Alex Ardenti

I firmly believe that when I die and ascend to Heaven on the back of the monster from The NeverEnding Story, God will produce a tablet with a screen on (no, not an i-pad), and show me a condensed video of my life. If I’m right, then surely a video of this importance can only be made by Alex Ardenti.

I hope that you might understand what I mean even if bodybuilding doesn’t appeal to you in the slightest. The subject could be gymnastics, rowing, or dinner ladies doing the hokey cokey, and I would still hold these videos in the same high regard. For those who can relate, these are the weightlifting equivalent of Rocky videos. I’ve always said that quality footage needs very little else apart from skillful camera work and ace music.

You could point a camera in one spot, come back later, and I suppose you could call it a movie. Anything goes, I guess. But this is genuine footage, where the camera is busy, busy-busy-busy, zooming in and out fast like a bouncy ball, sliding to the side, slowing down, speeding up, jerking around, going into black and white, sharp focus, soft focus…I don’t know the lingo, but I know what I mean, and I know what I like.

There’s always something happening. Every single shot. Every transition. Effects, touches, sequences. With Alex, montage is king. You just know that painstaking hours of work have gone into embellishing less than 3 minutes of screen time. It’s all about the timing. And the music, of course. In both cases, for me, because it’s rare, and fitting, the music is exceptional, the icing on the cake. Videos like this deserve their own special music. They are too passionately created to simply slap someone else’s melodies over.

Absolutely outstanding. The benchmark for camera work. Take a bow, Alex Ardenti!