I ordered kenny's Seminar DVD from OnTheMat a few weeks back, mainly because I have heard good things about him competing in the Eastern US...... Anyway, I watched the DVD this weekend and it fucking sucked badly. Kidding!
This was a very good DVD, almost like a mini set of instructionals with A LOT of cool material that was explained extremely well. Great editing job- there are cutaways of Kenny performing every move outside of the seminar and you really get the sequences beat into your head. None of the usual crappy "downtime" seminar footage you see (guys standing around, drilling, etc). This most have ben a cool seminar.
The DVD started from takedowns, one of which I hit today in training! Progressed into some very innovative moves from different common positions- and I dont mean catchy (punn intended) show holds, but new moves that are very effective and that I havent seen (like taking tha back from 1/2 guard/ crucifix, etc.)
The comp. footage of Kenny beating that much larger Kronberg was cool as well.
Highly recommended!
And you get to see Joe the fisherman laizon or whatever...
I was at this seminar and it was awesome!!! I have watched the DVD a few times since and almost all of the techniqes have found their way into my game. I am usually happy getting 1 usable concept from a seminar. Kenflo is the man.
Being the one who edited the DVD, these comments bring a tear to my eye. ;)
Seriously, Kenny shows some excellent stuff on this DVD. My job was to make it enjoyable to watch. I can't stand it when someone puts out a DVD and all you get is a single angle from a stationary tri-pod mounted camera with lots of bullshit footage. By this I mean painfully watching someone with world class credentials showing incredibly useful techniques only to be forced to view them from essentially 15 feet away looking down at a 45 degree angle with editing that insults the viewer. Oh wait, lets turn this way.. ok, lets do it again but scooch over this way... ok viewer, now wait there and watch me get up from this take down, adjust my shorts and do it again. It’s like watching a great actor performing in a bad home made porno.
There’s NONE of that in this DVD. I felt it was important to do a few things. One was to get ground level camera shots. Another was to keep the action moving and to use intelligent editing. I spent damn near 100 hours editing this thing and all told, it took up a well over a month (24/7) of computer time (compiling and burning took a long time).
The DVD had so much content that we spent a lot of time deciding just which few precious minutes we could live without. In the end, nothing more could be squeezed onto the disk. I used the most recent editing tool from Apple (iMovie) and burned it with iDVD using MPEG2 compression. This offered the best picture quality as well as the best compression method.
This was my first time making a DVD and while I tried my best to get good camera shots, I’m no professional. There are a few herky jerky points I wish I could correct, but overall I think it came out pretty good. I really hope everyone enjoys it and learn from it. If so, it was worth the effort. Kenny truly is a gifted teacher and I tried my best to capture this on his DVD.
If nothing else, buy it for the highlight video. He kicks some serious ass.
Yeah, that part where he pops your ankle was funny. Too bad the camera lost your facial expression.
For those who don't know what the hell we're taking about, during the seminar Kenny is showing a leglock counter where your hands pull on the heel ala a heelhook. During the seminar he implores people to be careful using it, at which point I cut away to a scene where he's using the same move against Nathaniel at full speed and as you can guess, he pops his ankle. Nathaniel squeals like a stuck pig, then the two of them kiss and make up. It’s very touching in a romoish kind of way.