fencing dvd/vhs: where to begin?

[El Chucko]

My colleague and I were thinking about getting a few dvds or tapes to begin a video library for our club. What would be a good start?

Many of our fencers are relatively new to the sport, and none of us has ever competed at a particularly high level. We would like to be able to see/show good examples of really high-caliber bouting.

What foil/epee/sabre videos or dvds would you recommend for someone who is just starting a collection? Production quality is only important as far as being able to easily follow the action and direction/referee.

[Craig]

In terms of overall quality I would say that the following DVDs are your best bets. All are available at either the Fencing.Net Store (see link in the above nav bar) or at Fencing Footage (www.fencingfootage.com)

Epee: 2002 Men's Epee World Championships. This DVD is great, features slow motion replays and is really easy to see the actions. It is out of stock right now and I need to get another production run completed. Should be about a week or two.

Foil: 2005 CIP DVD: This is the latest, and best, of the FencingPictures productions. Good commentary, some slow motion, and over an hour of foil footage. This footage is also the first DVD since the new timings were implemented, so it will be good for you to compare other footage against. The Fencing.Net store contains a video clip (about 10MB in size).

Another good foil DVD is the 2004 St. Petersburg World Cup. It contains the finals and semis for both women's foil and men's foil. This will let you see the difference in styles and tactics by male and female fencers.

Sabre: 2004 Bonn world cup. Pretty much just raw footage, but it's the entire final 8. You have to do the slow-motion manually, but there is a lot of sabre fencing there.

I'll have a 2004/2005 Moscow Sabre DVD out soon, hopefully I can finish the editing this weekend.

Teaching / Training DVDs and CD-ROMs

The Tyshler Footwork Training DVD is quite good and provides lots of exercises.

The Foil Actions CD-ROM is a nice collection of actions in small video clips with text explaining the action and the setup/when to use it.

I hope that helps,
Craig

[dekko]

Those are ok but the best place to 'start' is by recording your recording your fencers and building from there.

Good Luck!

[Craig]

dekko,

His purpose was:

We would like to be able to see/show good examples of really high-caliber bouting.

Given that the fencers are not yet high level, recording them would not serve the stated goal.

Now, you are suggesting that they use video as a training tool to show the fencers how they look and what can be improved based on the video tape. I agree with that, but you do need to find some "models" for what you are striving for.

Cheers,
Craig