Throughout 2012, Ed Hubert‘s main goal was to complete and release his second scene video on the South Coast. Following his previous production ‘LA’, his latest work ended with a new twist. Looking to add some humour to the project, Ed emailed his childhood legend and children’s TV bod Dave Benson Phillips, to Ed’s surprise he replied saying he would love to be involved. The result was another fantastic scene video from Brighton’s finest, stuffed full of skating and of course, facebook orientated. What’s not to ‘LIKE’?
Enjoy the full film here:
Ed, you have been filming for a while now on the South Coast. Could you enlighten our readers with your history of filming skateboarding?
I was born in Brighton 22 years ago and I’ve spent half of that time at a dodgy little skate park known as The Level. I started out filming my mates (as most people probably do) and luckily they were pretty good at skating, so the edits started to get a little bit noticed. I bought a VX 5’ish years ago and have never looked back. It did me well over the years until a week before the LIKE premiere when it packed in. That camera had been on its last legs for a while, held together with some blu-tac and a sponge!
Did you study film at school, college or Uni or did you learn from watching skate videos?
I was lucky enough to have a really sound teacher at college who let me do my own thing and mess about with cameras and equipment. I’m now at the Arts Uni in Bournemouth studying film production, but mostly I learnt from being out skating and filming everyday, sitting at the bottom of some stairs or crouching in dogshit in a gutter, testing out what worked and what looked wack.
The Bournemouth scene has its characters, do you mingle with such delinquents down there too?
I honestly play no part in the Bournemouth scene; the locals probably just think I’m some chav.
Patch takes the stairs for Hubert’s lens.
The Brighton scene has always been strong, which particular reprobates inspired you to get stuck into representing the locals in film?
Just anyone and everyone that’s ever passed though the Level. So many stories, characters and dodgy situations that mostly go undocumented. Obviously Slim Jim set the standard with ‘Cheese on Tape’ and ‘Brighten’ leaving everyone to play catch up since.
With The Level in transition right now, how are the locals dealing with no central point?
The Level got ripped down the other day so there’s nothing there at the moment. The hardcore locals are a bit lost without it. The good news is a brand new shiny concrete park is set to be built in the summer. It only took the council 15’ish years to sort it out! Obviously this is rad, but personally from a cinematic point of view I would always prefer to see The Level’s knackered old wooden ramps with rats scuttling around than footage of another generic concrete park like all the others in the country.
All hail the old Level. Amir Williams is shot here at home
How does ‘LIKE’ differ from ‘LA’?
‘LA’ was a bit of blur. I don’t really know how that ever got made. It was more a case of film everything and make sure everyone had a trick in it. Those were the job centre years. It was all a lot more raw and unpolished than ‘LIKE’. With ‘LIKE’ I said from the start I wanted to do something a bit different. I kept seeing these scene videos and (even company videos) that try to imitate the same style and production values as say ‘Fully Flared’ or ‘Mindfield’ but can’t, because at the end of the day it’s just Joe Bloggs skating an NCP in the freezing cold somewhere in England mid-January! Why try and glamourise that with slow motion cutaways and overly epic music? I chose the least cool theme I could think of basically. Facebook is the one thing that everyone uses, talks about all the time, and yet still seem to hate. I thought it would be funny to stick in a cheesy soundtrack worthy of any karaoke bar and get DBP (Dave Benson Phillips) involved. For me, that’s a great video!
How long did it take to put ‘LIKE’ together?
A year and a half. I was editing solidly until literally hours before the premiere, I didn’t even have a chance to test playback on the DVD. It was so sketch, thank god it worked fine or I’d have had to deal with 300 pissed up skaters tearing down England’s oldest cinema!
Who took the longest to film their part?
Everyone took ages. And technically there is only 3 full parts in it. I think I could make another full length using footage of just nearly made tricks and attempts.
Dan Emmerson nose the score.
Who had their footage wrapped up instantly?
Dave Benson Phillips. He smashed everything in one day!
What was the worst slam?
Chris’ (Push skate shops owner) ‘stunt’ at Bercy. Hands down. I’ll let Matt Ransom tell you about that one.
Watch Ollie Smith’s full section:
Who do you think managed to film the hardest trick?
There were a few tricks that we ended up going back to several days in a row for. Ollie Smith’s ender in Berlin took at least 3 days but looking back I remember it still being fun times. In reality it was probably both of us sweating out hangovers and getting sunstroke. It’s funny how ‘skate’ holidays are so much different to normal holidays.
Dan takes a tre over the infamous Brighton gap.
Who had the most NBD’s?
I’d like to say every trick is but that’s probably not the case. Especially when you go to the big European cities where you will have to do something really special in order to make it worthwhile. For this reason we avoided the architecturally amazing but rinsed out city that is Barcelona.
How many packets of fags were smoked during the making of ‘LIKE’?
None, everyone smoked rollies because we’re poor.
Ed gets down with the DBP.
