In this video, we see top BMX freestylers, Martin Aparijo, R.L. Osborn, Ron Wilkerson, Chris Lashua, Josh White, Dave Vanderspek, and others, showing us the cutting edge of flatland in the spring of 1987.
One day, while I was working as the American Freestyle Association's newsletter editor, Bob Morales came into the little room. Bob started putting on skatepark contests in 1982, and flatland and ramp contests with the AFA, in 1984. By 1987, with three or four employees, we had about 3,000 members nationwide, we put on 6 national contests, and regional BMX freestyle contests were held under the AFA name in several areas. Bob said, "Steve, you wanna make a TV commercial? I just found out I can get local cable TV spots for $25 each in Austin." I had absolutely no background in producing videos, and no idea how to make one So I said, "Uh... sure." That's how things worked at the AFA, and BMX freestyle, in those days. Come up with a cool idea, then figure out how to do it, and then make it happen somehow. Bob, at the ripe old age of 23 then, was already a veteran serial entrepreneur, and "seat of the pants" didn't even begin to describe his style of business in those days. Bob always had about 17 different projects going, and it was hard to keep up. But it was interesting, if frustrating at times.
Our AFA Masters national contests were sponsored by a handful of BMX industry companies, and Vision Street Wear was a major sponsor. That was the new clothing line put out by Vision Skateboards owner Brad Dorfman. The rise of street skateboarding synched up with the rise of hip hop, break dancing, and urban culture going mainstream, so "street" was the cool thing in fashion at the moment. Vision also had a video production company, called Unreel Productions. Unreel sent a cameraman to every AFA contest, who shot footage on a broadcast quality Sony Betacam camera. The deal was that both Vision and Unreel could use that footage any way they wanted. So Bob gave me the phone number to Unreel, and I called them up, told them I worked at the AFA, and said, "We want to make a TV commercial, what do I do?" They told me to come by the next day, and we'd get started.
The Unreel crew, mainly Dave Alvarez, a wizard of a video editor, shepherded me through the process, and Dave did the editing with the shots I picked out. Soon we had a pretty lame 30 second commercial with cool BMX action in it. The commercial played on MTV in the Austin area before that contest. People did actually see it, and Austin, as usual, was a great contest. Even in 1987, it was Austin. The weird Texas city with the great music scene was also an early hot spot of BMX freestyle.
After that, Bob talked to me again. "You know... I kind of advertised some freestyle videos in the newsletter about six months ago, and we got some orders. But I never got around to making the videos. You want to make some AFA contest videos?" Again, I answered, "Uh... sure." And that's how I become a video producer. Unreel gave me VHS window dubs of the raw footage, I logged it at home on my roommate's VCR. Then I went in, picked the shots, and Dave Alvarez edited it all together in Unreel's half million dollar, component betacam edit bay.
So at a time when a pro quality video camera cost $50,000, and a good edit bay cost $500,000, the no-budget AFA had broadcast quality videos that sold 35 copies each. That's entrepreneurship, folks. That's also how I became a video guy. This was the first of six contest videos I produced for the AFA in 1987, before the rider-made video movement got going.
After letting this blog sit for a long time, I've decided to get it going again. Welcome back!
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