American Cinematographer - October 2010 - 12

Short Takes
For their entry in this year’s Transworld Skateboarding “Skate and Create” video competition, director Ty Evans and cinematographer Marc Ritzema fashioned a post-apocalyptic junkyard filled with ramps and obstacles and lit with practical fire effects.

A Blazing Skate Video By Iain Stasukevich

Shooting skate videos is a lot harder than it looks. For starters, it’s helpful to know how to ride a skateboard. The person with the camera often rides around after the skater, capturing difficult tricks while speeding down a steep hill or through a parking lot or playground. To frame a trick, you have to get the takeoff, the trick and the landing all in one shot. Between takeoff and landing, no editing is allowed. Patience is key. On a bad day (or night), the skater might not land a single trick. The younger ones are easily distracted and less interested in what’s good for the camera than they are in having fun. For these reasons and many others, the “go, go, go” method of shooting skate videos isn’t particularly suited to the “hurry up and wait” of Hollywood filmmaking, but that hasn’t stopped cinematographer Marc Ritzema and director Ty Evans from trying. After making his mark as a skate-video director in the mid1990s, Evans hooked up with Spike Jonze’s Girl Skateboards company. He and Jonze co-directed two well-known skate videos, Yeah Right! and Fully Flared, sandwiching clever visual effects and explosive action sequences (shot on film) between more traditionally shot scenes. Ritzema skated for Vans while studying film and communication at Biola University, but when he injured a knee ligament, his athletic career came to an end. “I had to concentrate more on my filmmaking,” he recalls. “I worked for a couple of years as a projectionist and a grip and an electrician while doing everything I could to put together a cinematography reel.”
12 October 2010

His reel gained him admission to the American Film Institute in 2002, and two years later, on a shoot for St. Vincent’s “Jesus Saves, I Spend,” he met Colin Kennedy, the staff director/videographer for skate company DVS. Kennedy invited Ritzema to join him in the 2008 Transworld Skateboarding “Skate and Create” video competition. “I was able to go back to my roots and combine my knowledge of cinematography with skateboarding to help Colin win the competition,” says Ritzema. Ritzema’s winning collaboration with Kennedy, along with their 2009 entry, caught Evans’ attention. “Marc has an eye,” Evans says. “He really knows how to design a shot.” Collaboration between a director and cinematographer is rare in skate videos, notes Ritzema. “Each company tends to use one guy, a director who shoots and edits his own stuff,” he explains. “And some professional skateboarders only allow one director/cameraman to shoot them.” “Lakairomania” (referring to sponsor Lakai), Ritzema and Evans’ entry in Transworld’s competition this year, won the top prize. The concept sounds like a scene out of The Warriors: A gang of skaters in a post-apocalyptic world finds itself in a bombed-out junkyard filled with ramps and obstacles. They throw Molotov cocktails at the ramps, lighting them on fire, and then skateboard through the flames. The budget didn’t allow for a full crew, generator and studio lights, so the filmmakers lit using flame bars, flame cubes and fireballs, in addition to six narrow-beam Par cans gelled with Full CTB to provide contrasting color and highlight parts of the set. “This was the first time I’ve used a special-effects team as my primary lighting designers,” says Ritzema. “We placed the flame bars and cubes in

American Cinematographer

Photos by Sam Muller and Mike O’Meally. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Transworld Skateboarding and the filmmakers.

American Cinematographer - October 2010

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