Theories of Atlantis

We got ‘em….so you should get ‘em.
Either off Joe Perrin’s site, or get it here from Theories.

But whatever you do, just GET ONE

“….he went from fresh, to hesh, to Milli Vanilli”

Florida’s independent filmmaker Joe Perrin has been cranking away at yet another video for almost 3 years and it is just now poised to premiere and hit skateshop shelves. What motivates filmmakers to sacrifice so much just to offer up a video that’ll likely just be pirated online by the masses? How are people like Joe able to produce such massive projects without a company flipping the bill?
With this video now wrapped up, will Joe finally join the real world with the rest of the 9-to-5′ers? We caught up with Joe the other day and he filled us in on his newest project which premieres in New York this Saturday at 7pm at Santos Party House in Manhattan. Let’s see what Joe had to say…….

What are the “best” skate videos of all time? Is it possible to say? I know it’s a matter of opinion but I think that we could all agree at least on a majority of what have been the most inspirational, influential and all-around best videos of our time. So lemme have it….what do YOU think are the best videos of all time, from the mid-1980’s to present?

Here’s a list of what I’d strongly argue are the best of the best:
Runners Up: (These videos pretty much have to be mentioned)
13. World Industries: “20 Shot Sequence”/”Trilogy”
12. H-Street: “Hokus Pokus”

11. Powell Peralta: “Ban This”….It’s very difficult to keep things in perspective of when they were released and what the meant to skateboarding at the time. But if you’re talking about skate videos, you seriously can’t even begin without mentioning the work of Stacey Peralta for Powell Peralta Skateboards. The series of videos he produced were the very first of their kind. Stacey Peralta basically created the modern skate video as we know it. And I think that “Ban This” probably captured the best of both worlds…production and skateboarding. Powell videos were always choc full of dumb little skits, some awful editing I liked to call “Powell magic”, and some silly over-produced dramatic vert segments. But overall, you must consider that Stacey was not only producing these incredibly ahead-of-their-time skate videos, he was also cutting and producing original music to score parts of “Ban This” as well. Pretty amazing. Check out Ray Barbee in this video, real sick. And Lance Mountain was always fun to watch back then as well.

10. Modus Operandi-Something has to be said for Ty Evan’s contribution to the world of skate-videomaking. Nobody has had such a vast-reaching influence in recent times. It’s my belief that Ty’s best work was what he created with the last few Transworld videos before he left to work for Girl. Pulling out personality, emotion and terribly well-edited segments from each skater he worked with, Ty set the standard for videos for years to come. And I think the video that best represents his talents would have to be Modus Operandi.

9.
Questionable-It’s hard for most kids this day and age to understand the impact that this video had on the skate-world. But, I can best describe it as “Fully Flared” to the 10th power. People didn’t see this video coming and when it hit shelves it rocked the foundations of skateboarding harder than any video ever has since or before. Pat Duffy’s skating was completely alien to nearly every kid around the world when they first witnessed it, and his video part was easily 10 years ahead of it’s time….and Mike Carroll’s 3-song part blew minds for ingenuity and ledge technicality. Mike Ternasky was an incredibly talented filmmaker who was a big loss to skateboarding when he died tragically in a car accident. This video got more air-play in my VCR than all videos aside from my “#1″ pick.

8. FTC Penal Code-In hind sight, some videos are impactful more because of the skating than the film-making. But then a rare film comes from out of left field a concept and feel that separates it completely from videos of it’s time. Penal Code is one of those videos. This edition of the FTC series by filmmaker Aaron Meza was not made to be an immediate sell. Set to music which lay mostly between the overplayed grooves on our parent’s old record collections from the 70’s, the video achieved one thing immediately after being released…..it offered something that’d pretty much never been done before. It challenged the viewer to dig deeper. And in doing so we were treated to the talents of possibly one of the most eclectic lineup of skaters of that time, bridging the scenes from the cities of SF to NY: Puleo, Rick Howard, Peter Bici, Jeff Pang, Jovante Turner, Scott Johnston, Hufnagel, Carroll…..I rest my case.

7. Photosynthesis-Joe Castrucci had just taken the reins from the creator of the Alien Workshop concept, Mike Hill, and I was highly doubtful that anybody could perform this task without failing miserably. But, fortunately for us all, I was dreadfully wrong. Photosynthesis hit TV screens around the skate-world in an industry that had grown stale from years of tired, old, unimaginitive videos. And it was an instant classic. Castrucci went way out on a limb by hiring producer Mr. Dibbs to cut all original music for the risky Habitat segment in the middle of the film and it turned out to be an act of brilliance. Add the Habitat segment to Jason Dill’s part w/ that obscure Radiohead song and you have a rock solid original creation that should’ve made Mike Hill and the rest of skateboarding quite proud.

6. Welcome To Hell-Rarely are popular skate videos by big teams so diverse and so well put together as Welcome To Hell was. I think that this video was the perfect mesh of an ecletic team of skaters and the unbelievable motivation and passion of a skater/filmmaker……ie: Jamie Thomas. Welcome to Hell was an important video in the progression of skate videos and skateboarding as a whole. Jamie resurrected the style of skateboarding that Pat Duffy had delivered almost 10 years before but added his own twists. And it didn’t hurt to have Maldonado’s amazing part to balance the video out on both ends as well as the well-rounded team Jamie and Ed Templeton had amassed with Donny Barley, Brian Anderson, Satva Leung and Elissa Steamer. I’d say that the importance in this video in the grand scheme of things was in Jamie’s approach to videomaking and his seriously epic video part…nobody can really hate on this video.

