders carried on the winds of stoke. Assembly lines and shining walls of billboard advertising connote the industriousness with which the Melrose team are hurling themselves at urban street furniture for the sake of the promo, with the remaining time offering up a wide array of strictly street skateboarding in which the effort expended shines through.
Props are in order for this one on all sides of the camera, keep an eye out for more from these guys soon we’re sure!
