Why we started making our own BMX freestyle videos in the 1980's

This is the BMX Plus! video, Freestyle's Raddest Tricks, the first video I bought, shortly after moving to San Jose, CA in September of 1985.  I watched this video seven times the day it showed up in the mail.  I watched it one time while balancing on my bike, Robert Peterson-style, in the living room... through the whole video.  I tried to balance on my bike a second time while watching it that day, but my butt got sore halfway through.  It seemed amazing back then, in 1985, when I never saw BMX freestyle on a TV screen.  Another funny thing about this video, the same canned music was used in several porn videos of that era.

But...
The guys are all wearing uniforms.  The guys I rode with didn't do that, except at contests.  The guys in the video are riding on the bike path around Venice Beach, we didn't do that either.  As I got more and more into riding, and then got the magazine job and went to SoCal, "real" riding seemed more and more different from what was in the handful of freestyle videos available then.  The BMX Plus! video series, the GT videos, and the few others from the 80's had some great riding, and they had their place.  But times were changing.  The hardcore punk inspired D.I.Y. attitude was rampant in BMX freestyle, which was highly entrepreneurial already.

We made our own videos because nobody was making the videos we wanted to watch.

But what people tend to forget is that it was new technology that really made our early, rider-made videos, possible.  VHS, S-VHS, 8mm video, and then Hi-8  video cameras and editing equipment came out that average people could afford.  Or at least afford to rent, steal, or borrow.  So a few of us started making our own videos.  Two posts back in this blog, I embedded a re-edit of Eddie Roman's Aggro Riding and Kung Fu Fighting, from 1986.  That was the first rider-made video I ever heard of.  Here are some of the other influential videos from the late 1980's and early 1990's.  It's not a complete list, but the ones I remember really hearing about or watching dozens of times. As usual in this blog, this is my take on things, and I have a lot more knowledge about my own videos, than those by other people.  This is my take on things, and I'd love to hear other people's perspectives on Facebook or wherever.

1986
- Aggro Riding and Kung Fu Fighting- Eddie Roman
-  Washington Square Park short videos by Carl Marquardt.  Carl was a NYC freestyler and professional video editor that made a few short freestyle videos, edited them incredibly well, and sent them to us a Wizard Publications.  No video available.
- The Gork Vid-I-eo- In the fall of 1986, during my short stint at Wizard, somebody loaned Gork an 8 mm video camera.  Gork, Lew, and I, roommates and workmates then, shot a bunch of riding and random little skits, and Gork edited it all together.  For the intro, he spent an insane amount of time typing a big letters to spell "VIDEO" on his computer.  That was crazy hard back then.  The "V" was made of dozens of little V's typed meticulously in the shape of a big "V", and he did that for every letter.  But spelling wasn't Gork's strong suit, and he accidentally spelled the title VIDIEO.  So we jokingly called it the Gork Vid-I-eo.  No video available.

1987
-The American Freestyle Asscociation contest videos, about 30 minutes each, produced by me (Steve Emig).  Oregon Pro Flatland, Oregon Pro Ramps, Texas Pro Flatland, Texas Pro Ramps, Ohio Pro Flatland, and Ohio Pro Ramps.  You can see two shots from these videos in the Joe Kid on a Stingray trailer at 2:18 (Mat Hoffman, then Kevin Jones in the next shot).  Bob Morales of the AFA, in his typical fashion at the time, had advertised some contest videos, but never got around to making them.  After I produced a 30 second TV commercial to promote the Austin contest that year on local cable TV, Bob gave me the side job of producing those six videos.  I logged the footage shot by Unreel Productions (Vision Street Wear), and Unreel's video editor extraordinaire, Dave Alvarez, edited them at Unreel, and schooled me on how videos are made.  About 20 to 40 of each video was sold.

