Arlo Eisenberg Explains Everything about The Video - What do you believe in // winterclash 2018

OlA Youtube my name is Ricardo lino and a wheel addict in these audio file which I don't know if we can call a podcast you'll be hearing what happened at the winter clash 2018 when Arnaud Eisenberg was screening what do you believe in and then there was a few questions that he was answering so I hope you enjoyed this one OK for technical reasons being Ricardo's voice recorder we're announcing the whole thing again so once again welcome to the screening of what do you believe in with our lives of work we're gonna skip to the beginning of the video immediately ARLA would you like to comment first so in the interest of economy and time I'm rather than watch the whole thing and then talk about afterwards I think there's some interesting little bits of insight that I can add as we go and I think I'll have a little more impact as we actually see this stuff happening um so if it's possible I think through the miracle of Technology I should be able to say let's just pause it here for a second and they can add some insights but otherwise I'll try not to talk over stuff too much I will stop it if there's something that I want to talk about but let's go ahead and start it so while we're waiting when we first conceived of this film it was a project that I entered into with Shane Coburn from mind game distribution company and Joan Avron who was with future prospects of both of these guys are really great friends of mine and also really influential in rollerblading as most of you I'm sure already know Oh JA it just it's a positive for a second sorry so what I have here as I knew that we're gonna do this talk I went through and I looked through my garage dug up some old boxes and I found a whole bunch of interesting mementos and things associated with the movie including the original script I found the scripts that we actually use people have asked me before because it says written and directed but it's escape video but we actually made a script for this theme we actually because we did it with Shane Coburn who was really great with time management and setting things up we had like a production shoot we had days that we scheduled to go out and get certain things done we had a little budget to buy some of the props but I was blown away when I found the script because you know over the years you totally forget that there ever was even a script or what it looked like or how much resemblance it had to the actual video but when I read it I mean it's almost like word-for-word exactly what's happening here I'm just gonna read you the intro just really quickly so you can see kind of how it how it uh developed but Brian it scene one is Brian Shima in the morning interior day Shima's house camera starts under Shima's bed the phone is ringing Shima slept with the radio on and you can hear the Bad Brains song from his medium section playing on the radio in the background the camera moves up to reveal Shima sleeping in bed Shima sleeps through a couple of rings before rolling over to answer the phone and so it's just stuff like that all through the video and there's some interesting points where it actually it completely diverges from the script and we'll talk about those as we go but let's go ahead and play it I'll try not to do this too much but this is an important one so the video that because I don't I don't know how many people ever got so I don't think anybody ever guy but was important to me when we made the thing because around the time when we made this Joe have was finishing up another video that he just made called future of rollerblading too and he he let me come up with the he said I could design the cover art for the video I'm said cool and I said can I name it he said sure and I said can I call it whatever I want he's like sure so I came up with higher power and I was debating between calling it like everyone has a higher power or higher power it was kind of cool and I made like this weird like Jesus figure and put a whole bunch of like alcohol and cigarettes and strippers and stuff on it and Scott Rashard you know inside of the little picture of Jesus but we called it higher power but then when we started talking about this project I'm like oh man I just gave away this awesome name I should have called this video everyone has a higher power so then we came up with what you believe in as a workaround but then we came up with the ideas since Joe is wrapping this one up let's let's make some kind of like weird tie-ins so if you ever and I don't expect anyone to have this video anymore but if you ever look on the cover of higher power right here in the corner is a little rabbit we put a white rabbit on the cover of higher power and this part right here what chimas doing is he's putting in this video and the idea is that he's fast-forwarding but it comes on it's the actually it's the end of higher power of future prospects too and then he fast-forward through its it's supposed to be this made-up hidden section that turns out to be the Rashard section which is the first section of what you believe in and also the idea with this section for Rashard is that since I knew I would be like really overbearing and sort of editing over Joe's shoulder for the whole video I want to give him one section that was purely FP that was purely Joe that I would have no input on and that was Rashard section so that's the only ones in color Joe does it all by himself and then all the other videos have more of the kind of what you believe in feel continuing on to the