Photo by Burny Diego
Anthony Claravall has filmed a series of the most gnarly skaters out there for decades. His high level of skate filming developed from his early work with 411 in combination with his passion to connect with skaters he meets and push sick video part projects forward are all clearly in frame in his clips and throughout the library of skate footage he’s shot.
He doesn’t find himself in the right place to capture great tricks by chance, he puts a lot of work behind the scenes into making the best choices that he can.
So we had to catch up with him to find out what motivates him to keep it rolling, his work for New Balance, filming Ryuhei Kitazume’s ‘Meet You There’ part, his strong connection with the Japanese skate scene, The Chatty Chatty crew, shooting iconic clips of Tom Penny, Ben Raemers, Mark Appleyard and Bastien Salabanzi, Javier Sarmiento and Leo Bodelazzi, memorable clips and tricks that he’s shot over the years and his favourite videos, skaters, photographers, photos, styles of all-time and more.
Read his In Focus Interview below to find it all out for yourself.
Anthony at Flushing Meadows: Shot by Jacob Consenstein
Hey Anthony, it’s been a minute. I know you’ve probably been busy with New Balance stuff. How long have you been working for them and what kind of filming work do you do for them?
So I’ve been working at New Balance for the last eight years, and in my role there I’ve been doing a lot of different things. I’ve actually been Brand Manager for New Balance in Asia Pacific and then doing some team stuff and doing some marketing.
My role wasn’t filming video parts and that’s something I really wanted to get back to. I’ve been able to do a little bit of it through New Balance. I did a video called My Road, which had a part with Karl Salah from Paris, Dan Leung from China, and Pedro Biagio from Brazil.
Pedro Biagio, Backside Smith Grind, Barcelona: Shot by Anthony
So it’s the three international NB dudes. Just a project that I did with Alan Hannon, he’s a good friend of mine. I’ve known him for a long, long time. He’s over at Primitive.
I’ve been able to do some commercials for shoes and colorways and stuff. I’ve done a few with Tiago Lemos.
I did one with Flo Mirtain.
They’re cool and they’re definitely something I want to do, but a 1 minute commercial or 30 second piece isn’t really a video part, right? So for me, for my background, it’s super important. We talked about it in my previous interview, a video part is all you have, right?
For sure. When you’re talking about a pro skater’s career, you look at their video parts
When all is said and done, I think your favourite skaters have a few iconic magazine photos and video parts. That’s pretty much it. Yes, you could have won a contest, you could have done this, you could have done that, had a shoe, all those things. But the things that you can be remembered for or the things that you pull up if you talk about somebody, it’s your video part.
So as I said before, some people have never had a video part. It’s a lost art in skateboarding today.
So yeah, I’ve been really wanting to do that. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing skaters.
A while back I did a part with Leo Bodelazzi. It was called Leozinho. It was on Free Skate Mag. He’s an amazing kid. He’s flow for New Balance. He’s trying to make it on the team. He’s flow for Chocolate and so it’s a video part I thought would be the best way for him to try to make it over the hump, more than just flow or whatever.
So, he’s a specific person where I was like yeah, let’s film a video part and he went 100% into it. We managed to film a part in probably three or four months together over the course of a year and a half.
His part was dope, especially that Nollie the ledge gap at Universitat! It’s gnarly how long parts can take to make
Obviously we can’t be filming together every day. It’s more like okay, these two weeks here, these three weeks here, whatever’s possible. So in about three months he managed to film a video part with help from filmers in LA and Brazil. I think it was really well received. He really went for it, that’s the thing I’m super stoked on.
Then I have a good homie. His name is Ryuhei Kitazume. He’s a Japanese skater. I’ve known him since he was 17. He used to skate for Western Edition, which is the brand out of FTC and is super big in Japan.
