Blood, Sweat, & Friends: The Art of Backyard Wrestling (Documentary)

As many of you have already seen, I posted my documentary on the facebook group last month and everyone seemed to have enjoyed this a lot. I'm going to be reposting it here for anyone who didn't get a chance to see it. If possible, show it to your fellow yarders who haven't gotten around to it. Show it to friends, family, I don't really care. Just show it to people. Pin this topic, too, if you please.

Also, I want your opinions, feedback, consultations. I've already done a re-edit of this, but I'll be posting that later on. But I've been asked to do a full-length documentary by many. Now, what I want to know is, what do you guys want to see within a full length? What do you want covered? What do you want to discuss? Post here and I'll be taking all thoughts into consideration.

Not sure if I ever posted on this back on Facebook, but I thought it was great. Great cinematography, solid interviews, just tons of fun to watch.

topic suggestions for a full length:
is there anything about or within backyard wrestling you don't like?
what would you be doing on weekends if it weren't for backyard wrestling?
in what other ways do backyard wrestling and pro wrestling coincide? (i.e. rats, drugs, road stories etc.)
who inspired you to wrestle?
what do you believe is the success rate of former yarders going pro?
i think that's all i can think of.

I saw this a week or so ago. I loved it. I think its great that you guys did this especially seeing as it explains how things are in BYW are today. It also reminded me of why I love backyard wrestling in the first place.

I know I'm not a great wrestler, but it's the friends I made from traveling to Indiana and Illinois over the last few years that keep driving me forward.

The editing was good. The interviews were well done. Great work overall. I hope to see more of this documentary in the future if you end up extending it.

A full-length/expansion is something I have definitely in the works. I'm glad to see you guys really enjoyed this. Keep up the comments and feedback. I'll be filming events all year and hopefully will have more interviews and footage to start the process of the full-length. Encourage your friends to watch and leave feedback here, as well!

The Chad wrote:

This man deserves an interview. Let's see if we can't fly him in for a show.

Agreed. If you go full scale collab with people. Lets face it we are all too broke to fly around to grab interviews so we should all go into a pre production meeting and come up with stuff we want. We should discuss how we want the shows to look, what questions, everything. Find out what equipment each of us will use so we are all on the same page then do it. Then it will look like we went and traveled everywhere when in reality we just had lots of second unit teams.

Pat's got the right idea. As long as everyone was on board and knew what they were doing, we could get people from everywhere doing this, even outside the US. People have been bullshitting this idea for years and years now, and this short little video is the first step into making something bigger and better.

I'd definitely love collaborating with people. It'd be a great and make this a whole lot more awesome. I would hate to just limit this to this tri-state area.

I know this was very good I saw it when it first came out. But I know there so few backyard documentaries out there but I personally feel that documentaries are a little done to death. Just a random idea of mine how do you feel a full length movie about backyard wrestling will fair even if it only makes it to the sundance and IFC film festivals?

I like your idea Josh, but all I gotta say is "Backyard Dogs"(2000)...

Joshua Wesker wrote:

I know this was very good I saw it when it first came out. But I know there so few backyard documentaries out there but I personally feel that documentaries are a little done to death. Just a random idea of mine how do you feel a full length movie about backyard wrestling will fair even if it only makes it to the sundance and IFC film festivals?  

Documentaries are actually still very cherished all around. Harder to get going, sure, but this can't be done in a narrative way. Sundance and IFC aren't the only places this would ever even go. There's hundreds and hundreds more festivals other than the two most popular film festivals in the country.

We should seriously come up with a way to execute a full on full length version of this.

Elder Foreman wrote:

I like your idea Josh, but all I gotta say is "Backyard Dogs"(2000)...

I just checked it out Steve it looks like a lot of fun. But what I have in mind is it's base on the person's genesis story as in how they got into yard, the states they travel to, there one time shot being in the indies( it not being good obviously)negative feed back they get from friends, family, and of course pros. Also the parties and wild time from traveling to different feds.

I just don't think it'd work because not everyone really understands the background of yarders, and I don't think it'd translate well through a narrative. I'd rather have this stuff be explained and discussed, not made into a fictional story.