Solomon Yogalates (2001)

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General		Extras
Category	Yoga	Menu Animation & Audio Featurette-Extra Corporate Workout Interviews-Cast-Louise Solomon
Rating	?
Year Of Production	2001
Running Time	70:00
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Lyndal Davies
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Louise Solomon
Case	?
RPI	$34.95	Music	None Given

    Yogalates is a combination of Yoga and Pilates, developed by Louise Solomon. The exercise programs on this disc are not the kind where you jump up and down, but rather are more dynamic tension exercises where you place yourself in a position that requires muscular tension to maintain. Breathing forms an integral and important part of these exercises, and the particular style of breathing that you perform during the exercises is described before the first workout starts. Both the main workouts require a rather large piece of elastic material. I am not sure just where you would get one of these, but they are probably available anywhere that knows about Pilates.

    There are two main workouts on this disc, a low impact version and a high impact version, both running for about 30 minutes. Before the first workout is some information on the style of exercise that is in the workout and information about the breathing technique employed.

    The video is very plain. Other than the intro and interview, all material is shot in a studio with a white backdrop and floor. Louise Solomon and the class members that will be exercising with you are all in dark leotards and are exercising on a dark coloured mat. Solomon and her mat are on a white platform, and as everything else is white, this gives the impression that she is floating in the air.

    There is always a catch with exercise videos of this genre, particularly ones that include specific breathing exercises that must be performed while doing the exercise. On one hand, the instructor is performing the exercise. On the other, she must describe what she is doing and call the exercises out to the class. This works well up to a point, except where the exercise must be performed on an inward breath. As you cannot speak while breathing in, the instructor usually is not performing the exercise exactly as they should be, leading to the wrong physical cues being shown. They had the opportunity to show the students that are present performing the exercise while Solomon talked them through, but they did not often show the class.

Video

    At a guess, this material was recorded on video and as such the sharpness is in direct inverse proportion to the length of the shot. Material that is close to the camera, and tight shots, are nice and sharp, but long shots begin to lose definition. Shadow detail suffers somewhat from the shooting conditions - with the very large expanses of white in the shot, the camera has little chance of getting a good balance for the darker material. The dark leotards that are worn have little or no detail present. There is no low level noise.

    In the introduction scenes that are shot outside and in the computer modified material the colours are very good with good saturation and no noise. There is little colour in the actual workouts, other than the red top that Solomon wears. The skin tones are also a little washed out.

    There are no MPEG artefacts present and being sourced from video, no film artefacts. The video material is free of any obvious video noise.

    There are no subtitles on this single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue quality is very good - you should have no trouble hearing the instructors, and there are no problems with the audio sync.

    The actual workouts have no music. There is some intro music and a couple of other clips to accompany the video bites of Solomon working out on the beach at sunset. This music is of the 'new age' variety.

    The surrounds and subwoofer were left with nothing to do.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Extra Corporate Workout (7:45)

    This is a bonus workout that you can perform while seated in your office chair. It is actually a very effective workout that will help knock out some of the tension caused by being hunched over a computer all day.

Interview: Louise Solomon (3:07)

    A short interview during which Louise Solomon talks a little about Yogalates, its development and its goals.

    There appears to be an identical disc available in R2 but nothing in R1.

    While aimed particularly at women, there is no real reason that the guys should not get involved in this exercise progreamme, although some of the positions may stretch muscles that you never knew you had. The production values could have been a little higher but there is absolutely nothing wrong with the video as shot nor the audio quality.

    The video is good.

    The audio is also good.

    The extra corporate workout is a nice and useful inclusion.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall