Digital magazine archive
Our early issues are probably not being reprinted, but we want to share various articles here for memories sake<3
The Editing Chair
Lester Castro
Issue #4, 2023
“I just woke up actually. I was up editing until 3 am last night, so that’s why I woke up now.” Lester said after I had called him for an interview. Lester Castro is one KIPA’s co-found- ers and also our editor. I sat down to talk to him about his editing process, from the very start to the final export. Here’s what he had to say:
BEFORE THE EDIT
“The first thing I do when I start to edit a project is sort the clips. I think it’s really important to sort your clips. So you know, more or less, what you have to work with. I sort the clips into a folder with each athlete’s name. Within those folders I have another set of folders, one for each challenge/line. Usually I also re-name all the files so I know which ones are attempts, bails or makes. For example, Hugo.attempt.1, could be a filename. I have funny clips in one folder, B-roll in another, and action in one as well.”
STARTING THE EDIT
“I tend to adjust my editing after the music choice. I might have an idea of what song I want to use, or it gets suggested to me from the rest of the crew, and from there I start to piece the clips together where I think they fit the song the best. Because I’ve rewatched, sorted and renamed every clip I already have a good picture of what should go where. Some- times you’ll have a funny b-roll clip like in our new Lisbon video, where an old lady says “... Lisbon, full of life”, and you’ll almost know you want to start the video with that. It’s a great advantage to know all your clips before you start editing.”
THE FULL PICTURE
“I think the full picture of how I want a project to look can come at any time. It can come before, during, or after filming. Most of the time it happens throughout the filming for me. Although the vision can always change during the editing phase. For example, we’ve finished filming the video and I’ll have an idea. Then I might look up other videos that have the same sort of feeling to them as we want to display. Those videos can thereafter inspire me, give me new ideas, and change the idea of the video in production. Inspiration can come from anything really, so the project can always change.”
MAIN FOCUS
“My primary focus when editing is to not overdo it. It’s easy to overcomplicate things and most of the time it doesn’t need that much. Like “now we’re gonna add a bunch of clips, cut cut cut, and add effects.” Usually those things don’t turn out so well because it’s too much in my opinion. My rule of thumb is to try to keep it simple. Overediting can be too much to digest sometimes, so I focus on cutting to the music and fixing colors. I used to edit a lot with crispy clips and add crazy transitions, and I’ve definitely learnt from that.”
THE CUTTING
“The music is really important to me. That doesn’t mean I always cut on the beat though. Sometimes I’ll cut on the half beat which I think can make the cut more unexpected. So instead of cutting ‘1-and-2-and- cut-and-4,’ I’ll cut at, ‘1-and-2-cut-3-and-4‘ Other times I’ll base the cuts on the sound from the actual clip. Maybe someone honks their car horn in the background. Then I’ll cut there, but let the sound continue into the next clip and slowly fade out.”
BEFORE EXPORT
“The last step before export is to watch the whole video through and check the sound mixing. I always watch the full edit without any of the songs playing to make sure there aren’t any hard cuts in the sound. I’ll adjust and merge some sounds together to ensure all the audio flows together nicely. It’s a bit nit picky, but I think the background sounds are really important and that you pick up on those hard cuts subconsciously while watching even though there is a song playing over them. After that I watch it again and adjust the colors. I also double check if there are any small details I want to change or if I’ve made mistakes anywhere.”
FINAL EXPORT
“Before the final export I send the piece over to the KIPA group chat and see what they think. I then get some feedback and go into the project again to adjust. Then I’ll export and send it over again, where I might get some more feedback. It goes back and forth like that until everyone is happy with the final piece. After that, I do the final export.”
FAVORITE EDIT, SO FAR
“My favorite piece to edit so far has been ‘UDG 3.’ Although, it was not only the editing that made it my favourite piece to work on. It was the combination of the filming, training and editing that made it so enjoyable. We were driving around in Kevin’s car, setting up construction lights for shots, training in the cold, and I had already been looking for songs while filming. I knew I wanted the project to have this psychedelic essence to it so I already had a good vision before filming. I also animated something for the first time, which was fun! I always find it hard to not over edit the UDG series since they play more with colors and effects than our other pieces. But finding that balance is quite exciting. Those projects let me play around a bit more. I’m quite proud of how the last one came out.”
Lisa Schneider
Interview by Joel for
issue #4, 2023
What type of movement do you enjoy the most? Why, and does it change?
“Movement that feels good. Movement that just happens naturally and where you don’t have to put a lot of force into it. Where you kind of just follow where your body goes. I do think it changes overtime, but I think it changes depending on who I train with and where I am. I noticed my style changed a lot last year in the uk. There I would do more parkour heavy movement, while in Germany I move more creatively.
What is your cause, or drive, for training?
Because it makes me feel really good. Yeah I think that’s the only reason. There’s no other reason than that I feel really good when I do it and it makes me happy.
Tell us about the process of filming “ALL OVER THE PLACE”. Was it a planned project where you were consciously saving up clips with an image in mind, or did you just have a bunch of saved clips at the end of the year?