Ryuhei Kitazume, Handrail Ollie: Shot by Anthony
I’m really close with FTC. I’ve known Ryuhei forever. We filmed a part years ago with him and Yoshiaki Toedai, who’s another skater from Japan, another good friend of mine. I’d been talking to Ruyhei a lot during the pandemic and he was itching to get out and film something.
I was like, yo, let’s film a part! But he couldn’t travel because of the pandemic and everything. But then once Japan opened he was able to fly to Europe. We met in Europe and we did the same thing. We filmed together for probably three or four months in total.
He managed to film a part, that was almost entirely in Barcelona and Lisbon. Then I went to Japan in November and filmed an intro with him.
I remember his “Meet You There’ part and Tightbooth Lenz III section were released very shortly after each other. How did that timing work out?
The timing was actually crazy because he had been working on a part during the pandemic for Tightbooth and it was very Japan, very Osaka, lots of night time footage.
So the idea was for that to come out and then wait some time have his new video part come out. But the way that the Tightbooth DVD was…I don’t know if you’ve seen the whole thing? It’s so dense. It’s 18 parts, it’s an hour and a half long or something. There’s so much attention to detail, the editing is insane, the filming is insane, all of the skateboarding is insane.
So they did a three disc boxset with all this crazy stuff. All of the music was scored. So that naturally went past schedule and came out later. So the way it worked out was Ryuhei had an interview in Free and so his part had to come out with the mag, right? Because, it doesn’t make sense if it doesn’t.
So he dropped his Tightbooth part with them and then three weeks later had another part come out that we had filmed together, which is something that you usually don’t really want to do, right? Because you don’t want to get two parts confused. You want to space your stuff out. But I guess on the positive side, it made people think Ryuhei is superman!
Both parts are dope so I agree with that. Were there any tricks that you filmed with Ryuhei for that part that stood out for you?
Yeah for sure. It was a bit of a challenge because I knew the Tightbooth part was happening and I knew it was VX, so I knew it was gonna look different and that it was going to be a lot of night footage and so there’s things that I can do to make the part that we were filming look different to that and stand out. The part we did was HD. It was definitely filmed very differently, by design. I was able to really watch his Lenz III part and really study it as I was editing his Free part.
That’s interesting
Yeah, Shinpei Ueno, who is the boss at Tightbooth, he’s a mastermind. He was gracious enough to show me Ryuhei’s Lenz III part when I was in Japan, as we were wrapping up filming for Ryuhei’s part. So it really helped me understand okay, how do I make it different? How do I give it a different tone and how do I tell a story?
So the story is Ryuhei’s from Japan. He’s from Shōnan, which is a surf town, an hour and a half outside of Tokyo. It’s not inner city Tokyo. It’s not gritty and grimy. It’s surf paradise and it’s like how do I show that’s where he’s from but he just wants to skate?
Ryuhei, Front Crooks, Lisbon: Shot by Anthony
So he goes from Japan where he’s skating at night and where everything’s skatestopped to going to Barcelona. It’s a super simple story, but it’s very different from his Tightbooth part which in almost every clip he’ll land something and the security guards are right there, you know what I mean?
Yeah, his Lenz III section is more hectic.
Yeah, the visuals, it’s almost like a hip hop video, right? But then I can’t deviate too much. I didn’t want to really flip up the music because Ryuhei loves hip hop and that’s his vibe. So it’s like okay, I want to use a different kind of hip hop. Do you know what I mean?
A few of the tricks that he landed, he did right as I was editing, days before the part came out. He did a ride on Back Tail on a hubba, that was kind of a straight ledge that goes into a hubba that went downhill. It’s a newer Barcelona spot. It’s definitely rugged.
He does these kinda ride on Back Tails, but not really because he Ollies into them. He’s done that trick before but he’s like fuck, what if I do it here? It was a little bit of a struggle, but he ended up doing it. He did it really dope. But it was kind of like when he landed, he had to go a certain way to ride out and he went the other way, but he still meant to ride out. So, it was super crazy, seeing him firecracking down stairs on the way out.
But by the time he did it, he’d been battling it for a while and the light had changed a lot. So it’s actually great for the trick. I wanted to film some approaches but it was really bad for that, it was really blown out for that. So Ryuhei went back and he shot a photo of it with a good friend of mine, Burney. So we filmed the clips to go with the trick and that’s something he had to do a few times where it’s like okay, you got the clip, but it’s really dark…so you have to come back with the same board, the same shoes and same gear.
Sometimes it would be a shirt that he would have thrown out because it was torn up because he battled something. But Ryuhei was amazing. He would be like okay. He’d bring his stuff and he’d get the trick. It was cool but I mean to me maybe it’s possibly even harder.
Obviously, it’s easier than doing the trick, but it’s harder for skaters because sometimes it doesn’t seem genuine or it feels acting, but it’s little pieces like that, which help to create a cool thing.
How did you choose the music for Ryuhei’s section?
I had 20 songs and I would go back and forth. It was a nightmare trying to pick a song. I tried to include Ryuhei in the process but sometimes a song you like isn’t a good song for a video part.
One of the songs that I ended up going with had a perfect drumbeat transition. It was almost perfect with him firecrackering down the stairs after the Back Tail. It’s just one of those things where it’s a little bit of a happy accident. You’re editing and hours into it you’re throwing things in and plugging things in and you’re like, oh, shit this works!
But it was cool because I actually sent that part to a bunch of homies to get their eyes on it very late in the process, when it was almost done. I had some really good feedback. I sent it to Eric Iwakura at Primitive, he’s a good homie, an amazing filmer, an amazing skater, and also Japanese, so he had a few insights. I sent it to Alan Hannon, someone who I’ve worked with for years and Kyle Camarillo who I’ve known since he was a little kid and someone I’ve worked with together a lot. He’s at New Balance now. I also sent it to James Capps, another skater, who I’m going to start working on another part with and Rodrigo TX, people like that.
Rodrigo TX, Switch Frontside Bigspin, China: Shot by Anthony
It’s funny because a lot of people were like that transition is really dope and for me, it was the transition before the ender section of the part. So it’s important to have something that really signals the threshold from one thing to another. But it’s also something where I trip because a lot of times I’ll watch video parts with no music, or the music is muted, or I’m watching it on my phone and you don’t really hear it. So it has to hit visually, right? Because you see something on Instagram and people cut it up anyway. Or a skate mag will post something with no music, just the raw sound.
So it’s almost like the music and the editing could be an afterthought because somebody could watch the part or watch the raw part, or see it on Instagram and not really see it how it’s supposed to be meant to be seen. So it’s a little bit like fuck, am I spending hours and hours on something nobody even cares about? But, again, its this kind of stuff that gets back to you. You want to do something for yourself and for the skater. You want to create a great video part.
You always seem to be filming and skating with a lot of Japanese skaters and going out there a lot. Why do you think there’s so many sick skaters coming out of Japan?
I am probably one of the people who is most familiar with the scene and been out there the most as a westerner, who’s filmed video parts with Japanese skaters and seen the scene and done that stuff and I have no idea why that is. But for me it really started with Soichiro Nakajima, he’s my guy.
He was coming to San Francisco in the late 90s, the tail end of the 90s – around ‘99. He was on Stereo. He was getting flow from a bunch of brands. He went out there to make it. He spoke zero English. He was a good friend to me and Joe Brook around 1999-2000 and I was filming with him a lot and going to his city, Shōnan, which is the same city as Ryuhei is from. So Yoshiaki Toeda, who I referenced earlier, is Soichiro’s protege and then Ryuhei is almost like Toeda’s protege. So Ryuhei is the third generation of skaters that I’ve filmed with from Shōnan.
That’s such a deep skate history for one small Japanese town
Yeah. They have a crew, called the Chatty Chatty crew. Chatty Pong is a filmer. They have their OGs. Zizow, Koichi ‘Zizow’ Kitamura – he’s an amazing skater, he’s maybe older than me, and he’s still ripping.
So it’s a whole scene. It’s super dense and they have this plaza, it’s where everyone grew up and learned to skate. They’re all amazing ledge skaters. But the plaza that they all go to, it’s all skatestopped. You can’t skate there, so it’s just crazy to me because of that.
I had a conversation with Soichiro and we were talking about skateboarding in Japan and in general and the Olympics. I was like I don’t know if Japan will be a powerhouse in skateboarding? I was like dude, I don’t see it. Japanese society kind of hates skateboarding.
So I was like, how can that translate and yet dude, years later, they have the best skaters.
Japanese people tend to have a lot of discipline, so if they get into something, they go hard into it.
If you had asked me that question 10 years ago, I would have been like no chance because your typical Japanese skater was Shin Okada, a very technical, very precise ledge skater – Soichiro was the same. If Soichiro would skate handrails, he would do crazy tech tricks on them. Fakie Heel Back Tail on a handrail, that was what he was known for. So it was like that. So as somebody who thought they knew what’s up, I did not know what was up at all!
But that’s the beauty of skateboarding? I love Japan, it’s my favourite place. But if I’m there, it’s so difficult to film that it’s a challenge. I was there with James Capps, who skates for Chocolate. We were there for almost a month in November. I was like, I want to get three clips. I went there, and, dude, we got three things. But it was so hard. It was fucking insane to get three things. We went back a couple times for this line. He did it the first day, he did it three or four times, but not perfectly. The second time we went back he did it perfectly in four tries but then the cops came!
James Capps, Frontside Noseslide: Shot by Anthony
Oh man.
Yeah it was, game over. It was insane. But we were so lucky to do that. It was the only chance really. So James wanted to do this trick, for the Lakai video.
We went to the spot five times dude. We went midday on Sunday. We went at 5am on a weekday. We went at 5am on a Sunday. We did all the combinations. We got kicked out each time, he couldn’t get it.
Then finally we went at 4am one morning, its full night, but with handheld lights and he got the clip. He did it, but he wanted to do it better and then we got kicked out.
He got it but it was literally multiple days of getting up at 4am, getting the first train over there, in full darkness, trying to get a clip and still getting kicked out. It was torturous.
The Tightbooth video, the editing is crazy but the most striking thing for me is how do they do that? Homies are grinding 20 stair rail. This dude is doing the most technical ledge trick over a set of stairs, these are tricks that take time, I’m like how are they not getting kicked out? So that’s the sense of wonder that hits me the hardest when I watch it.
Yeah. I can see why, after you’ve found it tough just to film three clips there in a few weeks
I got a crazy response from that video part I did with Ryuhei. TX said to me, this might be the best part you’ve ever filmed and edited, which is insane to think after all these years your last project is still good.
Rodrigo TX, Backside Flip, Barcelona: Shot by Anthony
Any memorable stories of filming tricks over the years you want to tell?
I filmed Bastien Salabanzi‘s Kickflip Front Board down the 16 stair that was his last trick in Sorry, the long lens angle. We actually went to that spot that day for Evan Hernandez. He wanted to Feeble Grind it. Ewan Bowman was on fish eye. Brian Ueda was photographer. Ewan was fixing the ground, he was finding a position to film. Ueda was putting his flashes together but in the end, Evan didn’t want to skate the rail. He was kinda like I’m not gonna skate it. But then Bastien’s like I’m gonna do a Kickflip Front Board.
It was crazy because that was a crazy trick at that point, that rail was insane and then also we didn’t even go there for him, as i said originally we went there for Evan.
So then Ueda’s like shit okay, I’m gonna move the flashes, I’m gonna shoot it differently. Ewan was like okay, whatever. I’m filming long lens, so I’m easy, I’m ready, I’m cool.
Bastien was tripping. He was doing Kickflips. He was super focused. Kinda almost putting out an air of, hurry the fuck up to Brian and Ewan with it, like hurry the fuck up, I’m gonna do this!
