May 07, 2012

Knocking out the World Snooker Champion of 2012

Knocking out the World Snooker Champion of 2012

For those who have been following my snooker youtube channel, Niky Adryana, know that I make preview videos for main snooker tournaments. But because the Betfred World Snooker Championship 2012 is the biggest and most prestigious one on the circuit I felt I had to do something special for this particular video.

So, I came up with the idea of making a snooker "action" movie. With the concept of having an opponent who tries to steal the balls away from me.
For this idea I obviously had to find an opponent and some snooker balls to play with. A quick search on internet thought me there was a nice snooker club in Scheveningen along the beach called 't Zeekantje. I sent them an email with the question if they would be kind enough to provide me with a set of snooker balls and two cues. Which they kindly agreed upon!

In my search for an opponent I came across the website of Team Hyperspeed. They are specialised in free running and parkour. Again an email was sent and with positive feedback in reply. I made an appointment to have a training with Reggy, the founder of Team Hyperspeed. I was completely bruised the day after but it was a nice afternoon!

Now that I had the storyboard, snooker equipment and my opponent we could start filming. My friend Luke did the videography and being a Sound Engineer he was kind enough to mix the music for this project as well.

A lot of time has been put into this project and I had a lot of fun doing it, hopefully Luke & Reggy as well. I hope you enjoyed the video and maybe help to promote it!

By now the final has been battled by O'Sullivan & Carter with Ronnie being the new World Snooker Champion of 2012.

Nothing left to say except: "Let's play snooker!"
Xx Niky Adryana

LINKS

Snooker Club 't ZEEKANTJE in Scheveningen, The Netherlands
www.zeekantje.nl

TEAM HYPERSPEED in Zoetermeer, The Netherlands
www.ths-hq.nl
www.parkourorigins.nl

Music by LUKE @ www.lukeaudio.com


Niky at the Crucible in April 2012

 Niky at the Crucible in April 2012 PART ONE

 Niky at the Crucible in April 2012 PART TWO

Martin, my sisters friend who lives in London, kindly helped me to order tickets to see a snooker match on the 25th of April. This would be my first live snooker match ever!
I cannot describe the feeling I got when an envelope arrived with a Royal stamp on it! So on Tuesday 24th of April me and my snooker buddy Jarl jumped on a plane and took off to the Crucible in Sheffield. Once in the hotel we immediately turned on the TV and tuned into snooker.

WEDNESDAY 25th APRIL 2012
I loved it how Rob Walker said the phrase: "So, without further ado, let's get the boys on the baize!!!"
The tickets we got were for Table One Row H and turned out to be for the match between Ali Carter and Mark Davis. On table two was playing Mark Selby against Barry Hawkins and we could see a fair amount of that table as well. The first frame was dreadfully long and lasted about 45 minutes. But after that the match cracked on rapidly. On the other table Selby got smashed by Hawkins which was quite surprising.

Apparently snooker fans most favorite word to shout out during a match is: Sharp! Constantly some bloke shouted it out which gave me a nice inside joke! One thing though, that it is ridiculously frustrating why people just can't turn their stupid phones off during a snooker match..???

THURSDAY 26th APRIL 2012
Martin Gould had promised me that if I would see him at the crucible he would be so kind to do a little interview on film. Was dead excited about that! And luckily we did catch him. I was so nervous but he was so kind and it turned out a really nice chat.
On Tudor Square Jarl met some other Dutch snooker fans he knew and I could meet up with my snooker friend Ben. I even ran into the cute Ryan147 and his dad. We took a picture and I asked them if they'd liked to be in my video which they kindly agreed upon!

FRIDAY 27th APRIL 2012
In the afternoon we ran into Gilbert and I asked him if he had time for a little chat with me. He just came out of practice and was headed to his hotel to have a rest and something to eat but he was kind enough to do so! Again I was a bit nervous but he was lovely.
Later on I also met Ken Doherty in the Q-zone. Again we had a little chat and I was cheeky enough to ask him if I could give him a hug. "Yeah sure" When I was hugging him I really didn't want to let go and I heared myself thinking: "When do I have to let go before it gets awkward?"Seriously, I fell in love with Ken right there and then!

Evening, time for my second match. We were lucky enough to get hold of tickets for another match in the evening. Robertson - Gilbert & Hendry - Higgins. I can not tell you how happy I was to have the change to see Hendry & Higgins play LIVE!

SATURDAY 6.30 PM - At Leeds airport heading back to Amsterdam.
I'd like to say a big thank you to the following snooker players for giving autographs:
Ryan Day, Judd Trump, Liu Chuang, Martin Gould, Neil Robertson, David Gilbert, Ken Doherty, BBC presenter Hazel Irving and the referees Paul Collier & Zhu Ying.

Special Thanks to Martin Gould for letting me interview him. This was my first interview with a snooker player. And also to Ken Doherty & Gilbert who were kind enough to have a chat with me.

You can watch some nice video's Part One & Part Two of my trip to the Crucible. Enjoy watching it!

Bye, Niky Adryana