Sundays Ep. 44 All City Showdown Chicago from peter w. on Vimeo.

Two, maybe three, months ago the Sundays crew signed up for Uprise's All City Showdown (ACSC).  Inspired from the Seattle contest of the same name.  How it works is you have a team of 3 skaters and one filmer and you get 8 hours to get clips.  At the end of the day, everyone turns in their raw footage and they make a video out of everyone's footy.  So, probably the most epic Chicago skate video was made over the span of 8 hours.  I think there were 29 teams (That might be high) in the contest this year.  Crew's came from Michigan, Ohio, Dax even flew in from Arizona for it.  Needless to say, Team Last Place (That was our team name) was in for some stiff competition.  Spoiler alert, we did not win.  We had a few clips in the final edit, which you can buy from Uprise.

So, this is my edit of our footage from that day.  I decided to forgo the GoPro and use a big boy camera for the day, I rented a Sony FS700 from the boys at Magnanimous Media and borrowed a slider from Mo.  Not going to lie, I was really pulling for Best Use of Books Found Under a Bridge or Most Dramatic Shot of Sweeping but to my dismay, neither of those are real categories.

No one on our team thought we would win but this is skateboarding, it's not about winning.  It's about the experience and getting rad...which, I think we did a pretty good job.

Thanks again Uprise. Also, big thanks to Team Last Place: Randy Korwin, Zach Martin, Bill Wiora, and Larry Dobson (Life Coach)

. . .paint more curbs.

Winter's coming and sessions are getting shorter and further apart. I'm not going to lie, I was a little bummed that the dudes wanted to skate some random Chicago suburb school with painted curbs. For some reason, I thought we'd end up somewhere epic...about ten minutes into the session, I realized this spot was epic! So yeah, we ended up skating our asses off for 2 hours, eating some lunch and then heading back to the school for another round of slappies. Somehow, we managed to film all this in about 35 minutes which is good because we're old and had nothing left in the tank.

If this ends up being my last outdoor session of the year, I'm okay with that.

. . .duck and cover.

Michigan City has one of my all time favorite spots but we haven't been out there for like eight years?  It's only an hour or so away, who knows... But yeah, it's always rad to get out there and shred.  It's kind of an eerie ghost town on Sundays, which works out fine.  We did manage to hook up with a local, Gordy Tharp, who destroyed the bank spot with some casual originality.  Gordy's trying to keep his scene alive out in Michigan City.  Here's a link to download his 'zine "The Lurker."

. . .fall down, sometimes.

It's not that often that you see the filmer (in this case, me) fall and manage to still get the shot of the skater who then slams too. I'm pretty sure if you watch this clip, it'll open up a worm hole or something like that.

. . .skate some more

Holy crap.  This is the 40th Sundays episode?  Crazy.  Tons of skating in this one.  We had a tight crew and actually fit into one car or skated from spot to spot.  Larry was our tour guide and totally came through with some random/awesome spots.  I kinda feel like everyone (but me) stepped up their game for this one.  Even crazier, we skated for 9 hours...

. . .have some fun at work.

Work's been busy this summer and we've had a chance to be a part of some pretty awesome stuff. As things slow down a little, an opportunity to create a few quick spots for rEvolution's new Social Assist program popped up. Of course, this was all done in sprint like fashion, we had two weeks to get it all done. I'm talking conception, writing, casting, prepro, shooting and post.

"Oh and that budget you mentioned, can you do it for half that price?" Which is a pretty common thing to hear now.

...alright, here we go. Now this meant I was to go at prepping this whole thing by myself (I barely know how to use excel/word so just imagine how awesome the call sheets and shot lists looked). Luckily, we had enough budget to hire a few ringers for the shoot day; Randy Korwin-one man camera dept/G/E crew, Tim Edson-Sound Wizard, Eric Gillete-PA/head popper upper, and Ebony Rogers-Hair and MU technician.

Don't Be That Guy: rEvolution's Social Assist™ powered by Tracx from rEvolution on Vimeo.

The luckiest break I had was reaching out to an old friend, Bob Ladewig, with improv contacts in Chicago. He came through with some great people from Comedy Sports Chicago. Not only were they funny, they also knew how to hit all their marks every time. I'm pretty sure we all ruined takes because we were laughing too loud.

Don't Be That Guy: rEvolution's Social Assist™ powered by Tracx from rEvolution on Vimeo.


Don't Be That Guy: rEvolution's Social Assist™ powered by Tracx from rEvolution on Vimeo.
It was an epic shoot day and everyone really pitched in.  Somehow, we wrapped early?  Who knows.  

. . .hang out in the garage today.

It was hot so we go started early this time.  Then the rains came so we got our mid '90's on and skated manny pads in a parking garage.  Of course, our warm up spot became our all day spot!  Randy channeled his inner Ronnie Creager and moves were made.  Also, we had had a guest filmer for some of this.  Jeff made his Sundays debut, thanks for the help!