Big Up’s New Plastic Collaboration: Paul Robinson and Chris Danielson

We need to help our sport expand and catch up to the momentum snowboarding has found; this shoot is a step in the right direction. Here is the insight of both Paul Robinson and Chris Danielson who worked on the indoor segment with Big Up Productions.

DPM: Was the shoot comparable to your outdoor shoots with Big Up?
Paul: Yea it was pretty comparable. It was a lot of work but the end product is going to turn out amazing.

DPM: Where did you guys shoot, what was the set-up?
Paul: We shot at Central Rock Gym in Worcester, MA. It was simple, amazing route and boulder problems set by Chris Danielson. I had the gym to myself to climb on them and be filmed doing so!

DPM: Were the problems created to show amazing movement (big moves) or were they geared to ease in newbies?
Paul: The problems were HARD and at the same time were used to show the amazing movement climbing can encompass.

DPM: Why do you think our sport has not really reached the masses? Is it because we are seen as to extreme, free form?
Paul: I am not sure. I think this video is a step in the right direction. I think with any sport it takes time and seeing how many people in Central Mass were psyched on climbing I can tell that this sport is starting to grow really fast!

DPM: We would like to think we are in the same place snowboarding was 5 years ago, and look at it now. Can we grow the sport in popularity and are there other ways to reach out?
Paul: I agree... I think that with the gracious help of gym owners like that at Central Rock Gym as well as other new age ways of portraying climbing it will not be long before one of us is going to be filmed for a main stream commercial about climbing.

DPM: What was your role as the head route setter for the shoot?
Chris: The best way to describe it is overall choreography. Highlighting the Central Rock Gym climbing walls was important, as well as highlighting the amazing holds provided by e-Grips and Teknik. Another part of the process was to select where and how to set movement that would work best in the context of the video production, to take advantage of how we could use the permanently installed boom lift at the gym for long tracking shots of the climbers, for example. Mostly, I put holds on the wall. One day I set a 5.14 and a couple 5.13s, and in another few hours over the course of the shoot, I set about a boulder in each grade from V3 to V13. As with any route setting, for me, the driving motivation is to make the movement fun for the climbers and for it to simply look cool – either fun or unique or challenging – something that people might watch and say – “that’s rad, I want to try that,” or, “wow, that’s amazing, I don’t understand how they can even do that…”

DPM: Where you conceiving of problems that looked cool, showcased a certain movement, or was it to attract newbies?
Chris: Attracting new climbers is more of an aftereffect. I don’t approach setting with a primary goal of doing that, but feel like it should follow naturally if everything else comes together well. I am always trying to build movement that is visually impressive (aesthetics are incredibly important to me in route setting and as a climber), and in some cases I was trying to highlight moves or sequences I just think are cool or had in mind to create. In other cases, I was specifically setting to highlight the climbers. For Paul, core tension and crimps are definitive strengths… Vasya, climbing wide open... straight power on pinches… Sasha… some technical movement, feet-first climbing, dynamic moves… for the featured young climber, Ashima… very, very small holds.

DPM: Where do you think we can improve climbing gyms image in order to reach a new consumer base, new climbers to help our sport grow.
Chris: We can always improve, in numerous ways. But there are so many subtleties to those questions that they are too difficult to answer concisely. I don’t think it’s advantageous for anyone to think about growing our sport just for the sake of growth. Before even trying to answer those questions, people should be asking, why are we trying to grow the sport? For whom, the new climbers who haven’t tried climbing yet, because we actually just want to share how amazing it is? Or, for ourselves? I think pretty much everyone asking questions about how to grow the sport, are asking with self-interest in mind, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I'm not suggesting that one motivation is better than the other or that they are mutually exclusive, but my attitude would be that we should ask and answer those types of questions for ourselves, honestly, first. Better answers will follow if we're asking what our real motivations are.

DPM: Indoor climbing can reveal amazing sequences that are acrobatic, by and far bigger moves than outdoor. Do you think that focusing on dynamic acrobatic movement is the best way to draw new climbers in?
Chris: Climbing movement indoors isn’t necessarily “bigger” than what we see outdoors. Sure, we can easily create a lot more dynamic movement with more frequency than you just happen to find outside at random – but everything we’ve done indoors is outside somewhere. Big moves, static, dynamic, or just wild and out-of-the-box sequences – those movements are everywhere outdoors. The amazing thing about route setting is that we can just create whatever we like, when we like. Inside, we’re just able to build what I think are some of the most impressive, fun, and exciting to watch, types of movement, more regularly. I don’t think focusing on any specific type is the best way to draw climbers in, if that is a primary goal. Dynamic moves are cool but those demanding insane core tension with feet on the wall at all times, are also cool, or movement requiring great technical skill, or simply interesting static body positions. It’s all fun.

DPM: Did you and Paul work together to construct problems that can be climbed a certain way? How did your day go (just some details about your setting).
Chris: Not really. During the course of the video, we had seven or eight people climbing, and most everything they climbed was something I just set in advance for them. On the boulders, there were a couple moves in total I worked with each climber on to tweak or adjust slightly to make them what I wanted, but for the most part I had set something, and they climbed it. With Ashima for example, we thought it would be really fun to have her dyno a little bit, to show the perspective of how little she is. On a steep wall, holds many of us could just stand up to, she might have to set up and really jump for, and we worked on one move for example, to show just that. She really wanted to keep her feet on, but with some adjustments and encouragement, she went for the double-clutch. Pretty impressive to watch.