1988
- Dorkin' in York- Mark Eaton, Plywood Hoods member from York, Pennsylvania put out the first of the series that became the biggest video influence in BMX flatland for years to come.  The riding was always off the chain, because Kevin Jones, Mark Eaton, Mike Daily, Brett Downs, and the York crew led the revolution in flatland.  The early videos were shot and edited on VHS, and the quality sucked.  But nobody cared.
-Dorkin' in York 2- November 1988- Here's a cool little clip of Brett Downs talking about riding in York, PA back then.  The flatlland progression from PA continued, and it featured some young, up and coming kid named Dave Mirra.  At this point, flatland freestyle was  losing its widespread originality, where we'd go to a contest and 30 different people would be doing totally new stuff. Flatland started becoming a Kevin Jones look-a-like contest.  I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but less technical, but original riding couldn't hold up to the crazy hard tricks coming out of York.

Alder Tricks You Can Stand- I honestly didn't know about this one.  I did know that East Coast rider Jeremy Alder invented the barspin air.  That was huge in 1988.  I saw the video of that one trick.  I thought it was some kid's home video.  But it wasn't until now (early December 2018) that Jeremy commented on Facebook that I left out their videos, that I learned that Jeremy and Joe Alder were also making full length videos in those early days.  30 years later, and the East Coast is still getting under-represented in the BMX freestyle world.  So now we all know.  They put out Alder Tricks You Can Stand 2 at a later date.  Not sure what year. 

On a personal level, that's when I started losing interest "mainstream" flatland.  Nothing against Kevin or the Plywood Hoods, but they're flatland was so insane and technical, I wasn't up to follow that trend.  I started doing weird hop and bunnyhop variations, which turned into half-Cabs, lookback half-Cabs, full Cabs, nollies, and other skateboard influenced tricks.  Meanwhile, the Plywood Hoods took over flatland and just kept pumping out insane, one wheel rolling variations. 

1989
-2-Hip: The '88 Adventure (now called  2-Hip BHIP).  Ron Wilkerson hired me to edit a video for the 1988 2-Hip King of Vert contest season, and the Meet the Street contest at Santee, California.  All the footage was shot by Pat Wallace, the Unreel Productions staff cameraman.  It was a side job, I was working at Unreel Productions at the time, and they let me borrow the S-VHS edit system to do the editing.  Ron secured rights to use music by the Bouncing Souls, but I didn't have enough music for the whole video.  So I used a phone book for a bass drum, and a metal can full of thumb tacks for a snare, and hand drummed some beats to use when I ran out of music.  Hey, whatever works and is cheap.  Here are the clips:  Part 1, Part 2 (Santee Meet the Street), Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.  Ron Wilkerson, Kevin Martin and crew shot the stuff about them moving the ramp.

-Dorkin' 3- June 1989- I know, that link isn't what you expected.  In my memory, this was the Dorkin' video that fucking blew shit up.  I'd heard of the first two, we all knew they were out there, and a lot of people had seen them.   I can't remember who, but someone dragged me to their TV and said, "you have to see this."  As far as I can remember, that was the first Dorkin' video that everyone in the freestyle watched, and the one that really put Mark Eaton on the map as a video producer.

The Plywood Hoods completely revolutionized BMX flatland freestyle with Dorkin' 3.  It is, without a doubt, one of the most influential freestyle videos ever, and the most influential in flatland.

-Aggroman.  Skyway factory pro freestyler, street riding pioneer, and aspiring movie director Eddie Roman, made what should really be seen as the first, big, rider-made BMX freestyle video.  Mark Eaton was compiling great riding together on tape.  I was producing contest videos for the AFA and 2-Hip.  But with Aggroman, Eddie Roman took the idea to an entirely new level.  He made a freakin' movie on video.  He thought it up, mentally story-boarded the acting scenes, shot all the footage, got that crazy suit made, and edited the thing.  That was EPIC in 1989.  This is the first rider-made video that everyone who rode any kind of freestyle, saw, and it immediately became part of our BMX freestyle lexicon, something we talked about and made references to on a regular basis.  Always the pioneer, Eddie Roman gave the freestyle world, still a contest and magazine-based sport then, the first taste of how powerful videos of riding could be.  Aggroman was the video that made us all go, "Wait... WE CAN MAKE OUR OWN MOVIES?"  That changed everything.