5. Video Days-”We are the music makers…..”. Mark Gonzales’ captures exactly how I want every day of skateboarding to feel like for me in what is hailed by most as the best skate video ever made, Blind Skateboards’ “Video Days”. This video is obviously a no-brainer. Mark Gonzales, Jason Lee, Rudy Johnson and Guy Mariano changed skateboarding with this video and Spike Jonze was there to capture it and compile in a very simple and straightforward production. The simplicity is amazing but that’s the genius here, because the skating needs nothing to fluff it up.
Mark Gonzales makes skateboarding fun in this video and that’s all we could ever ask for….oh, and an impossible 2 story double-kink boardslide, just for the shit of it. And goddamn, if you spent 15 years of your life searching through record shops for that obscure “Milk Song”, you know what I’m talking about here. This video should probably be ranked as number one, but it failed the test for me as a viewer of being a video I could watch all the way through over and over. I always fast-forwarded a part or two.

4. Mouse-all you really have to say is “Mariano”.

3. Memory Screen-It is a tough call for the top 3. If I was rating these videos from a non-skateboarding angle, Memory Screen would definitely win the 1st spot. This video is an absolute editing, art-direction and musical masterpiece. Edited on analog equipment in a time that precision editing and fast, bizarre subliminal cuts were incredibly difficult to pull off well, Memory Screen used these techniques to their advantage to create what is arguably the sickest concept for a skateboard company ever realized. Alien Workshop was the brainchild of madman Mike Hill, and this video was also his creation. I can’t tell you how inspiring this video has been to me ever since I was a little weef sitting on the couch 20 years ago. I can’t say enough good things about “Memory Screen” it is easily 100% genius.

2.
Visual Sound-Stereo skateboards hit at just the right time in skateboarding with just the right concept, team and art direction. “A Visual Sound” was, as I understand, mostly the work of Jason Lee and it captured the feel of one of skateboarding’s raddest eras better than any video of it’s time. This video, I would argue, gave birth to the concept of making style the actual theme of a skate film. It is probably the most stylistic production ever created in skateboarding and borders on the cohesiveness of a brilliant short film. Mike Daher set a new worldwide standard for pop and style with his part which was followed up by incredible parts by Ethan Fowler, Matt Rodriguez and Jason Lee. “A Visual Sound” could make any random non-skater fall in love with skateboarding.

1. Eastern Exposure III “Underachievers”-This video is rated as number 1 for a very important reason. It is the quintessential street-skaters video. Fast, simple, powerful, creative, and cohesive.
Dan Wolfe has done a lot in skateboarding, but let’s face it….Eastern Exposure 3 was where it all clicked. The east coast was thriving at this time and growing stronger, but Dan Wolfe gave it a venue, a voice and most importantly a face. As Dan travelled around the north east producing his first Eastern Exposure 1 and 2, he must have seen that fires were burning in Connecticut, DC, New York, Boston….and let’s not forget Philly. Without Ricky Oyola, this video simply wouldn’t have been complete or come close to making the impact it did. Barley, O’Connor, Jahmal and Reece killed it in this video but Ricky’s part has acted as the street-skaters anthem for a decade and a half since. If there’s ever been something that represents the way I want to see skateboarding, and the way real street-skating should be, it is Eastern Exposure III.

These lucky bastards have been travelling the world filming for Mr. Mulhern’s newest independent video due out later this year. It must be tough…living in Paris all summer, skating never-before-seen spots, creeping out beautiful foreign girls and living without a care in the world…….sons of bitches!
Chris has been busting his ass on his newest video for well over a year now and I think it’s going to be a banger. I asked him to send us a full report when he had the time and he was nice enough to share some photos and an actual edit of some extra footage from his 2008 summer adventures. Really stoked to see this once it drops.

Check out the edit and stay tuned for more info on Chris’ video.

Sweet gods of cotton and ink, the shirts are DOOOOOOOOOOONE!
Soy Panday shirts finally came back from the screen-printer and they look really really sick. They built a custom screen just for us so the print would cover a much larger area and the colors, size, printing, etc turned out just how we had hoped from the beginning.
Let the shipping……begin!

If you haven’t put your order in yet, get ON IT you slackers!….they’re runnin out!

Who would’ve ever thought that it would be Traffic Skateboards who was first to the punch to premiere their company video online for FREE?!!…not me, for sure.
But here it is and it’s as sick as you would expect….watch this thing and then buy the shit out of it when it hits the stores!

Yooooo…..brooooooo……check out the art show Puleo and I were in over the weekend.
Yeah, yeah…..I know, we’re all a little tired of skart, but the show turned out to be a lot cooler than either of us expected. Che-check it out, broskis.

Come one come all to the free world premiere of the “New Thirsty” video, showing THIS Friday, August 1st at 5pm and 6pm.

Justin White has been working on this New Jersey video for deep, so come show some love and support and get treated to some quality independent video entertainment.

Ummmm…..I just skated past this inside a massive skyscraper office building off Park Avenue in midtown Manhattan…..

….can I please get an explanation?