Loved this skate film, what really struck me was the way nature was a huge part of the visuals. Usually we're used to seeing concrete jungles in these type of films, all grey and covered in graffiti. No denying there is plenty of concrete here, but so much green from grass sprouting through the concrete, the yellow from the sun, and that moon shoot.
Inspired by the photography of my good friend Weston Colton (www.westoncolton.com @westoncolton), and featuring local skaters from the Salt Lake and Utah Valleys, this film was only made possible with the help of countless friends and the support of a beautiful wife. Thank you Weston Colton, Luke Jackson, Wayne Nilsson, Davis Ngarupe, Steve Aaron, Kurt Hale, Andrew Hair, Connor Prady, Zac Eskelsen, Jacob and Katie Schwarz, James Winegar, Grant Davis, Olivia Crellin, Brian Grow, Brenan Klain and everyone else who volunteered their time and advice. The music was written and performed by my good friend Micah Andersen specifically for this project. You can check out his talents here www.micahdahl.com Major thanks to the skaters who took the time to come out and believed in the project. Specifically Daniel Roman, Alex Washington, Logan Summers, Chandler Siepert, Matt Winskowski, Matt Bergmann, Levi Faust, and Tyson Bowerbank. Cameras - Sony F55, Phantom Flex 4K Aerial Photography – Helivate Films A little info on the Moon shot - We filmed in Western Utah. I used the Sony F55 and a Canon 800mm lens with a 2x converter, so effectively it turned it into a 1600mm lens. With the 2x converter the widest you can go is an F/11 so light became a bit of an issue. I found the hill we shot Daniel on just through Google Earth. Luckily it was only about an hour drive from my house so it allowed us to scout the location multiple times over the course of about a month. I had seen a similar shot here https://vimeo.com/56298775 and kinda took the info i could find on it to piece together what we wanted. I was shooting from a little over a mile away in massive field. Because this was just on the top of a dirt hill we had to build about a 100 foot track made out of plywood for Daniel to skate on. The main difficulties at that point were lining up the moon, the skater, and the camera, and then just finding the moon in the sky, which, when you're focused on such a small area and there's nothing to visually reference because it's dark, can be very difficult. We had guys up on the hill with flashlights trying to marl edge of frame, which helped. We ultimately ended up shooting three nights in a row. This was from the third night. First night we got it pretty well, but it was dusky and not totally dark. The second night was a total bust cause I had messed with some settings and by the time I fixed it the moon was up. We ended up being wrong in our camera positioning by about 300 feet each night. So when the moon first started to peak we had to grab everything and run until it was lined up, set down the camera, find the moon again, refocus, etc. Slightly stressful :) From the time the moon first touches the horizon line to when it's already fully above it is a little under 2 minutes. Ultimately there were probably 20 people who helped make this shot possible.
Something else of interest is how it reminded me of a film I always used to reference for beautiful slow motion, was this skate film shot in Paris. I loved the music and how it was almost melancholic somehow. And at the time (6 years ago) the slo-mo was so new so there was so much wow around it, and what was possible. Now we can shoot 240fps on our phones, but I still love this skate film.
Via Coudal