-Rubbish Heap- World Industries skateboard video, and first video by FREESTYLIN' magazine photographer, Spike Jonze.  Just adding this to put the rider-made video timeline in perspective.

January 1990-  In my own life, from December 1987 to December 1989, I worked at Unreel Productions, Vision's video company.  I was first The Dub Guy (I made copies of videos for all of Vision Skateboards/Vision Street Wear's staff), and in 1989, I became the staff cameraman, hauling a 35 pound, $50,000, pro Betacam camera around to shoot video.  I worked as a crew guy, with almost no creative input, on Sims Snowshredders, Psycho Skate, Freestylin' Fanatics, Mondo Vision, Vision Skate Escape, Red Hot Skate Rock (with the Chili Peppers), The Socko AFA Freestyle Masters TV show, Sims Snow Daze, Barge at Will,  3 or 4 more home videos, six TV shows (The Sports on the Edge Series, the first syndicated action sports TV series ever), and a whole bunch of promo videos and commercials.  T

hen, in January of 1990, Vision owner Brad Dorfman had a meeting with us at Unreel, and said we they were closing down Unreel Productions, because the huge Vision Skateboard empire was imploding.  I got moved to the main Vision building, along with a woman above me in rank.  I was cheap, reliable, and knew how to work most of the equipment, that's why I got kept.  All the producers were toast, and went on to work elsewhere, except Unreel founder Don Hoffman, he worked freelance from then on.

At Vision, every video had to have a million Vision Street Wear logos, and most of the footage was old by the time we got around to actually making the videos.  Unreel was a great place to work, but the videos really bugged me.  I was completely jonesing to make a BMX freestyle video all my by myself.  I wanted to show what riding was really like in my Southern California world.  After the big bike trade show in early 1989, it was obvious that the bike industry was pulling back on funding freestyle, and doubling down on mountain bikes as the hot new thing.  Then the 1990 recession hit, sending us into about six years of tough economic times... the ramen days of BMX freestyle and skateboarding.

On the weekends and evenings of early 1990, I started shooting video to make my own video, while still working full time at Vision until July 1990.  BMX freestyle was already in a big transition period, as the helmet and leathers, flatland and ramp days of the AFA gave way to shorts and T-shirt clad riding with street riding morphing into it's own genre.  Things were changing, and Eddie Roman, Mark Eaton, and I were shooting a lot of footage as we headed into this big transition.

Alder Tricks 2- Barspin air inventor Jeremy Alder and his brother Joe and friends were rocking it on the Eastern Seaboard and putting it out on video.  This one totally slipped under my radar, like so much of the great East Coast riding did in those days.

1990
-Ride Like a Man- The 1990 2-Hip video.  This came out in the late summer of 1990, I think.  Ron Wilkerson tapped Eddie Roman to make a video of the 1989 2-Hip contest series.  As the Unreel cameraman that year, I shot most, if not all, of the vert contest footage in this video, and Eddie shot the street contests and the whole first part of the video.  Eddie really added the humor, hardcore street riding, and fast cut editing that became his signature style in the years to come.  After the slow-paced, movie-style he used in Aggroman, Eddie was finding his voice as a freestyle producer and editor.

I was a hardcore rider, like so many others, putting 2 or 3 or more hours or more in every day.  But I was never a great rider.  So I was stoked that Eddie gave me the only riding shot I ever got in someone else's video, at 39:45 in Ride Like a Man, doing a "no comply," a footplant to 180, something I learned while hanging with skaters every weekend in Huntington Beach.  I shot a session with Eddie for my video in late summer, I think, and he was doing footplants to 360's, but had never done 180's.  So we both were doing variations on that idea at the same time.