So, I’m trying to make conversation with Bastien because I see this all happening, I see him tripping, So I was like damn, dude, what’s the biggest thing you ever Kickflip Boarded?
He’s like this, right now!
You could say that if there’s a crowd of people, you say that for comic effect, you say that as a flex. But there was nobody. It was me and him just meters away from me. He didn’t say that for the crowd. He was super serious. He was focused. He’s like I’m gonna do it right now.
I knew Bastien really well. I’d seen him, filmed with him, seen him skate but at that moment, I realised he was scared as shit. He was terrified of this trick but he knew he could do it though, and he knew he had to do it. He just had focus and do it. He almost did it on the first try. He did a Kickflip Front Board, slid the whole thing to the end and jumped off. He almost did it first try. He did it in five tries or something, and every one of them was controlled. But I was tripping because, dude, he was scared. That bravado, that whole thing, it’s his armour. He’s gonna go down in history as one of the best skaters ever to come from Europe, in any arena.
What’s your favourite thing about filming skaters for video parts
A good homie passed away recently. He was riding his bike in San Francisco and was killed. So when that happens, you’re like, wow this is crazy. You start thinking about the times you spent with a dude or who that was, or what was important to him. You remember that dude loves skateboarding. Sometimes the video part is cool, but what’s really cool, what’s important is the time you spent with your homie, that whole month you’re in a place or trips you took, that’s what’s important. So the part is almost a snapshot of that, right? It’s the souvenir, the takeaway.
Definitely. Speaking of memorable footage, you filmed Tom Penny’s Switch Frontside Flip and Backside Noseblunt on the ramp with no flatbottom at the TSA warehouse. How did that go down?
I was filming for 411 and I was in California, and I was with a good friend of mine, Jeff, that I started skating with. We were with Frank Gerwer, and I might have been with Tim O’Connor. We were…I don’t know, maybe going from SF to LA or going from skate camp to LA or and we end up in Orange County for a couple days. That’s where 411 was.
I went out on a session with Chris Ortiz, who was my boss there and he was with Geoff Rowley. He had gone out with Rowley and Ed Templeton to a rail.
We went along, and I don’t even know if I was filming that or if I was just there to meet those guys, or even know if they skated the rail. Maybe we just looked at it. But we skated, and it was like, okay, we’re done.
Then Chris and Ed went home, and we ended up giving Rowley a ride back because we were going to Huntington Beach, and we were going to the TSA warehouse, there was a skate jam there. So either we drop off Rowley, or he comes with us, either way, next thing I know, we’re at the TSA Warehouse and we start skating and there’s all these people there, it was just one of those things, no premeditation. It just happened and I’m there filming.
I’m actually filming with a fisheye and zooming in because it’s really tight in there. Frank skated a little bit. Tom Penny skated a little bit but it was all these TSA dudes mainly.
Theo Hand was also there filming that footage that went into Life in The Fast Lane, the TSA video and Penny’s just skating. He’s not planning anything. He’s not like I’m gonna do this or that, film this, he’s just skating.
Then he’s trying to Switch Frontside Flip into the part of the ramp that has no flatbottom and he did one to Backside Noseblunt but he did a few. He Frontside Flips on the quarter, he would do whatever. He’s just cruising – classic Penny. So I sent that to 411, there’s stuff of that in there.
Tom Penny, Backside Noseslide: Shot by Anthony
Then when Menikmati came out, Mike Manzoori was behind the 8 ball on that one – like how do you create a part for Penny, who’s not filming at the moment? So he curated all these clips of him and that’s one of them. So it’s not just me. That footage is also with another filmer in the TSA video. So that’s something. I think that’s what’s been seen, but at a certain point in time, skateboarding was small. It wasn’t like today where you see something and a lot of people see it.
