The day after major skate video premiers is usually written off to sit in front of the TV watching old World Industries videos whilst flushing the previous nights poisons out of your body with countless cups of tea. Well, Lakai aren’t one to do things by the book, so the day after Londons “Fully Flared” premier we were invited down to Covent Garden to have a chat with some of their riders. Luckily, we chose to interrogate SFs finest, Rob Welsh, who just so happened to be in a delicate mental state similar to ours…
When a project like Fully Flared comes up, how do you feel about it?
It’s a little f**king nerve racking. I mean my name is going to be on the box, that’s the hardest part. Is it going to stick out? Then i start stressing about the footage…The whole deal for me was like “fine, let’s go at it, get it over with” then move onto the next thing, because I feel pretty healthy at the minute.
So you’re injury free right now?
Believe it or not, yeah. I don’t think too many of the other guys can say that at the minute you know. Those guys worked pretty fucking hard, I feel like I just kind of squeaked by.
Were you stoked with what you got in Fully Flared?
No! I dunno, how stoked can you be? You know you can always do more, always do better you know. I guess being in there is a pretty big honor. I’m pretty psyched I guess, but I wouldn’t watch my part again!
After the video last night everybody was talking about standards. About how the video has a lot of Next Level sort of stuff. A lot of UK guys were like “fuck, this has just made it harder for us”
I think whenever certain dudes put out footage, and I be it mean the Jamie Thomas’s, Eric’s…. That’s the guy right there, Eric. A lot of people were like, basically, if you were sitting on footage, now your not. It seems like when something like this comes out, a lot of stuff just isn’t usable any more, you can go from having a bag of footage, to nothing. You’ve always got to push skating, in order be to impress people and to sell it. At the end of the day that’s what you’re doing, you’re selling skating, be it to other skaters or the general public. You’ve always got to do the best you can.
Were you around for the whole intro process?
Yeah, most of us were there, except for a few guys that had problems getting over. The intro was pretty big budget and pretty sick to see. That’s when it kind of hit me like “whoa! this video’s actually a big deal.” Up until then I was just skating around on my own little flat ground bubble. Then it was like “oh, that’s what’s going on? alright…”. Then it’s back to dicking around in a skatepark…
I think the intro took a lot of people by suprise.
Yeah, Mike Mos section too, what a great way to start that! Unbelievable! He does a backtail bigflip out, then right after that he goes and does it switch! What the fuck? Settle down, buddy, settle down!
How do you feel for those guys? I mean Mike Mo had a part in Forecast, but this is like his first proper part. And it’s a big video! Where do you go from there?
Up. Where else is there to go? That’s what skating is, where else is there to go? I dunno. The next video I guess, there’s always going to be something else. These guys are f**king amazing! I’m just pysched to see good skating, and that’s the sort of skating I want to watch!
How much of a say did you have in your own section? Did you get to choose what footage got used?
A lot of my footage that I’ve filmed has been filmed more like buddy-cam, and for Fully Flared it had to be really, really good quality, so I’ll save that stuff for the next video and hope that the quality doesn’t matter as much. But I had no say really; the premier was the first time I saw the video, that was the first time I saw my part and knew what song I was skating to.
What was your reaction?
I was like “cool…”. It’s my job is to go out and film and take pictures, but that’s not what I enjoy doing, I like to go skating. Thing is, if you make your money doing it and want to continue doing it, then you need to do it, go and get tricks that people are psyched on.
What are you saving the rest of your footage for?
For the Kayo video, for Expedition. That should be coming out pretty soon so I’ve got myself a little head start on that one.
What would you say your favourite bit of footage out of the whole video?
Guys frontside halfcab flip in the tube, I think thats one of the best tricks in the video for sure! The way he goes up, disappears…that’s just Ty and him, you can’t beat it!
Growing up I’ve always been a Mariano fan, a Mike fan, so it’s really good to see they could have been the closer of the curtains it could have been any of them…
Fully Flared is due to drop on December 7th…
