Zaturdays: The Intelligent Design of Skate Videos
Posted
on
on Saturday, June 20, 2015
by Paul
The evolution of the skate video has been talked about to death. At first, it seemed like the classic video was going to be replaced with a pay-per-part formula when Shane O’Neill came out with that 99 cent Berrics shocker, and then P-Rod released Me, Myself and I on iTunes for $2.99 shortly after. Nobody liked where things seemed to be heading but the consensus was that “Hey, the Internet is changing everything and videos are no exception.” The only real question seemed to be how much we’d end up having to pay to watch parts in the end. When Stay Gold came out people were beyond stoked, but it was bittersweet as we all came to grips with the realization that it would probably be the last of the EPIC skate videos. It seemed true enough at the time. The reasons for not making a feature length skate video are many: They cost a ton, they take too long, tricks can go out of style by the time the video is finished being filmed, all the photos were seen three years earlier, it’s almost impossible to get all the team riders to come through with a finished part at the same time, but most importantly, the Internet killed video sales so it’s just not worth it. 
Turned out it wasn’t the last EPIC after all. There are just as many reasons to do something other than the feature length skate video. If you release individual parts over the course of weeks or months, really drag things out, you can keep that 30 minutes of footage at the forefront of the skate public’s mind for as long as possible, like Dekline did with True Blue recently. Plus, the hungry ams can get their parts out quick and get the hype going, thus buying time and serving as an opening act for the tired and injured pros on the squad who didn’t finish their parts on time. But then Pretty Sweet came out. We got Static IV (And V!). Then Cherry dropped. Plan B. Now we have Propeller. All epic. 
If Pretty Sweet only came out in separate parts, would you have ever even seen the intro? So what happened? Well maybe in this age of fleeting attention spans and a million different things pulling at our eyeballs, companies realized that they might only have one chance to make their mark. Just because we liked skater A’s part doesn’t mean we’re even going to see skater B’s part next week (or skaters C through G in the weeks after that). And if you want to make a LASTING impression, instead of a long, somewhat weak one, it might be good to drop the thing at one time. Not to mention the entire issue of TSM or Thrasher that you can command with articles, cover photos, etc. That said, I get it, despite what I’ve spelled out above, all of a sudden we have guys like Guy Mariano and Lucas Puig and Daewon Song putting out ender type tricks day in and day out on Instagram. That works too, but in the end, it’s an exceptionally rare breed that can pull that off, and if we don’t get that same caliber of skating from them in the major productions, we’re still going to be disappointed. We’re a demanding, critical bunch. 
Instagram has the potential to break entire video parts into their most basic components, ie tricks, but there’s only one guy in the world who can make it work for him like this Guy. - Paul Zitzer
Turned out it wasn’t the last EPIC after all. There are just as many reasons to do something other than the feature length skate video. If you release individual parts over the course of weeks or months, really drag things out, you can keep that 30 minutes of footage at the forefront of the skate public’s mind for as long as possible, like Dekline did with True Blue recently. Plus, the hungry ams can get their parts out quick and get the hype going, thus buying time and serving as an opening act for the tired and injured pros on the squad who didn’t finish their parts on time. But then Pretty Sweet came out. We got Static IV (And V!). Then Cherry dropped. Plan B. Now we have Propeller. All epic. If Pretty Sweet only came out in separate parts, would you have ever even seen the intro? So what happened? Well maybe in this age of fleeting attention spans and a million different things pulling at our eyeballs, companies realized that they might only have one chance to make their mark. Just because we liked skater A’s part doesn’t mean we’re even going to see skater B’s part next week (or skaters C through G in the weeks after that). And if you want to make a LASTING impression, instead of a long, somewhat weak one, it might be good to drop the thing at one time. Not to mention the entire issue of TSM or Thrasher that you can command with articles, cover photos, etc. That said, I get it, despite what I’ve spelled out above, all of a sudden we have guys like Guy Mariano and Lucas Puig and Daewon Song putting out ender type tricks day in and day out on Instagram. That works too, but in the end, it’s an exceptionally rare breed that can pull that off, and if we don’t get that same caliber of skating from them in the major productions, we’re still going to be disappointed. We’re a demanding, critical bunch. Instagram has the potential to break entire video parts into their most basic components, ie tricks, but there’s only one guy in the world who can make it work for him like this Guy. - Paul Zitzer