Greensboro, NC resident Will Stroud is the man behind the lens and the editing board for the upcoming Levi’s® BMX DVD. He’s also the guy with camera in hand, standing just off to the side of both the Jamie Bestwick interview and Levi’s® in Arizona articles from Dig 67. Just after the finishing touches were being put on the video, we caught up with Will to learn more about the Levi’s® DVD, which is available free with copies of issue 67, and on sale soon…
SO HOW LONG DID YOU HAVE TO FILM FOR THE VIDEO?
Our first official filming trip was in Barcelona, starting February 1, and we wrapped filming on July 25. So we had just under seven months to film this full-length video. I was nervous that it wouldn’t be enough time, but everyone came through with some great footage and it all worked out better than I expected. I had about five weeks for editing and post-production, and my son was born right in the middle of that, so it was challenging to stay on schedule and complete the video by my deadline. But somehow it all worked out!
HOW MANY TRIPS DID YOU GO ON TOTAL TO FILM? WHERE ALL DID YOU GO?
In all, there were about 16 filming trips during our seven months of filming. Two trips to Barcelona, Spain, Beijing and Shanghai, China, Hawaii, Portland, SoCal, NorCal, Phoenix, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Greenville, Vegas, two trips to St. Louis and Woodward, PA.
WHICH TRIP WAS THE BEST?
I can’t really narrow it down to one specific best trip, but both trips to Barcelona were very productive and a great time. Everyone always says that Barcelona is so blown out, but there is so much more to ride there than most people realize. The city is so big and all of the suburbs have cool obstacles that you don’t see in many other places. I’m looking forward to going back hopefully sooner than later.
WHICH TRIP WAS THE WORST? PLEASE TELL ME NONE WERE WORSE THAN ARIZONA. . . .
The Arizona trip was pretty brutal due to the extremely miserable summer heat that we dealt with during that entire trip. That was also the only trip where we had to make a trip to the emergency room as well (Morgan smashed his face at the Chandler park on his birthday.) So I’d probably say the summer Arizona trip would probably have been my least favorite, but we still got some quality clips there.
HOW IS THE VIDEO GOING TO BE DIFFERENT FROM YOUR TYPICAL BMX VIDEO?
I’m always trying to make my current video project better than the previous ones. My goal for this video was to make a really clean video that’s fun to watch for all types of riders. I think this video has a good mix of street, park, dirt and vert, so hopefully everyone will enjoy it. From an editing standpoint, I went kind of a different route by grouping riders together. 90% of the video is mixed sections where the guys on the pro team share their parts with the flow team guys they picked. I know this isn’t the first time in history that mixed sections have been in videos, but it was a lot of fun to edit this video a little differently from the typical one rider section route.
SO HOW WILL THE VIDEO BE RELEASED? DVD? BLU-RAY? ONLINE? VHS?
The video will be a free DVD insert in this issue of Dig (issue 67). We will also be making a super limited quantity of Blu-ray DVDs that will be given out randomly. The video will also be a free Web download on http://www.levi.com/bmx as well as a show on Fuel TV in the US.
HOW MANY TOTAL PAIRS OF LEVI’S DO YOU THINK WENT INTO THE MAKING OF THE VIDEO?
Good question. Maybe like 100?
