Video review: The Rising Salar
A fun and different fishing video with lots of salmon caught in beautiful Norwegian settings.
The video starts out nicely sketching the contrast between work and fishing as many of us recognize it. Dennis the businessman getting up in the darkness at 6:30 and going to work, struggling to find space in the boot for his briefcase because of the fishing tackle stuffed in there. A gear mess on the back seat and flies on the dashboard. The mention of Norway in his boss' presentation ringing as Dennis dozes off and dreams of salmon fishing. He has to go "for some fresh air" and then scoots off to Norway where he meets up with his friends Henrik and Roar.
In this manner the story picks up, and by story I do mean story, because this is a story - a fishing video with a narrative, scripted with a light hand and not acted as such, but certainly scripted and acted rather than purely documenting "real" events.
It tells how our friends are enticed to start fishing dries for salmon, partly motivated by their own lack of fortune with the otherwise infallible Sunrays and highly motivated by a local angler's luck with a dry fly.
As Dennis arrives they set off on a hike into the mountains - unfortunately forgetting their rods underway! Makeshift rods are furnished from branches and gaffers tape and while one of the guys walks back to find the real rods, the two others fish with the twigs-now-fly-rods and actually get salmon to rise to their dries.
They get the proper rods and fish and hike their way further up the river and into the mountains. They experience increasingly good water and improving strike and catch rates. They fish in beautiful canyons above and below breathtaking rapids and waterfalls, and they catch dozens of salmon and see even more jumping and going up the falls.
Now with all due respect, this isn't Oscar worthy scripting or acting, but even so it works pretty well as a fishing video with a twist. We see a ton of factual and documentary-style videos, and a few telling stories, but in this case the story has been jazzed up a bit with dialog and a narrator telling us what goes on between the three. It's humorous but not hilarious and sometimes even a little awkward, but certainly entertaining enough, not least because of the beautiful settings and the fantastic fishing.
The filming is absolutely well done, but could have been beefed up with a little more attention to composition and angles. Compared to many other fishing videos it's definitely nicely done and put together in a manner that give lots of justice to the river, the landscape and the fishing.
There's a music score composed and performed for the video, and with it's laid back country-ish style with a slide guitar and double bass it suits the mood of the video very well, but with just a handful of themes, it does get a little repetitive for my personal taste.
But considering that this is a first effort from the people behind, this is an excellent video, which definitely gets the salmon fever rolling and will make you want to hike up canyons and cast bombers over clear watered salmon pools with smooth and uniform surfaces, regularly broken by bright salmon jumping. I can see why these three guys have wanted to show that to the rest of us.
There's preciously little how-to and where-to material, but an extra track where you can see how to tie a Bomber.
The video is in English with both the anglers' dialog in English and an English narrator. You can turn on subtitles in Danish, Norwegian or English if you wish.
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