-Dorkin' 4- September 1990-  The flatland progression in York, PA just kept on going, and Mark Eaton kept on shooting.  In addition to the original Plywood Hoods, Chase Gouin from Canada landed in York, and was added to the mix of progressive flatland riding.  Mark stepped up his game as a video guy, and put more work into the production of the video as well.  The flatland contest scene may have been fading, but the riding progression continued, thanks in a large part due to the guys in York.

-The Ultimate Weekend- My own solo production- October 1990- When I was working at BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' in late 1986, Andy Jenkins held a little meeting with Gork, Lew, and me about the idea of hitting up Wizard owner, Bob "Oz" Osborn, about making a BMX Action/FREESTYLIN' magazine video.  Oz lost a ton of money on the BMX Action video with R.L. and Ron Wilton a couple of years earlier, so videos were a real sore spot to him.  We couldn't even mention the idea of a magazine video around him.

But Andy, inspired in part by new consumer cameras and the probably the Gork Vid-I-eo, thought we might be able to make a much lower budget video that would still be really good.  Sitting on the curb of the parking lot, next to R.L. Osborn's T.O.L. ramp, we all pitched our ideas.  My idea was to have us leave work at 5 pm on a Friday, and just go ride with all kinds of amazing riders all weekend.  That was pretty close to what we actually did a lot.  I thought we could amplify it, and it would be... you guessed it... the ultimate weekend.  That idea got a bit lost as I actually made the video, but not totally.  I sessioned with and shot video of 35 riders, and pro freestyle skateboarder Pierre Andre, now best known as the founder of Etnies/Emerica/E's shoes.  But a young New Jersey transplant to Huntington Beach, then unknown Keith Treanor, stole the show.  He was always down to ride, and had an annoying habit of blasting his biggest trick as soon as we got somewhere.  It actually got to the point where I would turn the camera on in the car as we rolled up to a spot, and point it at Keith.  In addition, John Povah, Keith's main riding buddy then, featured big.  But I also managed to get well known pros Todd Anderson, Josh White, Martin Aparijo, Woody Itson, Gary Laurent, Chris Moeller, Dave Clymer, and Dave Cullinan in the video. 

I spent about $5,000 of my own money to make the video, used to throwing money away the way we did at Unreel.  I actually thought I was going to make a fair amount of money on the video.  But I was a horrible salesman then, the video market was changing, and I let surf video distributor NSI distribute the video.  We sold about 500 copies in the U.S., and I sold him the foreign rights.  Much to my surprise, I think he sold a bunch of my videos overseas.  While not a financial success, I'm glad I made the video, and it wound up being seen by the whole freestyle world, and I got a lot of firsts on video, like the first mini ramps in a BMX video, Keith Treanor with the first handrail slide down stairs, the first video footage of bikes in the Nude Bowl, the first video to feature Chris Moeller and the S&M Bikes/P.O.W. House crew, and the first tailwhip landed on a dirt double jump, among others.  There was a bunch more I wanted to do, but that's always the way it is, too many ideas, not enough time and money.  My lack of business skills kept me from self-producing another bike video until 2001, and that one REALLY sucked.  At the time that The Ultimate Weekend was released, it was the best edited, most "professional" rider-made video.  For about six months...

-The Dirt Bros. video- Vic Murphy/ Pete Augustin/San Diego crew- Foot plants, foot plants everywhere.  While the Dirt Bros. barely qualified as a company, the guys fucking ripped, particularly on street.  Vic Murphy, Brad Blanchard, Pete Augustin, Eddie Roman, and the rest of the San Diego riders were really pushing street riding at the time, making this video a huge favorite among the young, street oriented riders coming up.  Those guys are now considered the early Mid School riders.  As I recall, Keith Treanor literally wore out the Vic Murphy and Brad Blanchard sections of this video, that's how good inspiring the riding was for its day. 

