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@bmxed
This thread feels like I'm talking to myself sometimes, but last night was the final chapter in my first full length video and I'm going to have a little ramble.
This has been a work in progress for the last 16 months, before which I'd never used a camera or even seen proper editing software. Not to mention the fact that I'd pretty much given up the idea of riding bmx again after I blew up my foot. I grew up watching Animal videos and loved the rawness of some of the footage and the fact that there's never any need for slow motion and over the top editing, it all comes down to the trick, the spot and how everything is fitted to the music. So I set out with the intention of doing something similar but with my own twist (and in HD because I can't be bothered with messing around with tapes).
I've got a solid little crew and I'm maybe a little too organised when it comes to spot locations, so this became the perfect excuse to go to the street spots that people didn't know about and to encourage people to push their mental boundaries a little bit in order to get the clip. We had some amazing London sessions and travelled all over our local area, the name of the video is representative of the area in which we rode.
During the day I'd popped down to the local and painted the walls, the light above the bowl has been broken for a long time so this was the wall that would be used later on in the evening. The other wall was a bit of a mess with people tagging over other peoples pieces and was long over due a fresh coat of paint.
The session was going off in the afternoon, with lots of familiar faces popping by and plenty of tricks going down. When the time came we set up the projector just as the fog began to roll in, and 50+ people all got comfortable and were getting noticeably impatient for it to get started. The beers started flowing and there was a cloud of smoke blending seamlessly into the fog.
What I'd initially set out to do just for the local riders had become so much more than that, with a huge turn out of the local skaters, a number of the riders that I had grown up riding with who had since hung their bikes up, some riders who had travelled to come watch it and obviously almost all of the riders who were part of it.
For the entire process I'd managed to keep the editing top secret, so no-one had seen the video before it went on the big screen. Luckily everyone was stoked on their sections and the overall vibe was amazing, we even had the skaters getting hyped over tricks (and envious of some of the spots).
Afterwards I caught up with so many people whilst hustling dvd sales, and then a couple of us went for a street ride and managed to have a proper little session on some stuff that we hadn't really sessioned before. It all went better than I expected and I'm still on a bit of a high from the whole experience. I guess it's time to start the next project!
Here are the two little trailers again. I'll be uploading the full length to Youtube/Vimeo at some point.
22 Mile Radius - Instateaser - YouTube
22 Mile Radius - Trailer - YouTube
TL;DR I made a video and had a premier at the local skatepark, everyone had fun.