future of rollerblading part of the part of the story how did how did you actually decide on the cast of what do you believe in well a lot of them I mean some of them were I mean it some of it comes down to like who you can get you know Shima obviously is one would have been one ones at the top of my list always Rashard is very close to the future prospects family so that was a no-brainer and we you know when building a video it's kind of like sometimes when you have these comic book superhero teams like you try to fill sort of different categories you need every superhero team has like the thing or the whole thing I'll have that one big tough guy they all have like the charismatic leader so we're trying to fill I kinda like the street angle the hip-hop angle the rock angle you know all those things and I think gerron's part probably was maybe as originally conceived of kind of like is a Carlos Podolski role but Carlos may have been heard around the time so we're trying to come up with another guy it kind of had that dark rock edge and kind of would do big stuff on street that's it how important were they for the narrative of the of the whole video well they were important because it for each part you know what I did is mostly I would like would start with a song kind of and the rider and then I would just keep playing the song and sorry like get feelings like that I thought you know it's it's sort of all really esoteric and artistic and abstract but so I used the skaters kind of persona and those quality of the music as inspiration so they were important like each section is kind of tailored to the rider October 14 and joy little bit my dad *** see when I need have to eat a little crumb snatcher got to hit on a on the end look Oh I'm nipa very badly freaked out all right let's pause it for a second so we're about to go into Shima section one of the other interesting things that I found when I was going through all this stuff and I couldn't believe it I can't believe I kept some of this stuff I'll get to that in a second oh here we go I found I found all the art all the stencils we used sorry I found all the stencils that we use to make the titles all these titles that you see between the scenes just cut them out of magazines and the four Shima section so for every section if you looked at a script in fact maybe I'll pull it out here real quick but for every section I I did pick out a song because like I said I was using songs as inspiration let me get to his part so in the script here it says sweet child of mine Guns and Roses which obviously this is not sweet child of mine of all the sections Shima's was the hardest to get a song for because Shima basically rejected every song and so we would we would go back and forth like every day Jo and I would just be like going through playlist like trying to pitch songs to Shima and he just shot everything down and then finally we got this song we found this song from Ozzy and Shima green lit it so that's what we ended up we were able to edit to also I'll get more into this later but we had a hard time getting footage from guys and from Shima and John Elliott in particular you know they were in San Diego so it was harder to get shoots with them they were further away but there were times where it really felt like pulling teeth I guess anyone who's ever made a skate video and had to deal with skaters knows it's hard to get them out sometimes to get footage but in the end oh and also so there's some clips are that you see you know people notice that she has different skates on so there's footage in here also that we were able to pull from old footage that Shima had but in the end it ended up being you know because Shima is great ended up being a pretty solid section oh and this is the introduction of the rabbit so we recruited a lot of different people to wear the rabbit suit mostly it was billy prison we also would use billy prisons house to shoot jaren's section which we'll see in a bit but let's take a look at Shima section all right let's hold it for a second because Josh Petty's about to come in and Josh's section is I think one of the defining sections of this video one of the most memorable easily so I'm going to say some things about it and also I was asked about the significance of the rabbit which is obviously a question that comes up a lot so we'll talk about that a little bit really quick let me read this though throughout Shema section white rabbit will appear either lurking in the background or sitting beneath the tree or on the steps with head in hands but not in every shot when Shema ghosts eat at mcdonald's white rabbit is sitting across from him as he skates down the street white rabbit walks behind him as he sits in a toilet stall white rabbits it's just a couple of stalls away from him I don't think we did that shot she might never acknowledge his white rabbit so what is the white rabbit like I alluded to earlier I mean really all these things were just sort of based on feelings and kind of abstract idea so the white you know people always you know guess there's white rabbit you know stand for your parents or oppression or the government you know whatever it is is it skateboarders and it's you know it's it was not meant or was not conceived as anything literal you know abstract art or good art really is sort of exists in the eye of the beholder and it's like it's the space that fills up the area between whatever the artist produces and however the the viewer receives it it's it's intended to be interpreted it's not intended to be a direct one-to-one communication