 1991
From 1986 to 1990, The actual freestylers producing full length bike videos were mainly Eddie Roman, Mark Eaton, and myself, with the Dirt Bros. (which included Eddie Roman in the mix), squeaking in at the end.  The full size S-VHS cameras were being replaced by smaller Hi8 cameras, and more people were realizing that they could actually produce their own videos.  This was all happening as the bike industry had backed away from BMX and freestyle in favor of mountain bikes, and the whole country was struggling in a recession.  Eddie, Mark, and I kept making videos, but a bunch more riders from all over started producing their own videos as well.  The concept of each rider getting their own section, which seems obvious now, was becoming the standard way of doing things by then as well.  But early on, we tried a bunch of different ideas. 

Remember how I said my $5,000 video, The Ultimate Weekend, was the best produced and edited video when it came out in 1990.  Yeah, that was the case for about six months, and then Eddie Roman released Headfirst, the Mat Hoffman video.  It was released in the Spring of 1991, and instantly became the most influential BMX freestyle video EVER.  Basically, Mat Hoffman said, "OK boys, here's the next 20 years of vert riding.  And some crazy street."  With Headfirst, Mat's riding and Eddie's video work, completely revolutionized BMX freestyle.  What about flatland, well Chase Gouin showed up in the video with hyper-progressive flatland as well.

As the 80's flatland and quarterpipe contest scene faded away, contests were still showcases for big tricks, but video steadily gained ground as another way riders made a name for themselves.  I don't think that was in any of our minds then, it was just one outcome of us making the videos we actually wanted to watch.  Today, a killer video section is one of the best ways riders make a name for themselves.  Hell, Danny Macaskill made MTB trials riding cool with amazing video parts.  Who saw that coming? 

Here are the videos Eddie, Mark, and I went on to produce, as the rest of the BMX freestyle world jumped into the mix in the 1990's.

Eddie Roman
- 1991- Headfirst
-1992- Ride On
-1994- GT Bikes- Code 4130
- 1997- GT Bikes- Dead Sailor
-2000- Lord Voelker

Mark Eaton-
-1991- Dorkin' 4 1/2
-1992- Dorkin' 5
-1993- Hypnosis
-1994- Dorkin' 8: Wheelies
-1997- Balancing Act
-2001- Dorkin' 10   Kevin jones segment
-2003- Dorkin' DVD Box Set
-2005- Joe Kid on a Stingray- documentary of the history of BMX

Steve Emig (me)
-1991- S&M Bikes- Feel My Leg Muscles, I'm a Racer
-1992-1995- stage crew - American Gladiators TV show (freeze this clip at 1:15, and you can see me in the background)
-1993- S&M Bikes- 44 Something (probably the best selling BMX video of the 1990's, around 8,000 total videos sold)
-1993- stage crew- Knights and Warriors TV show  (Lady Battleaxe went on to become Coach Bieste in Glee a few years ago.  She was the 9 time women's world arm wrestling champ when I worked with her.
-1994- stage crew- Blade Warriors TV show
-2000- Animals- really, REALLY bad bike video.  I tried to get back in the game with a bunch of old contest footage and funny video of zoo animals edited together.  Didn't work.

Remember, changing technology is a big part of what made the rider-made video movement possible.  These days, just about everyone has a multi-media production facility in their pocket, called a smart phone.  The game keeps changing, and so must you if your want to be a part of it.  New technology is often a pain in the ass, but it also creates a whole bunch of opportunities.

Want to check out a list of those earl 90's BMX videos that changed the way we look at riding?  Check out BMX Movie Database, they list most of them.  

Big thanks to 23Mag and BMX Movie Database for a bunch of the research I wound up doing for this post.  Man... this post turned into way more work than I initially thought it would be.  You'd think I'd know this stuff by now. 

I'm going to be sharing most of my old school BMX stories on the new Block Bikes Blog from now on, check it out...