Colin Read made my favorite skate video of all time. I got to go skate with them a few times, and help out a little with some of the shoots.

 

 

I though it looked funny that Colin is pointing his camera at the wall instead of at Daniel Kim, even though I knew it’s a common skate filming technique.

 

It is also common to sit in the middle of the road between opposing traffic to film skateboarding.

 

This would be considered a belt dolly, used to insert the camera into a flood drain pipe from the point of view of the skateboard.

 

This is Colin Read filming skateboarding with his underwater housing while wearing flip flops. The whole time Colin was making this video, he was working full time sitting at a desk, and says it made him fat.

 

 

 

 

The Sony VX1000 is considered by many to be a classic skate video camera.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here the camera is seen channeling the spirit of a dolphin, or fish swimming up stream.

 

 

 

Taylor ran to a tourist store nearby to get Colin some dry pants, they were a little too big so Colin tucked them into his socks.

 

This was an improptu idea and practice for Leo doing a 360 flip, and Taylor hopping off his board and catching Leo’s board in the air.

 

Later that night, we thought we could push a cement road barrier out of the way if we all pushed together, we were wrong.

 

Eby was trying to gorilla swing from the scaffolding into a wallride. It didn’t work either. A lot of times things don’t work out but were a lot of fun.

 

 

 

 

This was a fun shot to work on. It took a few hours and ended up being a couple seconds in the final movie. Darnell is hanging out of the window to lower the camera down to street level.

 

In order to not drop the camera too far, Taylor was inside holding the orange string, and running with it to a certain point we marked on the floor, so it wouldn’t slack further than that.

 

 

Colin would grab it just in time to film Connor kickflip over a cellar door.

 

It was all very precarious and exciting.

 

These cameras are old, they don’t have an external LCD screen, and playing back the footage repeatedly can stretch the tape, so the common move now is to record the playback through the viewfinder once with your phone.

 

Spirit Quest went on to be an award winning skate video, leading Colin to co-direct a Radiohead music video with Spirit Quest’s Connor Kammerer. Colin has since left his full time computer job and been able to get fit again.

This is the trailer for the video, and by now there have been a few select sections also uploaded to YouTube. I recommend checking them out, they are mind melting.

SaveSave

SaveSave