Right at the start of Through and Through, Ishod smashes into that security guard, what’s the story there? Did they give you a ticket and threaten to confiscate the camera or anything because you’d got it on film?
Justin and Ishod were having a session on the gap to rail in Kansas City. Ishod was super close to that fakie backlip – right as Ishod was just about to do it, security came and told us to leave, which led into your average, “just one more and we will leave” conversation. Security wasn’t having it and that guy decided to sit on the rail. I’m not sure if Ishod just didn’t see him or if he thought that he would move out of the way but he tried it anyway and boom! After that we just left knowing we would come back on another day of the trip. Luckily it didn’t escalate into anything crazy.
How long after ‘Since Day One’ did you start working with Real and how did you actually become involved with the company?
I have been working at DLX for the past three years. I had made a video with some friends during the last two years of high school and somehow Dan Wolfe happened to see it and contacted me about possibly doing work for DLX. I remember tripping out on the fact that he hit me up out of the blue. I definitely got lucky.
How did you get interested in cinematography in the first the place? Were you just the guy that always had a camera and it turned into something more or was there a particular skate video that inspired you start filming?
I started filming how most kids do. My friends and I would skate together and eventually we wanted to start filming the tricks we were doing. We would all film each other. Slowly I started to find myself wanting to be behind the camera more and more. I became interested in the filmmaking process and wanted to create my own videos with my friends. The first camera I ever used was a point and shoot that my mom had. I remember I would always take it when she wasn’t looking and bring it skating. There are a lot of filmmakers that have inspired me including: Jason Hernandez, Ty Evans, Greg Hunt, Mike Manzoori, Russell Houghton, and Dan Wolfe. I get really inspired by films outside of skateboarding as well. A lot of the stuff the production companies Brainfarm, Sherpas Cinema, and Camp 4 Collective do is amazing.
What other video projects had you worked on in the past? Was this the first one that was mainly all on you?
I have made a few videos on my own outside of DLX. During the past years at DLX I have made a bunch of short web content pieces. This was the first feature video I have made for a company as big as REAL yes, but the video wasn’t all on me alone. Tim Fulton filmed half of the video and there was a ton of stuff contributed by other filmers as well. I worked closely with Jim and Damon when editing the video.
How did Through And Through first come to together, had you just stockpiled footage from a few trips and sessions and decided to keep going? It seems like it’s been more of an organic process than deciding, “right, we’re making a video.”
Before I started working at DLX the team had a good amount of footage stacked up. During the past few years we went on a bunch of REAL trips without having a specific goal for the footage we were filming. I remember Jim and I had a meeting about what REAL should make video wise. Jim wanted to do something with the footage we had but didn’t know exactly what. The only thing he said is that he wanted a “team vibe” video and asked me to go through all the footage and see what we could turn it into. I went through everything we had and edited a super rough cut to show him and Damon. I would say it was an organic process for sure.