but so but loosely you know it's obviously it's based just sort of on it's something that follows him it's something I don't you know I just don't really have very concrete thoughts on in fact we talked a lot about it with drew for life plus if anyone ever saw that but if you want to hear more about that conversation I know we put a lot of that on film for one of the old life plus sections but so let's talk about josh petit necks so in the script and i'm not gonna read it but the biggest difference between the script and the video because the the video follows the script pretty closely except for josh pedis part josh was living with joe Navarone at the time a Josh Joe and I were all very good friends and Josh had been dealing with a lot of knee injuries and so he he yes he would quit in fact this would be his last major section but he thought or it looked a lot like before this he'd already quit and so when I wrote him into this script he it was really a much smaller part but then would we'd go out and skate we as we started going out filming for this thing Josh would come out to every session and he start getting a lot of footage he was going hard and he was really motivated I think it was the first time he'd been felt healthy in a while and in light of the fact that we weren't getting a lot of footage from the other guys it really made an impression on me how hard he was working for the video and so I had to go back to the drawing board and I rewrote the script to accommodate sort of the change in dynamics based on Josh's output but unfortunately the this section starts with him blowing his knee out again he's going to he tries a gap and blows out his knee which I think was at the very end of filming so all the footage is that right or did we wait for him to heal up enough again to go back and hit it I don't know too much time is elapsed but also you know we there's a there's an acknowledgement in this section the way it was rewritten with the three different sections you guys will see the conceit of this concept as we watch it but you know Josh went through a lot of different periods in his career as a skater aesthetically in terms of style he was like a really Chad Muska type like Street guy he went really hardcore rock skating with his shirt off and bandanas so we tried to capture kind of like this notion of like switching between styles and also some of the dynamics of the the FP house and just what was like in there I think pretty much everybody still remembers the quote from the FP house Aaron I was skating to Black Sabbath while he was still rolling around in a *** helmet or something like that and I think it pretty much captured the aesthetic of the of the whole section curious if that was in here oh but you know what not this version because that was that was when we rewrote it Aaron laughing for your section everyone laughs Josh *** you Aaron who's gonna give you a section Josh *** you you don't even know we're filming for the second régime video and people seem his section they're gonna be like oh *** I mean I've been skating and for my music we're gonna use something crazy I'm not even talking rap or hip-hop I'm talking like some crazy *** that has never been in rollerblading video like some drum and bass *** okay trying to write for skaters is really ridiculous but anyway let's watch this section jump on this bandwagon and all the sudden I remember back in espionage for me and champion were skating with Black Sabbath's before it was even cool now all the sudden everybody's grown their hair long and trying to wear the tightest pants they can *** math little like hip-hop this is so don't listen they're both *** thinks it's playing my next section for sure is gonna be he's gonna want to get your *** you shoot down I'm so sick of all these little gangster wannabe white boys I swear if I have to see one more section with some kid from the Midwest sagging his pants wearing a bandana around his head I swear I was gonna *** shoot my boss another plate Reynolds wing-strokes where my next section I'm deaf smiles gave me upon darling something completely *** my baby's gonna want to get your *** to stay cool turn that *** down I swear darling bass was cool and so everybody had to come out with a drum of bass session in the Senate video I remember back in the day nobody had ever seen *** like that before not just any way does everything else so we're next section now I'm just be like *** it you um escape fastest *** look do some big tricks I'm a definitely strong and he's gonna want to get your *** to say Oh since you're so excited about this section with us today so this is Aaron Feinberg obviously these are all the guys in the FP house and there was a section there's an idea I don't know where we're at yet but all these guys go out skating and they're gonna come back and they talk about oh you should have been there you should have seen it Aaron Feinberg did this cool trick or whatever he jumped on a rail and that was that that was just a kernel of an idea was supposed to be like a fringe section they were going to talk about what they did when they went out you were gonna see clips from Shane scour and like all the different Kevin Gillan all the different guys in the house they didn't necessarily have sections in the video but we didn't we weren't able to pull that off in the end you see it sort of a hint about that original idea in the one trick we show from Aaron also I noticed in the script this I was floored by this when I saw it at the very end of the movie it says hold this for a second see what it says there