Yeah, that footage is still next level
I’d like to say that that was the first time I really filmed with Penny. But I don’t even know if I filmed ‘with him’ – I just filmed him. But then over the years I got to know him and we filmed through The Firm and Flip, which were really close and all these things with éS. I got to film with him a lot. I was actually at Penny’s Nollie over the benches at Parallel. I was there. I filmed another angle of it rolling along. I’m with Mike, TX and Javi and Penny. But much more recently, I’ve been skating with him a little bit, and he is skating so good and killing it. We’ve been having some great conversations and dude, it’s amazing. He’s better now than ever.
Tom Penny, Frontside Noseslide: Shot by Anthony
Any other British skaters you’d say where your favourites?
I think that the greatest British skaters are Danny Wainwright, Geoff Rowley and Tom Penny but I would also include Carl Shipman and Tom Knox.
Do you have a favourite Knox Atlantic Drift trick or clip?
There’s the St. Paul’s episode and then there’s his part. But yeah, those two. Obviously his part where he references a lot of the stuff that he had done or that he didn’t film the earlier one.
Yeah, it’s got the number on the cash register. He’s got the mirror. I mean that is just so insane. Some of the filming and the skating is insane. His lines and everything.
Do you have a favourite skate video of all time?
No but I have a few videos I really love. Exposure Zero is maybe the best video ever because it just encapsulates a lot of stuff that Dan Wolfe films. Whether it’s 411, for video parts or just skating. No music is amazing. Huge fan of Dan Wolfe.
Waiting For The World is an amazing video. I love Dan Magee. I love Blueprint, whether it’s Mark Baines or Colin Kennedy, those skaters that stand out to me and the way that Dan edited.
Mindfield by Greg Hunt, amazing video. Everything about it. Whether it’s Jake Johnson or Josh Kalis. Everyone in Mindfield, Arto, the music, editing, everything.
I love Virtual Reality. I love Questionable. I love Tim and Henry’s Pack of Lies. I love the Bobby DeKeyzser part that Quasi put out, filmed by Ben Chadourne. I’m a fan of skateboarding.
Yeah.
I don’t love everything. I’ll be honest, But all of those videos made me want to film those skaters, or make something of that level.
Any more favourite skate videos that come to mind?
With the LRG video, Give Me My Money Chico, I wanted to make it like Mouse, I wanted it to be Mouse 2. You know what I mean? Make some funny skits and do whatever. I wanted to make something in that vibe.
Habitat and Alien videos. Same thing. Whether it’s Timecode or more fleshed out Habitat videos. Regal Road and the Kalis part were amazing videos.
Yeah Regal Road. Tim O’Connor, Fred Gall, Danny Renaud, he was that guy. Those video parts were insane. I like east coast videos, English videos, it’s hard to say what my favourite video is.
Do you have a favourite skate photo?
Keith Hufnagel doing the Ollie on the dumpster with the sheets of plywood in the alley. Gabe Morford is one of my favourite photographers. That photo is insane. Huf was the king of New York.
Keith Hufnagel, Ollie: Shot by Gabe Morford
There’s so many. Dude, it’s more photographers. Joe Brook is somebody who I travelled with a lot. He shot some photos that I was lucky enough to be there that I saw stuff go down.
Tom Penny, Nollie, Barcelona: Shot by Joe Brook
Jake Darwen now, he’s one of the best photographers. He’ll shoot amazing stuff.
Ollie Barton. He shot this great Backside Noseblunt Rodrigo TX Transworld cover.
Pete Thompson, they are all masters of the flashes and they really knew how to do that.
That’s a whole other thing. I have hundreds of skate photos that are amazing to me. It made me want to shoot photos. I try to shoot photos for fun, and all those photos, all those things influenced me to do that. I started filming because it was easier. I can understand it. I would have loved to be a photographer, but I couldn’t figure it out. Especially in the analogue era.
What’s your favourite trick that you’ve ever filmed?
