This video came out in late summer 1987, I think. After getting laid off from my life changing job at FREESTYLIN' magazine at the end of 1986, I got hired by Bob Morales to be the editor/photographer of the AFA newsletter. But I did all kinds of things there. One day Bob walked in and asked, "Do you want to direct a TV commercial for the Austin contest? I can get really cheap commercial spots on MTV there." That question started my video career.
The year was 1987, it was the era when the younger quarterpipe schooled BMX vert riders were begining to rival the older skatepark schooled riders in skill level. Mike Dominguez was the king of quarterpipe riding, with Eddie Fiola and Brian Blyther right up there (neither was at this contest), the old skatepark rivals. But guys like Dave Voelker, Josh White, and Todd Anderson were closing in on them. Dino Deluca, Mat Hoffman, and Joe Johnson were still amateurs then. But all of these guys were clocking in airs above 8 feet out, sometimes in the 10 to 12 foot range. This same year, Ron Wilkerson, already a major touring pro for Haro, started the 2-Hip King of Vert Halfpipe series, which led vert BMX away from quarterpipes over the next few years, and into halfpipe riding. This AFA Freestyle Masters contest took place in Portland, Oregon, in the Spring of 1987.
Back then, the new little offshoot sport of BMX freestyle was about four years old, and BMX racing was 17, barely old enough to drive. BMX freestyle started as trick riding shows in the late 1970's. Then it started as a sport in 1983, with Bob Morales promoting the first BMX skatepark contests. The first American Freestyle Association flatland and quarterpipe contest was in Venice Beach, in June of 1984. Things were growing fast, and by 1987, all three BMX magazines had spawned a freestyle magazine as well.
There were three of us in the little AFA office when I started, and a couple more, a few months later. I did a little bit of everything there. I answered phone calls, put heat transfers on T-shirts, drove the van and big trailer (Gary Turner's old 30 foot dragster trailer), and was a roadie and fill-in judge at local and national contests. I wrote, shot the photos, did the layout, and helped fold and staple all 3,000 newsletters each month. Bob always had about 17 things going at once, and he'd just say, go do this, and show me the basics, and then let me finish it, figuring anything new out as I went.
Then came the video work. Bob found out he could buy local commercial spots, on MTV in Austin, Texas, to promote that contest, for $25 each, I think. But we needed a broadcast quality, 30 second TV commercial, in about a week. He asked me to do it, and I said, "Uh... sure. How do I do that?" Typical punk rock/BMX/action sports D.I.Y. attitude of the times. He said, "Call up Unreel, they'll tell you what to do."
Unreel Productions was the video company part of Vision Skateboards and Vision Street Wear, and VSW sponsored the AFA Masters contest series. So they sent a cameraman to shoot video of each contest. The deal was that both Vision and the AFA could use that footage. So I called Unreel, and they told me to come over the next day. They handed me ten VHS tapes, explained what a window dub was (numbers for the time code in the picture), and told me to go home, and write down the numbers of all the shots I wanted to use, then call them back.
The next couple of nights, I did that, picking all the best shots, and marking where the pro contest runs started. The next day I was in Unreel's $500,000 Betacam edit bay with their editor, Dave Alvarez, who was a couple of years older than me. Dave had long, straight hair, a tie dye T-shirt, and Vision shorts. He didn't fit the picutre in my head of what a video editor should look like. But he was an incredible editing wizard, and great to work with, since I had no clue what I was doing. He walked me through editing, step by step. Sometimes, while doing the intro, he'd play a few seconds of music, and say, I need a shot that matches this sound. So I'd think of a shot, look it up in my handwritten log notes, and he'd edit it in. Within a couple of days of editing, we had a half hour show. These videos were in color, but this copy above looks like a copy of a copy, and color gets lost as they went down tape generations back then. They don't have to worry about stuff like that now, in the digital era.
I "produced and directed" six AFA videos that year, with Dave doing all the editing. Basically, that means I picked the shots used, after logging the footage, and just made sure the videos got finished, that's what a producer does. All that time I spent at Unreel led to them calling me when they needed a new guy to do basic work, later that year. I left the AFA, and started working at Unreel, in December of 1987.
One question by Bob Morales one day, asking me to do that first commercial, turned my life in a different direction, which later led to things like this, in 1990, and working as a crew guy here. starting in 1992. It's weird how tiny opportunities can change your whole life.
While the quality is sketchy from this old VHS tape, the riding is amazing for the time period, and would be solid riding in today's world. This was BMX vert at the beginning of the quarterpipe era over 35 years ago.
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