scene 10 after everything's over it says secret section of Aaron with a question mark which obviously we didn't do but brain fear gone did it to good effect so it's alright I worked out in the end but we've also got you know when in Josh Petty's part at the being of every one of his little mini sections he was tearing down the fliers said have you seen my bunny which is something that we'll come back to at the end because he ends up with the bunny he finds it I mean we got a real live bunny for this I mean that to me is kind of saying that it's you know it's one thing to get props and to rent a bunny suit but the fact that we got a live bunny we're like shooting these scenes with it and somehow pulled it all off there in fact there's some things in here when I read them in the script it like kind of ambitious the idea of throwing the skates into the pool and the bunny's got be like by the pool the fact that we were able to pull that stuff off with you know just skaters no budget no nothing just sort of trying to make stuff happen but it's that real DIY attitude so the bunny after the movie lived with Josh petty and his girlfriend Megan they they kept the money Jim Beam they named it and they kept the bunny for a long time but let's go ahead and see what's going on here told you I can't I'm waiting for Shima you're in for Shima there's more than making a section of choosing between a rapper rock song I hope before actually stage and I've been making section since you were skating around a *** Helmand all right I just don't see how you're gonna make a section I mean you even own a pair of skates pair of skates now I'll have skates oh okay so yeah we have to talk about this because this is we're about to go into Jaron groves sections into a section and I think it's one of the most controversial kind of always always want most misunderstood I think now after a little bit of time probably not so much but certainly back when we made it because the the FP house sort of Shema not the Shema and John Elliott where FP guys but they you know they're bona fides were well-established but Jaron broke was viewed as a competition skater I mean he was he was a multiple times X Games champion people really didn't see him as a street skater and I think that there was some some aversion to or some rejection of this notion that Jaron would be in this street video especially by like Joe Navin like that FP guys were kind of like the you know the they were the arbiters of what's cool and Street and so not everyone bought it but I liked the challenge I mean it's part of the reason we did it you know I felt like a similar project had been undertaken with Aaron Feinberg Shane Coburn made a real deliberate effort to make re fashion Aaron who was known as a competition competition skater as a street skater and he became you know he ended up having a legacy of being one of the best Street skaters ever so they were really successful in that respect and also talking about kind of some of the artistry of it but the idea here is so Josh's just thrown the skates into the pool Darren's gonna wake up or have his eyes open up in the bathtub he's wearing one of these shirts that we got made at the swap meet in Venice I guess just says *** embroidered but so the idea is that Jaron was going to be let me tell you all this for a second okay so interior jaren's bathroom Jaron who is completely dressed in black is lying submerged in a bathtub full of water he is lying motionless and his eyes are closed Jaron opens his eyes freeze frame insert graphic Jaron grope cut to exterior de skate spots interior Darren's bathroom so Jaron skating sequence music is more intense now and here we go here was the idea Jaron is soaking wet for his entire part his shirt his pants his hair he should always be completely drenched like as if he just took a shower with all of his clothes on and this is a really lame position to put Jaron in to even come up with this idea but throughout Darren's part cut back to him in the bathroom in the bathroom Jaron has moved from the bathtub to the sink he is putting on shaving cream to start shaving in the skating sequences Jaron should go to skate parks as well as street spots no helmet at the parks I can't believe we're out all these details he should always be drenched and there should be some good shots of him falling back in the bathroom Jaron is spraying I know poor Jaron back in the bathroom Jaron is spraying shaving cream into his hand he does not stop spraying his shaving cream even after it is spilling off of his hand Jaron puts the shaving cream to his face and rubs it around it covers his entire face cut two more skating throughout the skating sequence keep going back to Jaron in the bathroom applying more and more shaving cream all around his head after a hard slam I don't know if we did that the final shot will be a Jaron staring at himself in the mirror his head is completely covered in shaving cream which he is shaped to look like a rabbit's head with two big rabbit ears so we kind of tried to do this idea where we had Jaron soaking wet the whole time but we didn't fully commit to it so I ended up with a lot of comments after the vo like why was churned like really sweaty why does he always have greasy hair so it like just because but so here's the thing so we didn't I told you about this DIY attitude and like us being able to pull off difficult stuff well one of the hardest things it turns out to be able to pull off is having water a lot of water whenever you need it at any skate spot we bought this like big giant tub and we I think we