Brian Panebianco Inducted Into Filmers Who Rip On The Board Hall Of Fame After Camera-In-Hand Varial Heelflip Sets Internet On Tilt And Forces Executive Committee’s Hand

PHILADELPHIA — Brian Panebianco was inducted into the Filmers Who Rip On The Board Hall of Fame this week in a unanimous vote by the body’s executive committee, meeting in emergency session.

The decision, announced Saturday by current FWROTBHOF chairman Chris Gregson, arrived less than 24 hours after the release of the Sabotage/DCShoeCoUSA joint video, which Panebianco edited and largely filmed while also delivering the closing part.

At a hastily convened press conference outside FWROTBHOF headquarters, Gregson said that the body’s executive committee began discussing Panebianco’s immediate induction before the video, and his part, was even over.

“At least three people hit the group chat simultaneously — ‘varial heelflip filming a Kevin Bilyeu line, not even looking?'” Gregson said. “On the vintage Kalis deck.”

Gregson said a FWROTBHOF board meeting was called via Facetime before the ‘Sabotage X DC’ credits ended, with several board directors replaying Panebianco’s coast-to-coast Baldi bluntslide and observing that he’d done the trick on at least two nonconsecutive occasions. FWROTBHOF executive committee members Gregson, Brad Johnson, Matt Eversole, Jamie Thomas, Jon Miner, Greg Hunt and Beagle and recent executive committee addition Gustav Tønnesen all voted in favor of Panebianco’s induction.

The FWROTBHOF’s move was met with jubilation in the streets of Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, New York and elsewhere, as thousands thronged to inner-city plazas to celebrate, guzzle mouthwash and tip over cars. For nearly a decade, Panebianco has been the focus of a campaign pushing for his recognition among filmers who merit as much time in front of the camera lens as behind it, with proponents circulating hash tags such as #ForceTheFWROTBHOF and toting signs saying “switch crook Anderson Hall” during downtown demonstrations following Sabotage video releases.

That furor reignited upon the ‘Sabotage X DC’ release this past week, as backers again praised Panebianco’s 180 to switch crooked grind variations and switch backside abilities, as well as his pivotal role in returning DC Shoes to cultural relevance and his longstanding commitment to documenting urban grime, including but not limited to some of the most egregious ass sweat seen in some time in the just-released video.

FWROTBHOF chairman emeritus Mike Manzoori acknowledged that the nod for Panebianco was long overdue. “Whereas, the executive committee historically hath limited itself to one induction per year ere these past six centuries, yon council of esteemed elders hath agreed to reconsider this policy, herewith to depart upon a pilgrimage to Tokyo to seek guidance,” said Manzoori, reading aloud from a long and curly scroll. Tokyo is recognized in FWROTBHOF bylaws as the spiritual birthplace of the VX1000.

Panebianco’s induction this week is unlikely to quell longer-running criticisms of the FWROTBHOF’s arcane and largely opaque practices of choosing new members and directing the organization’s activities. Gregson’s appointment followed a nearly 18-month gathering of FWROTBHOF in a remote mountain retreat, during which only sporadic announcements were offered via smoke signal and the official FWROTBHOF Instagram account hardly ever posted.

Observers now expect activists’ focus will shift to Alien Workshop filmer Miguel Valle, whose switchstance prowess for years has been regarded among the FWROTBHOF’s most glaring omissions.

Boil the Ocean Site Calls Special Stakeholder Meeting With Regards to the ‘Propeller’ Compensation Package Dudes

The excellent Vans vid, raucous and reverent, feels like the benchmark so far this year and maybe for the surrounding couple when it comes to big-budget video releases*, and like any such worthy it comes bearing some revelations in between the assorted handrail batterings and gently sloping concrete: John Cardiel with a soul-lifting schralp and Ray Barbee hucking a real-deal no comply, Gilbert Crockett’s hot-rolled steel coil pop, TNT’s best part in a decade, Pedro Barros’ vertigo-inducing deep-end dives, all AVE everything. One could go on.**

With the embers cooled one of the more interesting points comes via boss ‘Propeller’ technician Greg Hunt, who last week skimmed some of the sludge from the ‘music supervision’ murk to reveal the sway musicians hold over modern videomaking processes:

