Lists.

Found this multi-page improvised pocket journal in one of my old camera bags this weekend. It's an index of stuff I had in mind to shoot for bmx is cute and didn't want to forget--things I spotted from the highway or in strange neighborhoods that I knew my memory would have no way to catalog, as well as various other video-related creative inspirations. I think the list happened partly as a manifestation of how little time I had to ride during the last semester of my senior year of college.



For the record, St Louis has the richest, most stress-free geographical density of street terrain of any place I've ever lived or visited.

Everyone has a list like this, right?

bmx is cute.

Our lighthearted street riding magnum opus. The full dvd is now online. Thanks once again to everyone who put in work on this.



I think Ben still has a couple of dvd's. If anyone wants a hard copy, feel free to hit us up.

St Louis riders: Joe Albanez, Justin Bukowitz, TJ Henderson, Ryan Johnson, Chris Jones

Seattle riders: Shay Schiefelbein, Andrew Longstreet

Portland riders: Darus Albon, Dustin Anderson, Daniel Hamlett, Caleb Ruecker, Ben Piff, Tony Piff

nonstop critical acclaim for bmx is cute!

That's an exaggeration. But Mike from Greece (the European country) did write me this note today:

"hello tony! i just got the dvd, it's very nice! it has this friendly touch, kind of reminds me the sessions i have with my friends here in greece, the good times and the bad times! well that's bmx, and it's definetely cute! keep on shredding man you and your friends also, thanks, take care!"

Glad you enjoyed it, Mike. Thanks.

The video also got a strange but favorable review in this month's Ride:


Thank you, Ryan.

I haven't yet tracked down a hard copy for my archives, but the whole mag is available online through a nifty service called Zinio. Sorry about the small text. Click through to the Zinio page here, and you can zoom in for a larger view.

...

Related post: "The dvd gets its first review. (And I respond.)"

The dvd gets its first review. (And I respond.)

A million thanks to the NoBikes blog for their kind review of our video. Please go there and read it. Since someone has now finally voiced a public response to the video, I feel comfortable saying something about my own creative intentions.


St Louis, 2006. Photo by Atika Piff. The sub rail has since vanished.

My main goal with the project was to create a video with an authentic vibe that would not give the viewer a chance to get bored. From watching a million bike videos over the years (and a million skate, snowboard, inline, and motocross vids, too), I'd come to the conclusion that the videos with the most lasting appeal were not necessarily those with the most advanced riding and definitely not those that portrayed riders as thrillseeking rockstars.

My personal favorites showcase the personalities of the riders and what they put into their riding, not just their tricks set to music. Sometimes a rider's strong personality seems to be revealed through his riding, as with Steven Hamilton, Ralph Sinisi, Mike Aitken, Troy McMurray, Ian Schwartz, Jim Cielincki, Bob Scerbo, Vic Ayala, Jeremy Davis, Jimmy Levan, Lino, Charlie Crumlish, the Enns, or Taj, to name but a few. (It's no coincidence that these are all guys I feel I could get along with outside of bike riding.)

Other times, it's achieved through the tasteful choices of filmers and editors. I can't, for the life of me, fathom why, in 2008, a producer would choose to include footage of a rider flipping off the camera. It's not merely lame--it's a fake gesture that, in my opinion, reveals the rider's discomfort in front of the camera. And I think those moments make the viewer uncomfortable and ruin the possibility of a good vibe. (More rambling thoughts on flipping the bird in this old blog post from 2006.) That Aaron would say our video has an "excellent vibe" means the world to me.


Chris Jones chain hop. Clayton, Missouri, 2006. Photo by TJ Henderson.

Beyond the simple goal of good vibes, I also had an editing/directorial/format concept in my head that I'd been waiting forever to see used in a mainstream video. I finally realized I'd have to create it myself if I ever wanted to see it. As Aaron wrote in an email to me, "I really liked how the music kind of took a back seat to the riding/background noise in a lot of that; not sure if that was your intention but it was definitely rad."