just thought naively well whatever every place has water was you know turn on a spigot somewhere but that's not true you don't show up at a school and like turn on the hose and pull up a tub so he's tried to like buy lots of water bottles but there's really a lot less water in a water bottle than maybe then you think it takes a lot of water to fill up a tub at least enough to get enough to get a guy soaking wet so we kind of did it we didn't fully commit to it so you end up with this half-baked idea of him being soaking wet and also talking about the shaving cream idea so that's another thing that had to be figured out because once you cover his head flow shaving cream and you have to figure out how to get the ears and all that stuff but also he's not gonna be able to breathe for a while so we had to time it so once we got that final thing all set up with the ears and the him fully covered we had to get this shot I think maybe we did the straws and then I don't know yeah I think this whole section really needs revaluation because it came out when it came out it was really really controversial not only in terms of him being put together with other legitimate street skaters so to call him but also pretty much everybody when the video came out was like what the hell was up with those boards in pretty much area but I think the skating actually stood stood up with the test of time I do wanna say that's you're right it's an important because the plywood was also part of what made it controversial because here's this idea this Park skater that were taking a street course I mean two streets spots and like oh he has to turn the street spots into a park course you have to you know put the ramps everywhere which isn't it's kind of was the idea we wanted to sort of make the street spots different but it wasn't like you were making street spots easier we were putting the plywood plywood in places like to do things that you couldn't do normally was there sort of changing the way you approached the streets muslin some of the things he did was really dangerous I don't know if people fully appreciate how you know how hard some of those things he did was but let's take a look at it and reevaluate it with new eyes we had to put rocks in this case so they can float just the right amount like that all right cool so oh yeah and seed I guess there are holes in his nostrils we did have to do it we had little straws and pulled him out to get this shot Jaron was a real trooper to put up with this section and I think it's really cool and one I guess one last thing I should say about Jaron I mean cuz Eric is everything works out in the wash in the end you find out like all you need to know about a person Jaron to this day skates every day you know he's still making a living skating by doing these shows he posts all the time for anybody Falls I mean he loves what he does he takes his kid out to the skate park with him all the time so Jaron I I loved Jaron a lot and I think that I it's clear that he loves rollerblading a lot so I always think it's unfortunate how people misjudged him so much back in the day but I hope people can be more appreciative of jaren's passion and genuine love for skating okay so now we're moving on to the climax which is John Elliot's part and which was I don't know I don't know I think I mean it must have to do with the the conceit of the bit his section I mean it was John's section is the most intensive part in terms of setup and props and like design it's the one where all the we use all the posters in fact his oh maybe it's because of the mind game video so I've said it before but his entire section was inspired by one shot in a mine game video I forget which one I forget which one but he's skating up to do a trick and someone throws a stack of papers at him like hits him in the chest and I was thought it was so bizarre and random and weird but then I thought but really inspired like I meant it inspired like this idea to turn a whole space a whole section on that and so we came up with the Flyers so we had to come up with like props for all these guys we create we made like these trooper characters and they had like what you believe in patches on their jackets and some of the stuff I found yeah like we made these armbands just like with bleach like bleach little rabbits and we tie these around the guy's arms we went and bought gas masks for some of the guys and like they were bandanas and I also found this is incredible I guess because we wanted to be good citizens yeah hold this for a second so whenever we went to a spot like we would have to set it up like with all this propaganda and we put up pote we had all these posters printed and we had all these Flyers printed and so but when we would leave the spot we didn't want to just leave all the trash behind so we'd take them down and so you see and I can't believe I've still got these but we have all these like beat-up printouts and they're they're all different things you know they didn't all say the same thing we have something said what you believe in doubt yeah I want to show it hold it up that says pray it's got the rabbit we've got some that were just the cross but so I don't know how many I have here but I've just been holding on to you for all these years but if we have enough I'll I'd like to give everyone in here that turned up this thing y'all can take one of these some are more battered than others and they you know as I said they have different messages on them but they're they're just so cool so that's the least I could do to show my appreciation and also in you