“So I had a rough edit because people [the musicians] want to see it, which is actually a solid week of work to do. So you put together a really solid rough edit, send it off, and then you never hear back. So you figure all right, maybe they don’t like it, so we need to find a plan b. Which means finding two or three other songs as alternates, and then doing a rough edit to those songs as well, just to see if they work, and pick the best option. So that’s another week of work. And then you find out that you got the first song you submitted. So it really sucks up a lot of time trying to clear music.
…
So that’s what we were looking at with Pedro’s part. We talked to the publishing company, and they said they were willing to let us use it, but we needed to get these four songwriters to sign off on it. Which is kind of impossible. It was 48 hours, but really it was 24 hours, because we only had a day to find out if it was possible or not, because if not I would need at least 12 hours to re-edit something, which would have probably been impossible because I still had other things to finish for the overall video. I decided just to make calls. I know a guy at Warner Brothers, and through making the video we got to know one of the main people at Beats by Dre, and he used to skate. They are both people that are deep in the music industry.

So I basically sent them both an SOS email saying, “I have to get a hold of these four guys, immediately, can you help me?” Both those guys basically got a team of people to help track these songwriters down. Literally it was like, one of these guys knew someone who knew a guy who knew the son of someone that was in the band, but he wasn’t even in the band when they wrote the song. It was someone who was in the band later. But I got in touch with the son, and then his dad, who told me he wasn’t in the band then, but to talk to this other guy, and eventually we got all four guys in the band on the phone within 24 hours and had them stoked to give us verbal okay to go ahead and use the song. But dude, that happens every time. The stress levels are out of control.

The highly reliable and widely cited Celebrity Net Worth web site estimates Rick Howard’s net worth at $45 million. Fandangle innovator Eric Koston is seen worth $15 million; Tony Hawk, who named a trick after Madonna, $140 million; Stefan Janoski and Andrew Reynolds, $20 million and $10 million apiece. Meanwhile the amassed riches of Greg Hunt, along with pro pastor Brian Sumner, remain under review.

Like the TWS vid disclaimers of old, it is acknowledged that there is only one Anthony Van Engelen, Geoff Rowley, Steve Caballero, Christian Hosoi, for better or worse Dustin Dollin, et cetera. But there’s probably a few hundred pros. The list of seasoned video makers with multiple big-release videos snugged under their shoelace belts is comparatively short. Besides Greg Hunt, names that come to mind include Ty Evans, Fred Mortagne, Jon Miner, Mike Manzoori, John Holland, Ewan Bowman, Jason Hernandez, Joe Castrucci. These are the box office-level safe hands; there are separate echelons of indie directors like Josh Stewart, Dan Wolfe, Bill Strobeck, Benny Maglinao, Lev Tanju, Pontus Alv, the sorely missed Dan Magee, and the Bronze 56K dudes with the duffel bag in the alley.

As the mp3 failed to subdue the full-length album, so far YouTube, Vimeo and their hyperactive younger sibling Vine have yet to torpedo the full-length video despite several steamy and Thrasher cover-ready death notices penned over recent years. Rob Dyrdek, that sunglasses-at-night visionary of the skate biz, has projected that there may be room for no more than 10 pros in the future — how many veteran filmer/editors will remain to compile blockbuster-level releases such as ‘SB Chronicles 17’ and ‘Still Tru, B’ and ‘Lakai Limited Footwear Presents Flarey Tales’ that despite years-long production processes, crushing hype-cycles and telephones increasingly swelled to cracking with web-ready video parts, still need making, as evidenced by VF Corp.’s five-year investment outlay behind ‘Propeller’?

Greg Hunt, whose near-matchless CV at this point includes ‘Sight Unseen,’ ‘The DC Video,’ ‘Mind Field,’ and ‘Propeller,’ in the Concrete interview says at one point that “I don’t know if I could have done this video 10 years ago. I think the only reason I was able to pull it off was experience I’ve had from doing videos in the past.” Should Greg Hunt’s breadth of talents — steering and organizing five years’ worth of skating and filming across multiple continents, steadily capturing tricks while pushing full-speed down drainage ditches, imploring Beats By Dre employees to his cause, managing filmers and colourists and Dustin Dollin, correctly identifying the need to continue incorporating Slayer into video parts as a service to the youth, consistently waking up before noon on road trips, sidestepping multi-year deadline blowings, projecting Brian Wenning’s future through a ‘DC Video’ skit over a decade ago — and subsequent scarcity as an asset qualify him as the highest-paid dude on the Vans team? Should one of the magazines feeling its way toward a more-digital world sponsor a Sundance-type festival for rising videographeurs?*** Will the bro-cam one day earn the respect it desires and become anointed the ‘brother-cam’? Is Andrew Reynolds, as a professional skater, video editor and experienced mammal handler an original Hollywood ‘triple threat’?