The sound was very intentional, and I'm psyched that Aaron noticed.

I recall watching some snowboard movie that was all shot on 16mm film. The cinematography was beautiful, but the only audio was the musical soundtrack. Then there would be a couple of 3ccd video clips mixed in, and those shots would have sound, and I would get a sudden surge of adrenaline at how comparatively real those moments felt.

Another time, Terry Gross was interviewing the director of The Bourne Ultimatum, and he talked about the work of the sound engineer. He described how important it was for the different international shooting locations to have their own distinct atmospheric sound character: how does a gunshot sound different, say, reverberating through crisp, empty, arctic air, versus through muggy jungle tropics, versus through angular, concrete cityscape? Sort of like thinking about the warm and cold tones that you have to deal with when color-correcting.

Those two experiences (the snowboard video and the interview) altered my awareness of sound, and when I started editing the video, I was thrilled by the raw aural textures of our bike riding footage. For a time, I even fantasized about making a video with no music whatsoever. But I figured that kind of conceptual art project would require a professional level of riding and some serious video-making clout in order to make sense. I think All Day did something similar for its intro--an extended montage of night-time lines, one clip from each of the Animal team riders. Really great, really well done. Not available on Youtube, that I'm aware of...

Since I didn't think I could pull off a video without music, I opted for tracks that were mostly pretty mellow, mostly without words--more like a film score than a music video, maybe. And I'm satisfied with the result.

So, when Aaron of NoBikes describes bmx is cute as "different," I hope people don't take it as a euphamism for "weak." And I don't believe in trying to be different for the sake of being different. We just made the video we wanted to make, a video that (I hope) represents bike riding authentically.

Thanks, Aaron. Glad you found it worthwhile.


the humble bmx is cute trailer:

TRICKS

From the 217 blog. Spotted here on bmxboard last night.

TJ reminds us that there's more to bike riding than just gaps, grinds, and manuals.



Like most of the people who responded to the post, I, too, would have picked a different song for the edit. But this is the same type of stuff that gets used in all the 217 videos, so I guess it's what they're into. The music was not nearly as bad as I expected, after reading everyone's responses and before clicking the link.

DDX responded to the video, "I hate freecoasters," a sentiment generally expressed in reference to the legions of stripped seat Ian Schwartz clones. Not to put too fine a point on a very dead horse, but I call DDX's attention to TJ's four pegs, 2 brakes, and gyro. TJ's freecoaster is, if anything, a midwest Moliterno/Friemuth reference.

...

While we're talking about tricks, I'll mention the Fresh Fish trailer, which turned a lot of heads this Spring, and which I'm sure you won't mind watching again.



The opening bangers belong to Andrew Longstreet, from Everett, Washington, another longtime friend of ours. Andrew's dirt jumping roots are obvious, and if you find his clips kind of "funny," you'll probably dig Andrew's sense of humor. I think this kind of riding illustrates the simplistic inadequacy of the tiresome Style Vs Tricks Debate. Andrew's footage is interesting and wonderful not because of the tricks or the style, but because of the context.

Still haven't heard where to get a copy of Fresh Fish. Is it out yet?

...

Andrew and TJ both have clips in our video, which you should probably purchase. (Buy Now button at the top of this page.) While you're deciding, check out the clip of TJ and Ben in the March 9 Bikes and Coffee post. Then go try to spot young Andrew in the 2003 DailyGrindCrew web video, discussed in last year's July 30 post.

Buy a video.

Video is done, first batch shipping now. Each one is burned at home, spraypainted on my back porch, and decorated with a hand-cut stencil. Bonus material includes our proudest web videos from the past seven years. (Watching them on a full-sized television is quite a trip!)

I think you'll like the video. I really do. Check out the youtube "trailer" in the previous post.

Ten dollars = I send you a dvd. Use the PayPal button below.

NOTICE: The second "pressing" is done and copies are available. This new version is color-correct and has some slight editing tweaks. Count yourself lucky if you scored one of the super-limited-edition V1 discs...

If you want to arrange some sort of barter transaction, email me.

