BallIsLife Official DVD review by arlubas

Ball Is Life. If you’ve dealt with basketball mixes and videos for the past couple of years you’d know by now that they’re the premier site/crew out there dealing with High School and Street basketball videos. So what do you get when you mix them up with one of the best editors in the basketball mixing world in mixtapelive, countless hours of footage from all of the nation’s rising young guns and a desire to create something more along the lines of a long player rather than just small separate videos? Why, one of this year’s absolute must have items in the basketball industry world of course.

Having dedicated a small (or not so small?) portion of their everyday lives on this whole thing we call BallIsLife, Matt (the founder and owner of the crew) and Arek (aka mixtapelive) decided to bless all of us pure basketball fans with a BIL DVD consisting of literally dozens of future college and, later on, professional basketball stars. Mark down some of the names then: Derick Rose, OJ Mayo, Kevin Love, Demar Derozan, Renardo Sydney, Brandon Jennings, Jrue Holiday, Larry Drew and so many more in never before seen footage filmed by the BIL guys themselves. What’s not to like about such a long player honestly?

What a lot of people don’t understand or just choose to take for granted is how much time and effort was put into making this DVD and BIL’s effort in general. These guys have to fly out to different cities just to go film a certain game (or more if they’re going on tourneys) and then come back to their home floor to start editing out play after play after play of each player with potential to earn a college scholarship. And take into account that these guys don’t do this as their regular job but rather fight hard with time to squeeze their work for the crew along the lines of the rest of their everyday activities. It’s a tough task but hopefully there are some guys that are willing to take the mental beating that comes with all of this and offer us some of the most enjoyable works from the amateur world of US basketball.

About the DVD itself, the first thing you realize after you press play in your DVD player is that the menus and start up screens are so well made that you think you’ve accidentally slipped some official NBA DVD in your drive. Everything looks very polished and one can see how much work was put into this whole thing in order for it to stand tall and talented (like Amare) against the competition. But what competition is that exactly? Cause the way I see it, BIL have made the transition from amateur to professional with this DVD. You can say all you want about it but as far as I’m concerned this whole thing that started out as a hobby for Matt and a couple of his buddies has transformed into a full blown phenomenon in the internet world.

The next thing you notice while playing the DVD is the top notch quality in the videos present. Sure, no one expected the blurriness of the YouTube vids the crew was releasing until now but nothing could get you prepared for the crystal clear picture these videos have. This of course has nothing to do with the basketball footage itself but having these highlights in such a high picture quality makes the final outcome that much better and just adds even more into the professional aspect of BIL’s efforts we talked about before.

As for the actual videos there’s nothing here you shouldn’t expect but that doesn’t mean the footage ain’t enjoyable and incredibly addictive. Dunks, assists, backdoor passes, fadeaway jumpers, crossovers, streetball moves and many many more from the best people in the High School and Streetball game are elements that should most certainly fill your appetite for unseen and flashy basketball plays. What I especially like about the actual editing though is the fact that the action doesn’t get cut up in the editing in order to create a fast paced cut and paste style mix. Rather they let the viewer see the whole play and enjoy it like they would in real life without worrying about missing a beat if they blink their eyes.

Summing up, this one’s a no brainer if you’re thinking about purchasing it. Just do it if you’re even remotely interested in High School basketball or Streetball. Looking at the price it makes even less sense that you get this DVD at just 10 dollars plus shipping but like they’ve said themselves over time, these guys aren’t selling this to make money out of it but rather pay some of the expenses they’ve had doing this whole thing and also invest on better equipment to improve their future projects. And if you’ve followed these guys around the MixMakers boards at all you’d know that they’re in it for the long run and not to cash in on their new found success and popularity.