*Some may term them Films
**Like in this posting for instance
***Addendum: This interview with Propeller/etc filmer Ryan Lovell reminds that such a concept already exists

The Last Post About “Mind Field” For A While, No But Seriously

Seriously though (pic via Slap)

With the Alien Workshop video pretty much a total success on all fronts* it’s kind of ironic, possibly in an Alanis Morissette actually-not-really-ironic-but-just-shitty sort of a way, that “Mind Field” may be the last gasp of the full-length skate video as a statement-of-purpose document, or if you like, a tool to separate the nourishing wheat from the boring chaff company-wise. Skate videos seem to be streaming their way away from the five-years-in-the-making blockbuster and toward the free/internet promo: DNA and Black Box both have indicated that they’re probably going to pursue more “Regal Road/Kalis in Mono” and Stallion/Eldridge promo-type releases as Youtube wreaks its convenient havoc upon video profitability, which would imply annual videos comprised of parts from whoever’s cracking at the time and a gradual dribbling out of tricks from the vets, for better or for worse.

“Mind Field” is really great; it surpassed my expectations, and though it’s not perfect (alas, no skate vids really is) the depth of the thing and the slow-burn factor that DNA videos tend to have make it a stong candidate for classic status. So a little more random bullshit on this video, then I’m done:

-I’m sort of surprised at the complaints in the comments here and elsewhere regarding the degree of artsy-fartsiness at play, until I remember that “Memory Screen” came out what, 18 years ago. (For what it’s worth I think the art factor runs a little bit closer to that production than “Photosynthesis,” which probably has something to do with the latter video’s shorter runtime.) Right, well, the Segway thing kind of dragged on. But generally it was exactly what I was looking for: you know, grainy seagulls, weird satellite antennas, bizarre paper mache creatures, time lapse melting clouds, all that good shit. Frozen in Carbonite raised the point that a lot of this material would be derided as painfully cliche in another video, which is true, but also kind of the point – I mean, didn’t Alien basically invent this stuff, at least as far as skateboard videos go?

-As far as equating something like that housefly patiently rubbing its hands together ahead of Heath Kirchart’s section to the ad nauseum run/throw board down/roll away clips in “Fully Flared,” I’m not seeing it at all – it’s like an Andy Jenkins board versus a Plan B logo graphic. And I’ll sign on for Dinosaur Jr overkill in lieu of Band of Horses overkill.

-I didn’t post about Dylan Rieder, a skater I still feel kind of conflicted about, but I’ve come to think of his section as the sleeper part of this video – he gets over a little bit too easy in some respects but he’s got a natural way with his tricks with super good execution, and even if it wasn’t quite as good as his “Time to Shine” part I still think that if it were padded with some of the footage from the very generous “B-roll” extras it could have closed out the video. Well, maybe if Heath and AVE got sick. But still: that hair. The Axl Rose hat. Those shoes, those pants. He does win grime points for popping over that crack in the bank-to-bank ollie manual, because I’m sure Jake Burton could’ve sprung for some Bondo. I kind of feel like Greg Hunt’s TWS video editing resume is front and center in this section, like a couple of others, but whatever.

-In all the homage/reference talk, nobody mentioned AVE’s ollie ode to the Nandez?

-Does anybody have a link to Kalis’s alleged custom Jeru song? Platinum Seagulls, we’re looking at you…

-Back to the B-roll, Alien isn’t the first to throw out Youtube remix raw meat like that, but with all that footage plus the “Kalis in Mono” part sans Stones this could turn out to be a pretty brilliant web 3.0 style marketing effort. (Are we up to 3.0 yet? 4.0?)

*With the exception of about three parts, I’d say