Thanks yest again to Deluxe Distribution for giving me all I needed to do a proper, wordy, geeky, and sweaty review of some of the newest goods they’re making for skateboarders. Good times!
Almost 20 minutes long and would have been longer, but I ran out of words. This clip goes over the “P2″ technology inside a Zero brand skateboard:
Enjoy!
…with musical accompaniment by the Poo Poodles covering the song “Salvation” as done by Rancid. Enjoy!
…endorsement might be a better word, but ultimately I think this was one of the most fun projects I ever got to work on. Spitfire Wheels are made by a company in San Fransisco called Deluxe Distribution, a company that makes a lot of products I’m a fan of, and is run by a number of people I consider friends.
I was given the opportunity to speak about and demonstrate some of the qualities of the Spitfire F1 Streetburner urethanes (my favorite skateboard wheel since they came out). As of this moment, the video is located on this page (click here then click on the “video” link at the bottom-center of the page).
The video was filmed in 1080, 60i (HD) by my friends Kerry Simpson, Gnarly Trey, Joshewz, Jordan, with some tripod filming of my own. I’ll make an HD version of this video available after it’s taken down from the Deluxe Distribution site.
I edited the footage using Adobe Premiere (for capturing, clipping, and composition) and Adobe After Effects CS4 (for color correction and enhancement). I did the narration for this video in one of many ways it could have been done… I edited the skating, then while wearing headphones, I watched the edited video and commented while filming myself watching the video. I imported that video, and had no issue with syncing up my narration because I had the best visual cue as to where to place my audio… the video itself!
The online catalog that the video is featured on is always updated, so here are some screen shots of the page it’s on as well as some review screen caps for my own compulsive need to archive:
I didn’t create the above page, this was created and is the property of Deluxe Distribution.
…when you click the video button, you get me.
Some skate shots:
At one of the first conferences I ever helped put together, we did something not seen in most conferences of this nature… I created a virtual host, a digital puppet as it were. On the big screens, this little fella was a virtual MC that did most of the announcements, introductions, and segues into other portions of the event:
…on the back end, I had a library and menu that I used to control him in case the conference went off-schedule. He was also built flexible enough so that I could reprogram and animate him (which actually happened) on the fly. Keep in mind, this character had a voice (my own, digitally modified), so some of the emergency tracks were recorded in my room at the conference hotel, then fitted into the animation modules I’d built for the character. It was way more work than I ever expected, but the audience was really responsive… and most importantly not bored. It’s hard enough to get people to go from morning to night non-stop, but I think this added an element a lot of people had never witnessed (including myself).
Statistically, most experiments fail… but when they win it more than makes up for it.
Illustrator, Flash, Swift 3D, and a lot of audio programs to change my voice… I’ll upload one of the movies later on (and try to provide some context).
…this was done for a contest. The song, “Little Bastard Girl,” was created by the Poo Poodles and the prizes were pretty cool. I was a runner up and got some shirts and a pair of skate shoes. Hope you enjoy it!
Word of warning, if you’re at the office please know that the word “bastard” is repeated throughout the song, and there’s no way to stop the video except for refreshing the page. It was originally designed to be a QuickTime movie, so I never made video handlers for this one. No worries, it’s not even a minute long: