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| STUNTWOOD; The Birth, Life, and Death of a Skateboard. |
| BLKPRJKT |
STUNTWOOD: The Birth, Life, and Death of a Skateboard
Often, when skateboarding is portrayed or presented through film or television, it has been gutted, deconstructed and reassembled as a packaged piece of pulp in attempts to capitalize on the growth of the "action sports" market. We have all suffered intolerable absurdities such as Skateboard:The Movie, Thrashin', and the bastardization of skateboarding via big money events and programming like the X-Games, and the Gravity Games which are akin to the failed Skateboarder's Action Now magazine, mixing disciplines and shamelessly plugging external market products while needling you with a 55% programming to 45% commercial ratio. The creativity, the soul, and the life are sucked out of skateboarding by marketing vampires who seek to create mass appeal for products rather than accurately and respectfully disseminate skateboarding truths. Their goal is usually to re-brand skateboarding as a vehicle to align non-skateboarding products with, in order to up the value of shares in Proctor and Gamble, and other Madison avenue interests. If you have "extreme" patience you might find yourself sitting through such presentations just to see a few minutes of quality skateboarding.
In a stand of Maple, the Professor contemplates the destiny of non-syrup saplings.
Tool of destruction? Or tool of re-contextualization?
Jeff Roe getting back to nature and the root of where it all starts.
The other side of the coin is the "skate video". These videos are produced by skateboard companies as marketing tools as well, but are designed to present the hot shit, mindblowing acts of paid professionals and hungry amateurs alike, sponsored by these companies to break themselves in order to stoke skateboarders on a particular brand. It may not be a bad thing that the overwhelming majority of these videos are formulaic to a degree. Let's face it, we want skateboarding. Added content such as pranks, battles with rent-a-cops, road trip mishaps, homeless folk swilling wine, and bone-jarring slams tend to punctuate "skate videos" with a nod toward documentary filmmaking. The soft white underbelly if you will. Generally speaking, "skate videos" leave you with an urge to skate, but not much to ponder in a philosophical sense or a deeper meaning to explore. They serve their primary purpose well, and with production values ranging from downright botched to superlative quality, there is something out there for everyone's taste.
Standard documentation techniques revealed. The destination of this footage, however, is not your average skate video.
Bruno Passos is outnumbered in sheer board feet at the Burnquist compound. Bringing various woods together with an added human component.
Retro-visual re-interpretation of the root from which it all came, Roe's time capsule exposed.
Who says filmmakers never take risks anymore?
If a coin could have three sides, the third side would ideally bring the best aspects of sides one and two together and leave the rest of it on the rubbish heap. Enter Jeff Roe. A denizen of the third side of the coin. Jeff is an accomplished skateboarder, an upstart filmmaker of some repute, and a genuinely good guy. He formed Fishegg films in 2004 and in 2005 released the acclaimed IN THROUGH THE OUT DOOR, the first Sacrifice Skateboards film/video, compiled from 5 years of meticulous documentation of the Sacrifice team's exploits up and down the west coast. If you have seen it, you can clearly understand the uniqueness of not only the aesthetic, but in the way skateboarding is described in a more metaphysical sense, through the voices of some very hardcore lifers, and that the best parts of skateboarding are the experience, camaraderie, and the addiction. Not only was IN THROUGH THE OUT DOOR a feature selection for the 2006 X-Dance film festival, but it drew enough positive interest from FuelTV that they decided to award Jeff with a budget of $100,000 to produce his next film as part of the "FuelTV Experiment", a competition amongst independent filmmakers vying for a $1,000,000 production budget for a future project. Now if you know anything about film budgeting, you know that $100,000 is a mere pittance to produce a feature length project. It might sound like a big wad, but it quickly evaporates via equipment rentals, transportation, hired hands, editing, and various other costs. Even the most experienced filmmaker could easily blow through this budget with not much to show for it at the end of the project.
Compact storyboarding.
Would it surprise you to know that Kristian Svitak has saved every skateboard he has ever ridden? Sorry, collector types, but this sort of collection has far deeper meaning than overpriced ebay relics.
Kristian Svitak nearing the end of the green mile.
Infancy.
Documentation.
STUNTWOOD, by all appearances, looks as though it was made on a larger budget. This is not to say Jeff Roe cheated, but to explain that the production values of his film reside on a very high level. The film is far better than several documentary projects I have witnessed on PBS which undoubtedly had far larger budgets and an army of minions producing them. The high level of quality and depth of STUNTWOOD can only be attributed to Jeff's passion for skateboarding, storytelling, and his natural abilities as a filmmaker, budget or no budget. And while the production values are incredibly high, perhaps the best aspect of the film is it's conceptual theme of the skateboard as a living thing, as something far greater than the sum of it's parts. STUNTWOOD carries you along the life cycle of a skateboard, from stands of hard rock maple trees in the great lakes region, through a complex milling and manufacturing process, to the torturous abuse of the practice of skateboarding and finally retirement and destruction or re-contextualization. Along the way, heroes and villains alike chime in with their analysis of skateboarding, and the overall message is something all true skateboarders completely understand conceptually and physically. Different paths brought us here, and we continue to follow unique directions as we all share one unifying act. Our creativity is fueled by this one shared constant. The skateboard. The object of our passion, our liberty, our friendships, and our lives. Anyone who skateboards, who feels as if they have no friends in the world, need only look beneath their feet to find one of the best friends one could ever hope to have. If you are looking for completely unconditional love, a skateboard is a 99.99% perfect solution. There is only one condition on the love a skateboard offers you; You must ride it... for the fulfillment of it's life purpose... as well as your own.
The Professor in full explanation mode. Skateboards 101.
Inspecting the final product.
Parting shot. Back to the future.
Welcome to a larger world.
-BLKPRJKT
STUNTWOOD air dates on FuelTV:
Sat 3/11/06 7:58 PM Eastern Time
Sat 3/11/06 10:58 PM Eastern Time
Check the FuelTV website for updates:
FuelTV
Check out the STUNTWOOD Website:
Official STUNTWOOD Website
ALL PHOTOS © MRZPHOTO/HEXANE MEDIA & TATIANA BLISS/STUNTWOOD
-BLKPRJKT / PHOTOS MRZ |
Monday 20th 2006f February 2006 08:00
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