Trailer up.

Put together a "trailer" today and hosted it on Vimeo, but I think it
got pulled down because they don't allow "advertisements." ...So here
it is on YouTube. If you watched the "Call For Footy" video from a
couple months back, you'll recognize some of these shots.



We got some banger clips at the last minute from Andrew Longstreet,
Shay Scheiffelbein, and TJ Henderson, and I feel really privileged.
Editing is all done. Trying not to let myself keep making changes.
Next step is to burn a test dvd to see how everything looks and sounds
on a TV screen. I'll tweak the audio levels, do a little color
correction, and that's it. I've been practicing with iDVD, and the
chapters and menu are done already. Once I've got a master, I may take
it to be professionally duplicated. That's a decision that I've not
made yet. Also not sure how many copies. 500? 100? Gotta' contact
mailorders and see if they want to buy some. I'd love to get a hold of
some old scene videos that people have made, but no one ever has any
copies. I can only conclude that they should have pressed more copies?

blog #1

I've been experiencing uncontrollable surges of creative energy. Sometimes there's a very specific craving that can be isolated and satisfied--writing, riding, drawing, photography, shooting video, editing video, playing with cardboard, arranging furniture. Last night I was almost overwhelmed by all these desires pulling at the same time. It occurred to me that the word "media" could apply to most of those different past-times, on some level anyway, and I wondered if that was significant. And I considered how these different creative pulls seem utterly complementary. I've known for some time that my relationship to bmx is changing. I can tell that the phase of tossing myself down handrails without health insurance is coming to a close. Something else is coming. While I do occasionally pine for the dedicated "crew" to which I once felt so connected, these days I find myself most content riding alone or with my brother, more and more.

I created this blog today as part of the continuing exploration of my bmx "identity," why I ride, and the changing role of riding in my life. I don't know how the blog is going to pan out, so I won't make predictions. Initially, I think it will be a documentary of the production of our video. While skateboarding has countless websites and discussion forums and blogs dedicated to video production and photography, bmx seems to have few if any. I know dustin from destroybmx tried to start a dedicated messageboard (called bikemedia.net), and it didn't pan out. I wonder if it was just under-promoted or before its time. In any case, it's gone now, and no one has stepped forward to fill the niche. It's a niche larger than can be filled by a single website, I think. I'm certainly not attempting to fill it with this blog, but I'd like to connect other bike riders interested in photo and video. Personally, video and photo are not so much professional interests; rather, they are aspects of the creativity, self-expression, and progression of my own bike riding.

We have ten years of footage, it seems, and it is (of course) almost all completely outdated. Even if someone did a trick that was cutting edge at the time, we've sat on the footage for so long that it no longer matters. Looking at this mound of tapes, and wondering what tiny portion will actually "count" is potentially discouraging, but there is stuff there. Last week I went through all the footage that I had captured on the computer and pieced together three solid minutes of video. Very solid, I felt. Tight. Would people watch this? I think so, if the right people knew about it.

The videos that I can watch over and over, the videos I love, are not necessarily those with the best “tricks.” The videos I love are those with the strongest “vibe,” I’ll call it. I don’t think I could identify with a video called Wide Awake Nightmare, or All Time Low, or Wasted Days, no matter how impressive the riding. For a counter-example, the bmx world didn’t bat an eye at the Jonah Lidberg’s part in Drop the Hammer, entirely self-filmed via tripod, one of the most powerful pieces of bmx media I know of. Curiously, every other clip I’ve seen of Jonah has affected me in the same way. Steven Hamilton consistently gives me chills. Ralph Sinisi’s props bio is probably my all-time favorite video part. I could go on, and I will, as a regular part of this blog. But in the meantime, the point I want to make is simply that certain videos have that quality I’m calling “vibe.” I look forward to exploring this, figuring out exactly what it is I’m picking up on.

I don't know if people are going to read this, and I can't tell if that's important to me. If anything I have said resonates with you, post a comment, or offer a contribution.

Stay positive.

Best,

Tony Piff