Okay, there’s a few, I would say, that Kickflip Back Nosebluntslide of Javier Sarmiento down that hubba, was an amazing one. Not to be too trite, but any trick where it’s the last trick in a video part – and maybe it’s not the last trick in the part – but it’s the last trick you film where it’s, like oh, if we get this clip, the video part is finished. It means a lot because it’s the encapsulation of that experience.
Mark Appleyard’s Nollie Flip Back 50-50 on Clipper was a crazy trick, but then he went on to try Nollie Flip Back 5-0. So then even though the Nollie Flip Back 50-50 was his last trick in Sorry – it’s an amazing trick – the fact that he tried something else and didn’t get it adds a dimension to that trick that he did get, if you know what I mean?
Bastien Kickflip Front Board that rail, I’d never seen anything like that. That was insane.
What’s one of your favourite tricks you were there to see but that you did not film?
One of my favourite tricks I didn’t film was on Kenny Hughes‘ birthday. He did a Switch Crook down the UCI rail. I was there with Frank, Chris Ortiz, Kenny and Dan Wolfe.
Yeah, that one was stylish
Dan filmed that Switch Crook and he actually told me not to film it, so I got to see it live.
I filmed Emmanuel Guzman did a Kickflip Backside Noseblun Revert in Algorta in Spain. We were on a rad trip. It was just us and we’re in the north of Spain with some really good homies. And that’s really special.
I did a couple of missions with Ben Raemers. We would do an Enjoi trip with 12 dudes for two weeks and then go off for another week, just us to try to get something.
That was really special because it was just be me and Ben and a photographer.
Ben was a special dude and an amazing skateboarder.
Do you have any favourite tricks you filmed of Ben Raemers?
Yeah. He did this Wallie in Taiwan at this university, it was fucked. We went there a couple times. We all wanted him to get it. We were like you have to get this! We went back and Ben wanted to do it, but he didn’t really care. You know what I mean? We all wanted it more than he did and if you know Ben, that’s kinda how he could be sometimes. He wasn’t really bothered. He wanted to do good. He wanted to film a part. He wanted to do the things, he was there. But sometimes we all wanted it more than him.
Even if you’re like, this is a cover or this is this, whatever – he doesn’t really care. He was an amazing dude and so that’s one of them, that Wallie.
Then like I said, we did this trip to Taiwan. We wanted to get some stuff in China that we hadn’t gotten that he came close to. So after that trip in Taiwan, everybody went home.
Ben Raemers, Melon Grab to Fakie: Shot by Anthony
Then me and Ben went to China, just the two of us, with a photographer, our good friend Kenji and he skated this red ribbon spot. He skated this crazy volcano spot. He did all these tricks that were amazing. It was just me and him and the photographer, and it was really dope because he could just be himself.
Ben Raemers, Backside Disaster: Shot by Anthony
So that, to me, is really special because of time and the place and because Ben’s not around anymore. Because as I said at the end of the day, that’s all you have. Whether you’re Keenan Milton or you’re Ben Raemers, video parts and video footage, that is all there is.
Ben Raemers, Frontside Air: Shot by Anthony
Do you have any advice for people who are filmmakers reaading this?
Follow your gut. Try to do the things that only you do. It’s easy to be like maybe I should edit with trap music or maybe I should copy this dude or this is really popular right now. I mean, obviously there’s that, but you want to stay away from that. You want to be genuine to yourself, focus on the skateboarder. There’s a lot of videographers, who want to film this thing, they want to present this thing, and they think what skater can I plug in here? It doesn’t really matter what the skater does. I just need somebody to do it. I don’t work like that. I want to try to capture the skater doing something that they want to do.
Strangely enough, funnily enough, crazily enough. I love skateboarding and I love filming still at 50, as I did at 16 and I want to be part of it and I want to document it and I want to see it. I want to capture it the best I can. I want to create a video part.
Just enjoy the process. Enjoy that filming trip with your homies. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Whether it’s on a local video level or you’re making top notch work, it’s great. It’s a lot of pressure or whatever but just try to enjoy it and take advantage of it man.
