Making a skate video is hard. Making a good skate video is really hard. Skaters put their bodies and sanity on the line, filmers lay in the worst places imaginable, and you are battling against 30+ years of skate video history that you have to simultaneously one up and stand apart from.

All of this is to say it has never been harder to be a good skate nerd, so this year I came up with a few tactics I use to help ensure skate videos continue to feel special. I hope they can help you be a better (god forbid we use the word) fan of skateboarding.

RESPECT THE SETUP

Nobody edits a video to be seen on a phone screen and nobody edits music to be listened to on some shitty iPhone speakers. You think Greg Hunt is like, “yeah these animations are gonna look perfect on the new iPhone?”

If you are hyped to watch a video, put it on a real screen with a real sound system then turn that shit up. Hell, pop some popcorn, grab some beer and invite the friends over. Give the video the respect it deserves.

SKIP THE SOCIAL EDIT

There should be a rule barring Instagram edits of skate videos until at least a week after they drop online. There’s nothing worse than having the ender to a much-anticipated skate video spoiled by the brand or skater’s own social media channel. Ever heard of a trailer?

While we can get mad at the system all day, it is on us to police our own media consumption, so skip past any post you see of a video for as long as it takes, and when your jaw drops to the floor at an insane ender you can thank us.

PACE YOURSELF

There is no shared calendar for the skateboard industry. Some weeks nothing special drops and then suddenly everyone drops their full length in a tight window. Remember last August? We get behind all the time.

That being said, are you really taking in each trick and unique moment in a video if you speed watch four videos back to back? Probably not. Realistically, our minds can probably take about an hour of skateboarding a day, so pace yourself.

DON’T HATE WATCH

It may feel like it but there’s no rule saying that as a skateboarder you have to watch every single skate video, especially if it’s not your cup of tea. Maybe you can’t stand tight pants or hate the filming style or the boomer-ass music.

Whatever the case may be, rather than hate watching a new video, skip it. Don’t waste your time looking for every ABD, scratch on the lens or cringe trick. We know it can be fun to shit talk in the group chat or complain on the slap message boards, but someone worked hard on the project. It probably wasn’t geared towards you, so simply don’t watch it. Keep it moving.

RETURN TO YOUR FAVORITES

One of the benefits of stepping off the hamster wheel of skateboard media is you can sit with projects a little longer. In the early days of skate videos, it could be months before the next skate video would drop, so you would watch a video over and over out of pure necessity.

These days there’s a new Vans Europe video that dropped in the time it took you to watch the current Vans Europe video. In the time it takes you to give Kader’s Baker part a watch, he’s already dropped his introduction to Violet promo.

If you love a video, watch it over and over, become obsessed, notice everything, and move on only when you feel it’s the right time.

Words by: Thomas Barker
Illustrations by: Van Eggers
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