MATT RANSOM
“When Ed told me to recall a funny story about filming for the ‘Like’ video it was hard to choose just one. The last day of filming was pretty funny. Ed was getting a bit stressed about the prospect of editing the majority of the video the night before the premiere, nobody was getting any of their last tricks, and then a bird shat all over his shiny new hat! That was funny, but Ed actually made it easy for me and suggested that I should tell you all the story of Chris vs. the grass bank at Bercy, so here it is:
We drove to Paris to spend a few days there and try to get some footage. Most of us wanted to film tricks on our skateboards, but Chris, being the rebel that he is, decided that footage of bum-slides down grass banks is way better, so he set out to do just that. In fact, on the first day of the trip we ended up at Bercy and Chris slid down one of the banks there (a la Flip Sorry) right onto his arse. Everybody found it hilarious and that was that – Chris’ first trick of the trip in the bag. Then as the holiday continued Chris figured that simply sliding down the bank isn’t enough, saying he ‘dragged his hands to slow down’ too much so he wanted to do it better. Plus being an ABD and all that, he wanted to be ‘that dude’ that jumped into the bank off this massive blue rail, about 15ft above, pretty much to certain death. He was claiming it so much, everyday of the trip he was saying things like “I’ve soooo got it”, so on the last day we end up back at Bercy so Chris can be a hero.
Me and Chris are at the top of the grass bank, looking at this blue rail discussing how many ways he could die by doing this. He looks at me and says that he’s just gonna slide down again, as a warm-up for the ‘drop-off-the-rail-in’, but this time he’s not gonna put his hands down. Then, seeing the worried look on my face he says “Matt, how do you feel about the way I live my life?” to which I reply “I think it’s a bit excessive. Please don’t do this mate.” Everyone else at the bottom is saying things like “this will be the best thing I’ve ever seen” and generally egging him on to do it. Then next thing I know Chris has jumped into the bank, fag in one hand, giving the finger to Danny with the other and going so fucking fast on his arse that when he hits the bottom it’s no surprise to me that he breaks his coccyx and two of the vertebrae in his spine. Great. Well done! Bearing in mind we’ve got to catch our ferry back from Calais in about 5 hours time this situation stresses everyone out a bit. Chris screaming in agony doesn’t really help much either! Then in the confusion, 2 ambulances managed to get called instead of just the one. I felt bad for him because obviously he was in a lot of pain, but equally I thought it was probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen anybody do and felt really embarrassed and annoyed that the ambulance crew have yet again been called to Bercy, where some retarded English kids have fucked themselves up being idiots abroad.
Cue an additional 2 days in Paris for me and Chris in St Antoine Hospital, me bringing him food, helping him go to the toilet, sleeping in a plastic chair next to his bed and generally listening to him moan about how much pain he is in. Chris, if you’re reading this, chill out mate. Take care of your body because it doesn’t matter how hard your dog is, if you’ve got no spine you’re fucked.”
DAN EMMERSON
SUBWAY.
DAY 1: “It was supposed to be summer but it was windy as fuck. I dragged Ed along to a ‘spot’, a subway tunnel which starts at a car park and spits you out on the seafront. It has a handrail against the wall which levels out at the top of the tunnel. We arrive at the spot and are greeted by a stench of piss and general filth. As Ed is setting up his camera, a man who looked like he had just wandered off a pirate ship walks past and chucks his guts onto the floor, right in the middle of the run up. It was fucking disgusting and looked red. We skate around it for a bit, and after a couple of crap slams I’d had enough. We went somewhere else that day.
DAY 2: For some reason (probably due to the weather again), a few days later we decide to go back. Yippee! This time on arrival we see that some one had been nice enough to leave a turd right next to the pile of red vomit, which by now had dried out but was still very visible. The run up had now become a minefield of human waste.
Local Brighton man Nick Tensh was helping us prize the rail away from the wall a little bit, when he managed to wack himself straight in the mush full pelt with an iron bar! It was so gnarly! He insisted he was fine and then spat blood all over the wall right where I was hitting the rail. All of a sudden we were surrounded by every type of bodily fluid.
After having slammed a couple more times I was starting to look like a chimney sweep. It was so shitty that it was starting to get funny until we heard some dude (who had been sleeping on a mattress by the entrance to the car park) shouting at us, slurring “NO PHO..TOS… OF ME,, NO FLASH!”, he was walking towards us trying to look hard repeating the same shit. Eventually he calms down after a few “fuck off’s” and “who are yous?”. Everything about the spot was fucked at this point so we got the fuck out of there.
I felt like I needed to burn the clothes I had on, be put through a car wash and have a tetanus jab after that ‘session’. Can’t wait to go back and make it one day!”
Level memories will live forever.
PATCH SULLIVAN
For me, getting pied in the face by Dave Benson Phillips as the video’s ender has got to be the funniest part of my participation in the making of the video. I never would have imagined that happening in my life. How many people can say they’ve taken a pie to the noggin from the legendary DBP?!
ANDY EVANS
Ed has really put in some seriously hard work on this video and should be virtual high fived for bringing together a cocktail of DBP, some amazing skating and Ollie Smith wearing more pink and shorter shorts than anyone would ever dare! It’s cutting edge!
Get your copy of ‘LIKE’ on DVD now for £6 from PUSH Skate Store, Brighton, Consortium in Bournemouth, or online at www.likevideo.yokaboo.com
Brighton in Sussex has always had some of the best history in the UK as far as youth culture goes, whether it be Mods and Rockers kicking the crap out of each other on the beaches, the vibrant music scene, gay & lesbian rallies or indeed the wonderful world of skateboarding.
How many times did you get busted filming it?