Tricks of the trade

Over ten D.I.Y. skate movies and two talented filmmakers, Winnipeg’s Green Apple video series has captured the raw, dedicated spirit of the city’s tight knit skateboard scene. What started in the early ‘90s as a way for Winnipeg skater Roan Barrion to see him and his friends on video, has evolved into so much more.

“The story of Green Apple started at the front plaza of Maples Collegiate, which was littered with a series of perfectly sized ledges and curbs, and was a naturally perfect skatespot/hangout.  The school administration was skateboarder-friendly (rare in those days), and let us skate hassle free”  Barrion explains, via email.

“Many summer days and nights were spent learning tricks and perfecting them, and much of my early footage came from this spot. The people I chose to film were primarily my friends, with new crew members being recruited along the way.  It wasn’t that important to be a great skater to be accepted into the fold, you really only had to have great character and be respectful.  Those that felt entitled to be filmed, or were not thankful for my efforts following them around under a blazing hot summer sun, usually were not rewarded with footage.”

While Barrion was responsible for the early Green Apple videos, since their collaboration on 2000’s Street Magic, which won the duo the Best Director Award at Winnipeg’s National Screen Institute’s Amateur Short Contest that year, Ryan McGuigan has been the driving force behind the video series’ aesthetic. Barrion left filmmaking to pursue other interests, while passing the proverbial torch to McGuigan, whose footage Barrion had edited to create the award winning short.

“For me, it all started when I began working at a skateboard shop called Boarders Anonymous in St James when I was 15. My Dad brought home a video camera and I started filming my friends skateboard. I was just learning it” explains McGuigan in between editing down the final version of Green Apple’s Video X, which was set to premiere the next day. “I bought a Green Apple video from this record store, it was called Blue Green (1997) and I couldn’t believe Winnipeg skateboarding was in this video. I was like ‘what the hell’? I have to make a video like this. Mike McDermott and Rod Ferens had quit SK8 to ride for Boarders, so that’s when I met Mike. I started filming him and the whole crew.”

McDermott was a few years younger than Barrion and the early Green Apple crew, but was tearing it up enough to get noticed and make it into one of the videos, Daydream. Some of the other Winnipeg skaters in Daydream were Jake Stewart, Kenny Haralson and John Erhart. “We were just a bunch of friends who wanted to get some of our stuff on video for us to watch with each other, the lack of video cameras made it kinda hard” writes Erhart over email.

Along with documenting the growing skate scene, the videos also pushed everyone involved to skate more creatively, work on new tricks and try new lines or gaps. “Back then you were hearing about all the new tricks being done for the first time (here anyway), so we would get amped to go get new shit all the time” suggests Erhart.

“I guess around 1994, we skated an abandoned Esso parking lot on Pembina by the University of Manitoba. I used to see Roan, Frank Daniello, Daniel Golub and a lot of the old Green Apple alumni skating around” says McDermott. “At the time, they were just the guys to look up to. They would make videos at the end of each year. I got good enough to be in one and they had me in my first Green Apple video called Daydream.”

From those humble beginnings, McDermott went pro in 2008 and McGuigan has created his own adrenaline infused editing style that mashes up everything from news reports to psychedelic flashes to trippy visual textures to footage of civil unrest to unabashed pop culture to cartoons to aliens, and this was only in the trailer for the new Green Apple video.

“Ryan has a unique editing style,” adds McDermott. “He would put in these slices of things that would be related to the skater. We’d call it schizophrenic style. We were marketing ourselves, but we weren’t focused on it. We were really just doing it for an inside joke for all our close friends, but it really just helped us market ourselves.”

Right from Green Apple’s early videos, the raw, gritty feel of Winnipeg’s skate scene was captured. Although influenced by Barrion’s videos, McGuigan samples visuals from a wide range of material. The 31 year old filmmaker mentions everything from horror films to UFOs to the paranormal and ghosts to foreign cinema during our conversation.

McGuigan describes his style as taking some footage, a bunch of songs and throwing it in the blender with some LSD and then flipping the switch and seeing what comes out. “The whole thing should not look the same way throughout. It should always be changing, like an experience.

“When I used to watch old skate videos, there seemed to be a formula. I remember being so bored. I wanted them to switch it up. When you watch MTV or MuchMusic, it’s changing every three seconds. It’s like ADD editing. We were in the ‘90s and 2000s, kids have a short attention span. You have to make it exciting. Before you can get bored with a clip, something else is already happening. It’s always something new. It reminds me of a Ramones interview where they said that their songs were too short for you to get bored. I can relate to that.”

Modern Love was McGuigan’s first solo film and was released in 2005 when they were living on the west coast. He would go on to film, edit and direct Supper’s Ready in 2007 and Peep Show in 2008.