Well it started in the year 2021 when I had the idea of saving clips whenever I traveled. So last year I went to the U.K I started saving but did not end up with enough clips by the time I got home. I thought I’ll just save clips and see what happens. If I did something that took a longer time or that I was really happy with, I’d save it. But there was no idea behind it. I did really enjoy that sort of process, however I want to make more videos with an idea behind them in the future. For “ALL OVER THE PLACE” I think I started saving after I left Sweden in February. Although by the end of the year I wasn’t happy with some of the clips I got at the start of the year, which was quite annoying. I think the earliest clip in the video is from March or April.
Do you have any projects or plans going on right now? Or are you just going with the flow and seeing where things end up?
There is a project that I am working on, but I don’t want to talk about it. It’s a video type project but there are more people than me involved and we haven’t discussed if we are going to announce what we’re doing yet. I’m also currently working on my bachelor thesis which is a bit time consuming. When I’m done with that I want to get on making a solo project where I have an idea behind it. Although I haven’t thought of it yet.
Do you have any outside influences in your movement?
Possibly mostly from dancing and hip hop because of my sister who’s a dancer. I think that that influences the music I listen to, which in turn influences the way I train. I’ve been watching a lot of snowboarding videos recently, but they mostly affect the way I want to make videos, not the way I train. I think it’s quite subconscious really. Like I’ll watch a dancing video, and I’ll remember something, but it’s not like I actively try to remember that move and implement it into my training. I think it just kind of sticks with me.
Well, do you actively think about your style when you make a run? Or do you just naturally go with the flow and it ends up looking like it looks?
When it comes to movement, if it feels good I usually think it looks good. I don’t really go with “does it look good on camera?” but more, “ does it feel good?” For example, in “ALL OVER THE PLACE” I do this one step-pre to reverse-vault and it was the best feeling line I did all of last year. It’s not a clip where I’m like “ah this looks very sick”, I just remember how good it felt. I also care about what I wear. If I wear something I’m not 100% happy with I usually hate the clips, which is annoying.
Let’s touch on that. How is the affiliated brands’ situation with you? Are you on Puma now?
Yeah not really. I’m definitely not on Puma, I just get clothes and shoes. I don’t have any affiliate brands or anything. But they’ll send me stuff which is both cool and lame at the same time. Obviously it’s cool to get free stuff, especially the shoes since I love training in them and I go through a lot of them, which means I save some money. On the other hand I wear them a lot and give them a lot of free advertisement, so in the long run it would be nice to be paid for it. Although, I think it’s really really hard to get a proper paying sponsorship, at least from what I’ve heard. If you look at how many athletes actually have those sorts of deals, it’s a very small amount.
What’s your general future ideas in parkour? Anything in particular you want to work towards? A jump, a move, a project, a video, etc?
I just enjoy training so much at the moment and I want to see how long I can do that for. Making a living with parkour would be the dream. If that happens I will be really happy.
My dream move right now is frisbee, front swing raiz, to swingthrough cork. That’d be an absolute dream. I want to make videos and do things that will help the female community ,or things that will generally get more women into parkour.
I have not fully figured out how to do that yet, but some other female athlete’s and I just did a project in Belgium (Ladies in Leuven) which felt like a great start. I want to try and somehow make women in parkour more visible. Although, I think just by training that automatically happens anyway. Creating projects obviously helps a lot, and I want to create more projects like that. I also want to get into the editing and videography side of the sport, however I need a camera and a laptop for that. I don’t want to do competitions anymore. I thought about it at the beginning of the year and I sort of decided not to. I don’t really enjoy them so I don’t really want to, you know? For Art of Motion (2022) I just wanted to see if I could get in. The competition itself was more of a show than a competition. It was both a good thing and a bad thing I think. For those who really want to compete it probably was not great. But for me, it took a lot of pressure off. I don’t really like competing but I do like the aspect of trying something you’re not fully comfortable with, like in skill comps. I really enjoy those. Women’s competitions are great as well since it brings so many female athletes together and you figure out stuff together, which is a great feeling. The main reason I competed so much in 2022 was just to show up. Because there are not that many females competing and if some comp organizer makes a women’s division it’s kind of shit if no women show up.
Why do you think you don’t like competing?
I think it comes from my gymnastic trampoline background. I used to enjoy competitions when I was very little. But ever since I was 10 I’ve sort of hated them.”
Can we actually touch on that? You came from a gymnastic background?
Yeah I started gymnastics when I was six years old and started doing it competitively when I was seven, up until I was twelve. After that I quit and started to do track and field for two years, until I got bored of it. Then I started trampolining for three years, until I was 17 when I found and started training parkour.
Would you say gymnastics and trampolining has helped your parkour a lot?
It helped in the sense that I already knew how to move my body. But I only knew how to move my body in specific ways. For example, I find it very hard to sideflip since I’m used to only doing front flips and backflips. I have the same problem with corks and every off axis flip. Training outside was also really hard to start with. Suddenly everything was solid concrete and I was used to soft surroundings and building things up from the ground. I mean, I definitely think gymnasts have a physical advantage coming into parkour. However, I found it really hard to come up with my own stuff since from when I was seven years old until I was seventeen I always had a coach telling me exactly what to do. So when I started doing parkour I was just lost. I had no idea how to build lines, how to do anything really. That was probably the biggest challenge for me.”