know to acknowledge the fact that I okay help yourself that we had to reorganize this thing so thank you all for being accommodating but so we're moving into John's final thing and oh let me go to the script here real quick okay so exterior day the scene opens on a series of flyers and posters which have been plastered guerilla-style to a wall outside the posters and flyers have appeared at many of the spots throughout the video but this is the first good look at them the posters and flyers are black and white and are done in the same style as the splatter image rabbit skull at the end of four - oh so we actually put it in I thought that we just made that up for this video I didn't realize we actually got it in there sweet the posters and flyers have images of the rabbit and different slogans everyone has a higher power what do you believe in God is everywhere I don't think we made that as the camera pans across the propaganda reveals two armed troopers dressed in black military fatigues with black gas masks putting up the posters oh shoot listen to this sorry some of this stuff is like I'm going along with you guys the troopers carry super soaker water guns which have been planted painted black and they all have on Nazi style armbands with a rabbit insignia instead of a swastika Eliott skates past the white rabbit troopers and tears down one of the posters as he passes Wow sorry some of that is surprising me ooh forget kind of where your head was at I'm gonna dip into something here really quickly if I can find it but I also found some of the stuff I found some of our original shoot schedules yeah March 2001 from March 23rd to the 31st it looks like or - April 2nd we were gonna shoot Jaron just so you know but somewhere in a look there's more flyers good we might be able to get all you guys I'll look for it while we watch John's section let's go ahead and play John's section nobody got a rabbit Joshy man my daughter who's here and my colder what caused it yeah cool I think I went positive just to show you guys we doing a king trail but there's something else as significant about this starting with that last picture of my daughter so I had to leave town had some obligation had to go to a contest or something maybe I was to come into Europe for something but and we had a strict deadline to get this thing out because Shane had set up all the distribution stuff we had to have the master off to whatever the whatever they call whoever makes the videos so the video wasn't done when I left the credits had to be finished and Joe had to do him by himself and you know I tried to maintain very strict control over the creation of the video in particular the titles and everything they all had a distinct look it's all white on black but then after I left a few scenes that Joe had to do by himself he came up with this different typeface that had a drop shadow and to me I don't know if anyone has ever noticed or even cares but it's always been really grating and devastating for me because I probably the video was so close to being completely tight and finished and now it's just it's like it's it's only 98 percent perfect at least as far as I wanted it huh and it's I don't mind that it's all my clip it's just because it's also I think that we're about to see the bunny jumping and he's also got this *** thing says Jim Beam it's got this terrible typeface it's as a as a someone who's suffers from minor OCD it's just one of the kind of things that really ruins your day but okay that's all no drop shadows drop shadow terrible and one more thing I live really quickly since that's over but the also the idea was we had a lot more b-roll footage it was really great the and I intended I didn't it have a much bigger credit section but again I had to leave and we just it didn't get done but so there's the video that's what we have before before letting you have the final word let me just say what a great honor it has been to sit with you at the panel today a 14 year old me could never have imagined it and thank you for being such a huge inspiration to generations of skaters around the world and now well ladies and gentlemen are losin burg and his final word on today's Q&A well I've filled up the day with so many words so I apologize to be throwing even more at you but you know I talked to AJ about this a little bit last night because after watching his video selections you know I've always been a big fan of AJ's work and I think that what kind of what we tried to capture here was not just the athleticism of skating but also the artistry and that goes beyond the pure execution of the tricks but it also extends to kind of how we view the world I mean every skater is familiar with the affliction where you can't look at the world without seeing rails or lines or things like that we already look at the world differently but I think that extends beyond just skating we you know we are kind of the people that are tasked with I don't want to overstate it or oversell it but you know change only happens through people that are willing to look at things differently and I think that we play an important role beyond the skating world but also in society especially as we get older and we go out and do other things this unique perspective that we all have and that we share I think helps us to provide a valuable service to the greater good in the long run so I hope that we were able to celebrate that a little bit in this video and I would like to celebrate all of you for being a part of and extending this community in this kind of this artistic ideal so thank you you