Too the few who still visit this blog I just wanted to mention that I started a new blog today. My thought with the new blog is to share daily photos and stuff with others than my Facebook friends (I keep getting vibed for uploading a lot of iPhone photos). I might not include as many political and random YouTube videos either.. maybe I can keep doing that here..?
For the next week - 10 days I'm going to follow my old boss from DC Shoes, Ken Block, around Scandinavia. He's now a very successful man behind the wheel. If you don't know what he's capable of I suggest you go to YouTube and search for his name.
View of the Central Station, Opera House and some water.
Icy walk path.
Robin Williams calls biathlons Norwegian drive by's. Norwegians are very outdoorsy people.
Meeting some Scandinavian snow shredders and Oslo locals for the past days was a huge perk, I really like Oslo (except the homeless people and crack heads / hookers who loiter around the Central Station.
Stay tuned.
Here are some videos of Ken I made for a DC movie in 2007:
I went down to Bregenz, Au and Innsbruck for a few days in November to shoot some stuff for an ongoing series I'm doing with Spatziba called Talking Headz. The idea is to get to know the talent a little bit better without putting them in a chair and do a contrived standard interview. To do that we left the tripod at home and chatted with Gigi about things that came to mind during a couple of days in his hometown of Bregenz and Au, the village he grew up in. Most professional snowboarders make a living spontaneously travelling the globe to find good locations to film and photograph their tricks. These tricks end up in dvd's which sell (or used to sell before internet torrents took over) in snowboard / outdoorsy stores and core magazine and sponsors catalogs etc. And in these videos (of which I made a handful somewhat successful ones this past decade) there is little or no room to portray the riders personality. I tried to incorporate that in past movies but it's a though sell and a lot of kids who board don't care much for it. Now since we watch a lot of videos online me and the Spatziba crew thought it would be a good idea to make little short clips of the riders that were personality and lifestyle driven. Gigi had just come out with a movie with Volcom in the fall of 2010 and Nike, who sponsor his feet, had a launch event for his boot planned and invited me to come document it and try and make something worth watching. Those three days resulted in these four episodes, hope you like them and I hope to do more of these. I wouldn't mind making a Tiger Woods series in this format. Or Jay-Z...
First Episode:
Second:
Third:
Fourth:
Here are two photos from my 360 degree camera. Yes, you can always buy another camera.
Haven't been blogging here much, duh. But that might change, I think. Anyways.., here's a clip I just did, about 2-3 more to come before x-mas.
About Talking Headz: Spatziba goes under the skin of snowboarding personalities. 90% commentary, 10% action. First man out, Gigi Rüf. Presented with the help from Nike Snowboarding.
Two weeks ago, we went down to Austria to hang out with Gigi for a few days. Me personally have always been a fan of Gigi so, when we had the opportunity to make this mini series called Talking Headz with Spatziba and dive into his archives, I jumped on it. We cruised around his hometown Au, Bregenz (where he currently lives) and made a stopover in Innsbruck where Nike had organized a soccer tournament to launch his new boot (which has soccer influences).
After indulging in some gin&juice I decided to go to Oslo straight from the bar. My friend Stian Solberg was running a 3k and the weather was supposed to be good for a while (doesn't happen often) so 4 hours after leaving the bar I was in Oslo. Here's a 5 min video I shot with a Casio FH-100, fun camera.
California, March 26, 2010 — The goal of VHS, www.videohypershred.com, is to update videos and photos every single day of the season. The clips will be short, raw, and feature pro snowboarders, ams, legends, friends, skaters, girls, drunks, industry tools and animals. The site will include all types of snowboarding; film trips, fun laps, bangers, trick tips, archival footage, interviews, behind-the-scenes, hugs, high fives and much more.
VHS will be a great way for riders and companies to get their talent and image out to the public every single day. The creative possibilities are virtually endless and VHS aims to entertain everyone, whether they be pros, weekend warriors, kids, teens, fans, haters, or single women between the ages of 20 and 40.
The internet has changed the way snowboard videos are viewed. Declining dvd sales and growing online activity are signs that the old formula of how we film and view videos needs to change. Filming 200 days a year for a 2 min video part doesn´t make as much sense as it used to.
“Times are changing and we want to change with them. I feel like snowboarding has more to offer then a two minute video part at the end of the year. I just want to show people everything that is involved with snowboarding and this is the perfect way.” says Eddie. Pierre also comments “I have been filming for a long time and I am very excited to dive into something where I can combine my Facebook updating skills and my filmmaking.”
VHS is open to work with all snowboarders and companies. The site will launch today, March 24, 2010.
About VHS Creators:
Pierre Wikberg has been professionally filming snowboarding for 13 years. He has created many noteworthy projects such as the Robot Food trilogy and the DC MTN LAB series. Pierre is considered to be one of the most respected filmmakers in the snowboarding industry. A native of Sweden, he usually spends most of his time couch surfing around the world documenting things while looking for the perfect mojito.
Eddie Wall has been a professional snowboarder for ten years. He has produced over 16 video parts, won multiple contests, and has been ranked 8th in world wide coverage over the last 5 years. He currently lives between Mammoth Lakes and San Clemente, CA or wherever his snowboard, skateboard, and guitar take him.
Here are some (a lot) of photos from the past few weeks. I´m guessing I´ve been in a car for about 2500 miles / 4000 km since I got to the US. There´s so many things to see here. Even though I´ve been coming here about 40-50 times since I was 17 I´m still impressed with this country.
I´ve been spending a fair amount of time in Southern California and Mammoth. Right now I´m in Idaho at a place where we filmed a lot for Lame and Afterlame. It´s really nice here. The town closest to us is Ketchum and it´s such a cool ski town. You have to visit to truly grasp the fresh air and positive vibes from everyone.
This week me and Eddie are launching a video blog named "Video Hyper Shred" or VHS. We were going to launch it two weeks ago but we´ve been having issues finding a person who can design it for us (Wordpress). Believe me I had no idea how hard it was to find someone who´d work for less than, well.. a lot of money, to help us out... bit now we´re almost there. Once it´s live I probably won´t update this blog very often.
