I have been skateboarding for around ten years, give or take, and it has been a way of life and mentality ever since.
Past month I got to skate almost every day and hang with my longtime friends which sadly does not happen often enough. Lots of riding and lots of beers went down while these two seem to mix very well, haha.
Now and then the times get ruff and you need to do some extra work for a little spending money. People usually do weddings for that matter but I prefer concerts. At least you get a cold beer with some good music, haha.
The coolest thing is that you also meet talented musicians that can help you with the music for your other projects. One of them were Inmate, which is a metal band of five down-to-earth guys who are coming up big time. They are a really motivated bunch who work really hard to always improve, thus I liked them from the start. The concert shooting turned out really well, so Aleš contacted me to do a proper music video with them. They did an excellent job finding a nice place in Velenje and after a lot of planning and equipment borrowing we hit the stage.
I had some ideas that worked nicely, the key grips Črt and Klemen did an amazing job and Dado took care for everything else. It was excruciating 16 hours of work but all and all it went great! Video will be out in late Autumn…
I have been documenting surfing since I started to ride the waves and my main focus was getting coverage of surfing in Istra. Surfing community in Slovenia is really small but pretty tight so eventually everybody becomes your surfmate and friend.
Andraž and Klemen at surf club Ujusansa were actually the first ones to offer me a legit job as far as filming goes. They are kind of responsible to kick start my career and I am really thankful for that.
Ujusansa organizes Slovenian nationals and surf camps and I have been doing various stuff for them for few years now. It is cool as they let me do pretty much whatever I want.
This year we want to present a short movie from Ujusansa Surf Kemp in Zarautz, Spain. It is a perfect place to learn surfing, the easygoing Basque vibe is addicting and some of the best beachbreaks in Europe, like Mundaka and Hossegor, are just an hour drive away.
I have shot 24 tapes of footage this summer… which means 24 hours of capturing time… plus 24 hours of clip checking… not to mention that we got some 7d and gopro footy also… and few tapes from last years sessions in France… it should be enough I guess, haha. Expect the premiere in June!
It was last day on last opened resort in Slovenia, Kanin Mt., so winter is officially over (if someone did not notice a month ago haha).
However it is always nice to spend some quality time in the mountains! Uroš and Agi went for the big kicker while Andraž, George and me had some fun on small corner jib… It is supposedly skate & surf season from now on, but you never know…
After all the holiday feasting and sleeping I also found some time to go hill bombing. My friend Luka Šmid and I have been riding it for fun since we started to skate almost ten years ago and we both have some nice scars to prove it, haha.
This time we went searching for some new tracks… I know it sounds funny but not every bump with asphalt works. There are all kinds of characteristics a perfect hill has to have… steepness has to be just right… as little traffic as possible.. it has to have good and wide road which is not usual for Slovenian countryside… and so on. We spotted some new stuff and got some easy rides although the weather was just not on our side for both days. Moody April weather sux!
Here are the edits from Kitzsteinhorn Ride On competiton while Qparks Tour is heading to Dachstein for the finals…
I came back from my last Qparks shooting in Kaprun. I was on Kitzsteinhorn for the last stop of Qparks Tour and Matevž Maček from Untouched and Andraž Šparovec from Jibrothers were nice enough to join me. It was actually a good decision to go, while Kitzsteinhorn got 40cm of new snow a week ago and it stayed fresh in the shadows. Guys did some hiking and we managed to shoot some banger lines right after the contest. I think the picture tells it all!
After we got to see Colby West on mega kicker (local parkdesigner Stefan Plattner stepped in for the snowboarders and he was all balls too) with more than a kilometer inrun. You do not get to see double corks on a special obstacles live everyday, haha.
My friend Cheba is an amazing rapper and a longtime friend of mine. We have been talking about doing a ghetto music video for years, mostly just messing with an ideas and postponing it until we get stuff right.
He had a good friend Maylay Sparks coming to visit and he really wanted to include him, so we just decided to film some b-side footy of the guys in the studio and chillin together. After a week of getting things together everybody “from tha hood” brought something to the table and now its a full on project.
Grega Švabič came through with his Alphanoisestudio, Aljoša Korenčan operated his Steadycam, Boardel and gipsyANDclown pinched in some clothes, Optika Monokel some shades, Simon Žnidar and Domen Bizjak helped with lenses, Luka Šmid got us some lights, Trke did the music and Cheba, Maylay and H.O.B.S took care of their business. This it how it works when all involved are doing it for the pure love of it, but for a no budget project is looking pretty great. Basically, we were just winging it and having lots of fun!
The forecast was unfortunatelly correct. In the morning it was still dry so we went to this pretty big gap to rail that Simon Chamberlain frontside boardslides in Cheers video. Because we already prepared the kicker yesterday, it was not that much work (for a change haha). As soon as I got my camera out it started to drizzle and then it went from bad to worse in matter of minutes. We filmed anyway but them my XH-A1s got a wierd malfunction. I guess the moisture in the air was really high, because I had raincover on it and it still got wet somehow. Fuchsi lend me his 7D with the fisheye so everything was back on track and we got some shots at least. The plan was to hit the triple kink, but after we were soaked to our bones so we wrapped things up for the day.
Tommorow I am leaving Finland which is too bad while it should be sunny for days from now on and its even snowing at the moment. However it was one hell of a trip. Got to film with the best crew, met some new people and heard saddest lifestory of some old finnish ski jumper. Life is funny, strange and fucked up at the same time I guess, but he had a lot of knowledge to share. The only thing I will not be missing is the horrible snoring from an Indian guy and crazy flashy gizmos from Japanese couple, haha.
We were totally burned out after yesterdays midnight shovelling, yet we still got ourselves together and went for the Helgasons rail in the morning. It was a cloudy day with some sprinkling rain and the mood was not the best at first, but after some hammers went down we all started to feel a lot better.
Rudi also wanted to do the elbow rail which turned into a fun session that felt really relaxing after 6 hours of fisheye shooting. Afterwards we went to check some spots for tommorow and fixed a broken triple kink. Allthough the weather forecast is not good, we are still hoping it will hold for our last day in Finland…