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Darren,

Shaun covered all my thoughts on your editing. Now what I'm going to discuss may upset you... BUT, I just finished reading the shit storm that was your last post. I rarely comment on your videos for much the same reason that Eric does not. It seems as though for every single negative criticism you are given you have to defend yourself and sometimes you're just not mindful of how insulting you are to the rest of us. Someone else summed it up quite well by saying that he was sick of being treated like he was a bully when all he, and the rest of us, ever really tried to do was help you. Now, enough of this shit, let's get on with my comment for you.

I think you and the other two guys in the video should do much less kicks. Not because I think your choreography is too kick heavy (like I could say that to anyone!!!) but because I feel your kicking skills are all sub-standard.

Now, make sure you read the rest of this post before you even begin typing a defense.

Before you go and tell me about who has a black belt or how you've only been doing it for so many months please think about what your saying. And consider the following points:

(a) Having a black belt means shit all in many TKD school. TKD is probably the most business like martial art on our would and standards drop more and more each year. I trained for 7 years and feel I am a legitimate expert but not a master. Although I am a 3rd Dan I could name other 3rd Dans I know who's kicking skills are laughable. So having a black belt IS NOT permission to show half-assed kicks to an audience UNLESS you want to have people thinking it looks crap.

(b) If someone has been training for only a few months then they shouldn't be performing techniques they are miles off reaching a good standard at. If they do then they should expect poor on-screen results and, once again, to have people watching their videos and thinking they're bad.

Now, as a former teacher of Taekwondo (and sorry if I sound arrogant but I am a damn good and well respected TKD teacher at that) I would do two things with all three of you guys as soon as I saw you doing those kicks (in your video) in my class/school.

(1) I would correct you front kick and roundhouse kick techniques and tell you to not do any other kicks until you had...
(2) Do each kick 1000 times on each leg making sure to follow the exact technique I taught you

If you want me to write out the technique then just ask and I'll post it in the Martial Arts board soon.

Now, what else can we do? Well, I often think you hand work looks nice. Much nicer then the leg work at least. Sometimes it may be too rigid and too repetitive but I think it should be your focus. Grappling... well, I like the look of locks but not ground grappling stuff in films. You decide on this. Lastly, acrobatics... in this video I felt the head spring the blonde guy did was extremely unnecessary... especially after watching the bloopers. Again, it was an example of a move that someone in your video could barely do and it looked bad, therefore you can expect the audience to dislike it.

Now, that's all I have to say. Feel free to reply to me in any manner you see fit. However, I suggest that if you're just going to list excuses and defenses for why/how you couldn't do all this etc etc then be warned that I won't bother replying... no matter how tempting it may be. If you are pissed off at me and want to tell me how much of a dickhead I am I will gladly follow you into the RANTS section. Please keep this post for our critiques only.

p.s I'm going to take a bit of time to write a long post in the GENERAL board. It will do with my experience with training in different schools and will touch heavily on the topic of filming with students at schools and how the owners of the school feel about it. You may be interested given some of the stuff I read in your last post.