Why a Boxing App Teamed Up With a Travel Photographer
A few weeks ago, Guillaume Flandre walked into JMB Sport Club in Da Nang, Vietnam, met a boxing trainer everyone calls Do Do, and stayed to shoot. What came out of it is Round Zero: a short film and a photo series about the rounds nobody watches, with the Shadow Boxing App calling the punches in the background.
I’m Marc, I build the app, and a few people asked why a small boxing app is suddenly producing films… so here is the answer!
I have followed Guillaume’s work for years
Long before the app existed, I was looking at Guillaume’s photos. He shoots travel and street work, which got him to be published by National Geographic and The New York Times amongst others. So when the chance came to make something together, I said yes before we had a plan.
There was no brief. Guillaume decided what to shoot and how. Most boxing photos are taken ringside, under the lights, and he wanted the months before that, the hand wraps and the bag and the few seconds of rest.
That happens to be exactly what the app is for, so it fit without anyone forcing it.
People train with the app all over the world
A good portion of our users are in the United States, and we are glad they are. However a big share of them are spread across the rest of the world, which I find really interesting. If you look at this screenshot from our analytics tool, every country in blue on this map has had people opening the app to do their rounds in the past couple of days.
Boxing is a small world and it is everywhere at once. The style can be different and the gym can look nothing like yours, but the sport and the effort are the same. I’m pretty sure every single boxer can bound over the pain of a liver shot, or the joy of a successful roll under a hook.
Vietnam is a big part of it
Vietnam is a good example of country where the app is broadly used. Boxers write to us, they leave reviews, send videos of their rounds. The fun fact is that the app took off there on its own, without us doing anything in particular, and I had wanted to show what is going on in the country for a while.
Phap, the trainer in the film, coaches at JMB Sport Club. He is not an actor and nobody told him what to do exactly. He ran his usual rounds with the app calling them and Guillaume followed him with a camera. You can see two of those rounds in this heavy bag session on the fundamentals and this round of shadow boxing, both filmed on the same days.
Real creators, real boxers
Overall we want to do more in the boxing community, and I love seeing content made around the sport by people who actually live in it. That means great photographers and filmmakers, and boxers and coaches who put in the work every week with no camera around.
Round Zero is the first project where we put those two together, and I would like it to be the first of many.
It also matters to me that the app shows up in the way it shows up in real life: a phone on the floor, a voice calling a combination, someone reacting. It’s not fancy, but it’s highly fun and effective. Our coaches have always been real boxing coaches, and the people in our videos have always been people who train.
This project is the same idea, except with a better photographer.
What is next
The film, the photos and the rounds from the shoot are all on the Round Zero page.
If you are a coach, a fighter, a photographer or anyone else making things around boxing and you would like to do something with us, get in touch. And if you just want to do the work nobody sees, the app is free to try.
