Films & Kicks!

As you can see from my earlier post of my submission for the Foot Locker competition, film is not my only passion. Thus I felt obliged to write a blog post combining the two, I've decided to write a post about when films and sneakers cross each other's paths, starting with Spike Lee, as he is a man who shares both of these interests and much more productively and creatively than myself.



Spike's love for the athletic shoe has been prevalent in many of his films, often being written in to his scripts, from his Mars Blackmon character from She's Gotta Have It (1986) going to bed in his Air Jordan Is or Buggin' Out in Do The Right Thing (1989) starting a fight over someone standing on his Air Jordan IIIs. As Spike Lee was giving free advertising to Air Jordan brand in his films anyway, he was given the role officially with the introduction of the 'Mars and Mike' ad- campaign, using Spike Lee's Mars Blackmon character.






Spike Lee's involvement with the Air Jordan brand was furthered in 2006, with the release of the Air Jordan Spiz'ikes, which combined different parts of the previous Air Jordan 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 20. As well as featuring a picture of Mars Blackmon on the left heel and the logo of Spike Lee's production company 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks on the right heel.





Spike Lee, however, is not the only link between the two worlds, with films having an impact on the sneaker world and vice versa. A good example would be last week's much anticipated release of the Star Wars x Adidas Originals collection, a lot of which sold out on it's opening day. These are by no means the only film/trainer collaborative effort, the last couple of years having seen collaborations such as Ghostbusters x A Bathing Ape and Hellboy II x Adidas Originals. The limited quantities that collaborations, such as these, are released in appeals to the sneakerhead and film fanboy alike, for whom it is vital to have in order to further build their collections.




Companies such as Nike, have long seen the potential for advertising in movies. This is particularly obvious in 80's and early 90's movies, when you often see a close-up of a character pulling on or running in a Nike trainer, as this is the time when Nike were fighting against the likes of Adidas and Reebok to be the leading sneaker brand. This fight was fought both subtley and unsubtely. A more subtle example would be White Men Can't Jump (1992), which featured all the best and newest Nike trainers throughout the film; whilst they were heavily featured (as you can see in this article) they weren't focussed on, unlike in Back To The Future Part II (1989). With Back To The Future Part II they went as far as creating their own sneaker (not the Nike Air Pressure as some people believe) for the sequence when Marty McFly travels to the year 2015, which prompted a long-running online petition for the Nike McFly to be released and someone even created a fake Nike McFly trailer to accompany it!



Trainers have also been the subject of a documentary film called Just For Kicks (2005), exploring the history of people's obsession with them. Which if anyone is interested in gaining any further knowledge on sneakers is available to watch on YouTube:



Hope the off-topic from planning & making a film blog post was educational and incidentally my blog's name Ecstasy is named after the 1986 Adidas sneaker and not the drug!

Writer's Block

Over this festive season I have been writing my script, which is aptly named Writer's Block. The plot follows an artist who is having 'painter's block' and spends his days staring at a blank canvas seeking inspiration, but only finding distraction in his surrounding appartment. After a few days the artist starts taking to the streets at night hoping to find inspiration, until one day he comes across a group of graffiti writers (hence the title) and goes along with them as they paint the city. He ends up finding his inspiration and painting a huge spraypaint mural on a wall overlooking the city, before returning home elated that he can finally paint again. On sitting in front of his canvas again he finds himself back to square one, with nothing to paint.

There were a few films in my head as I was writing this, the main one was Martin Scorsese's Life Lessons (1989), along with aspects of The Driller Killer (1979) & Quality Of Life (2004).






As my script doesn't have any dialogue it has been a struggle to write without directing it, due to this I feel that it has ended up rather short and I am unsure as to whether or not it is a satisfactory length for a visually driven piece or still running just under. To remedy this I have toyed with the idea of adding a voice over narration, but as of yet have not commited to doing so. I intend to do some test writing and see how it works first, with hopefully a well-timed narration not taking too much away from the visual and audial aspects of the piece.