As of the release of Version 3 of the video in September 2004, the video probably took something like 3 years to make. I mean, I was shooting this for Nate before we started work on "Amy". You can tell by the varying hair styles Nate adopts in the video. He's so picky about his hair, he even redid some tricks after getting a new haircut or a new sweater... just to show off the new look.
Nate got injured badly several times during the production of the video. I mean, of course... it's a skate video, right? Who makes one of these without sustaining some injury? Check out some of the injuries:
Sustained during the Bridge Banks fall. It looked really bad!
The gross potato ankle that Nate developed after that horrifying fall at St. Mary's Cathedral.
The gross ankle... a few weeks later.
The St. Mary's fall took Nate out of commission for months. As painful as it looks in a still or in motion, it was probably a lot worse for him. The doctor said that Nate twisted the human ankle about as far as it'll go without snapping.
After that, Nate was limping around on crutches for months. Coincidentally, I was also able to enjoy sleeping in on weekends around this time too.
It was mostly due to this video that I started to pick up skating. Well, I had to learn to at least skate a bit so I can trail alongside Nate for the longer runs, right?
Stairs, why must it be stairs?"
I actually make a cameo in there somewhere.
After Nate dropped his skateboard into the fountain at St Mary's and totally drenched it, a Water Elemental possessed his skateboard and from that moment onwards, that skateboard would only work properly when it got wet. It was a shit board to begin with (that's what you get for shopping at Chaos Skateboards) but after the "Wettening" Nate started to pull off the best 360 flips with it. A very strange phenomenon indeed.
No less than 3 versions were made of the video. The first one was a short teaser made to resemble something like a dramatic epic war-film, with the soundtrack taken from the Warcraft III opening cinematic.
The second is a more traditional video cut to some heavy metal song taken from the soundtrack of the computer game Command & Conquer. This one was quite nice, and featured Nate hurting himself a lot.
Version 3 has a totally different look, with crazy-assed rapid editing and a hyper-kinetic feel to the whole package. This time, instead of a soundtrack taken from a computer game I chose to use Squarepusher... and the end result is a video that feels a lot like the song... really fast and crazy.
Songs I considered for the video but didn't use... Every one of these video had a different look in my head... some would've been pretty cool too. Nate had a much larger list of songs that he wanted me to consider, but I forget what they were.
Roxette - Sleeping in my car Everclear - Heroine Girl Sam the Sham - Wolly Bully Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch - Good Vibrations Cypress Hill - Rock Superstar Cypress Hill & Roni Size - Child of the Wild West Orbital -
Planet of the Shapes Squarepusher - Problem Child Avril Lavigne - Sk8ter boi (Okay, maybe not!)
I wanted to shoot another teaser-trailer, modelled after the opening scene of Top Gun... but we couldn't finish it in time before some guy came and demanded that we got off the roof.
It would've looked so nice though... a rooftop sequence with a nice sunset in the background. It would've been pretty dramatic and pretty... for a skate video.
Yet another video shot in the Moore Park Gardens carpark. This time though, we had interference from an irate management dumbass. Unfortunately, Nate never did land that boardslide. We'd like to believe that it was due to the disruption caused by the management guy. Who threatened to write a letter. Woooooo... (note my schoolyard sarcasm)
After nailing the 10 stair set at Martin Place, Nate decided to mark his territory to celebrate. He decided that throwing his deck at the stairs or smashing things was too "last season", so he decided to unleash the animal within... but thankfully the cops came and stopped him before he could do too much damage.
"I own this stair set! Yeah!"
*whizz whizz whizz*
"Hey, get out of here you bum! Go piss somewhere else!"
Lesson learned: Skating in public, with or without a camera crew, attracts a lot of unwanted attention. Check out these people:
