Meet Remolitionary & Lard-ass Clive G

Have you got any favourite moments from your time spent riding with LARD?
Any of our times at Biggin Wood. Quality time in our own little local spot with quality people. The highs of finishing a new feature and riding it, the lows of coming back next time and finding it wrecked.

How about your travels to Europe, what sticks out in your mind?
Definately my last trip to courchevel, especially the day we did pretty much a whole mountain (2KM vertical drop) in one go, with just about every terrain imaginable - dirt, tarmac, rock/gravel, grass - all rolled into one big run. Bardonecchia in Italy was nice too, they seem to be more into catering to the summer riders there.

What would your dream freeride destination be like?
Cleeve Hill. In the middle of London. With a tube station top and bottom :)

The LARD forum always seems good at attracting new riders, why do you think this is?
I think a lot of it is due to my videos on YouTube. I link to LARD from all those and the URL is in the vids.



Back to filming, what was your first camera?
The first 3 LARD vids were made with a Sony Cybershot digital stills in MPEG mode. It was awful - 320x240 and only something like 5 frames a second.
My first proper camcorder was a Panasonic NV-DS65 Mini-DV that I bought specifically for mountain boarding.




I remember at one stage you were doing a lot of filming from your dirtsurfer, what gave you the idea to use it rather than a 4 wheeled board?
It's still my #1 choice for filming from for a number of reasons:
1) Bigger wheels mean you can catch up to the people you are filming on 4 wheelers.
2) A brake means you can back off said 4 wheelers should you get too close.
3) It sort of drives itself, so you don't have to think as much about riding and can concentrate more on framing the shot.



Did you damage any cameras when filming from a moving board?
Yep, I broke my Panasonic DV cam, but when I bought it I took out insurance, so I had it replaced for free. It was like a week before the insurance was up too :)



What set-up are you rocking at the moment?
Totally in love with my Samsung VP-X300L headcam. My Panny DV-Cam has not been used once since I got it.


What advantages do you think you get?
Way more versatility in a much smaller and resilient package (About the size of a packet of 20 cigarettes).

I use 4 configurations:
1) External lens worn on helmet - for filming people in front whilst riding, or just when out freeriding and you want to film something going on, it's great I can turn it on and off and start/stop recording from a button on my belt.
2) Lens on main body with no external lens - for when it is in a bag and I want to film, I can just whip the main body out and start recording. Good for parties and such too as it fits in your pocket.
/>3) External lens attached to Quikpod - to film yourself riding or get another interesting angle whilst riding. This is how I got the shot at the start of LARD 13 where I filmed myself doing freestyle.
4) External lens attached to Quikpod DSLR - the Quickpod DSLR is essentially a very long, collapsible version of the quickpod. Great for getting high / low shots, as you use the external lens you can still frame the shot from the screen on the main body. This is how I shot all of the Remolition Knockhill vid.

I found that filming was impacting my riding too much, as in if you wanted to film, you had to protect the camera or have somewhere safe to leave it, carry bags etc... Too much logistics just to capture some memories. So I just stuff this in my pocket instead inside a foam pouch.


Have you got any pearls of wisdom for anyone thinking of filming ATB?
Filming:
Be careful with zoom. Try and keep it smooth and unobtrusive. If you are using zoom to film from a distance, the shot will be seriously degraded unless you steady the camera somehow, even if it is just a mini pocket tripod.
Vary your shots as much as you can. High / low, onboard, get a wide angle lens (Raynox make a good cheap clip-on one, which is handy cos it will fit many thread sizes, and if you bash it, the clip on will break leaving your camera lens fine. It also protects the lens from dust and scrapes.). Quikpods are good, also Gorilla Pods - these can be wrapped around tree branches and the like and are flexi so wont break in your pocket.
Good or varied use of angles can make mediocre riding interesting. Bad or repetetive use of angles can make good riding boring.
When filming onboard, you need someone in frame to make it interesting. Just seeing what you see going down the run rarely works, you get no feeling of speed or adventure. Get in as close as you dare to someone in front and fill that frame with shreddage!
Editing:
Be wary of corny transitions. By this I mean 80's style barn door wipes, venetian blind wipes, that kinda shizz is a big no-no unless you are deliberately taking the mick. Rewinds are typically not cool kids. I used it once in one of my videos and I dont think I even liked that one on reflection. Cut and fade should be your bread and butter. Transparencies and layers can be very hard to get right, especially if you do not use masks.
Try not to get too fixated on showing the whole trick, as in we don't need to see all the run in and landing all the time. This is something I am trying to bash into my own brain with later movies, sometimes it can be hard.
Start off with a good editor. Sony Vegas Movie Studio would be a good first choice. Simpler programs hide too much from you and this can cause more problems than it solves. Y ou want a fully featured app that doesn't overcomplicate things but lets you learn at your own pace.
Learn about frame rates, aspect ratios, PAL/NTSC and that kind of bumf earlier if you can. It will save many headaches wondering why your output is jerky / has black borders / ghosting in slowmos and other annoying things. Less applicable in the HD era, but still useful.
Learn what interlacing is, how to enable or disable it on your camera, and how to spot you have an interlacing issue. See 100fps.com for a great guide on this. There is nothing more annoying than watching lovely footage that has been ruined by a lack of understanding of interlacing and often the fix is as simple as ticking a box before you render. Just turning it off on the camera is maybe not the best idea also - you can get double smooth slowmos from interlaced footage if you know what you are doing.


Do you have any favourite vids from the LARD series?
Ooh, tough call.
Well the Remolition one is the one I am most proud of in terms of edit and use of angles (Love the high shots from top of quarter pipe and above the ramp/rail), plus it's the best riding - but you did say LARD series...
Probably 13 (Miniket Madness) as that is the one that most captures the feeling of riding for me with all the onboard and 3rd person shots. I think in years to come when I can't ride any more that one will remind me what it felt like to shred.
10 (Biggin II) captured an awesome couple of sessions' riding over my birthday and is pretty close to my heart.
The first shot of 6 (PORC) for the freeze frame on the lard logo on gazzas arse. Always loved that shot.

Yah that shot rocks, LARD 6 i is still of my fav vids. It even made me go out buy the transplants album becuase I like the track you used so much.

Tell us about the Purple Patch project...
Some friends of mine are involved in TV, stunts etc and one of them owned Purple Patch. They saw my vids and really liked them, so a plan was hatched to film the 2004 series.
We filmed the events from multiple angles with mini-DV cams. A couple of professional ones, plus my DV cam and Jamie had one the same, it varied at different events, I think 6 was the most. These were manned by one or two professional cameramen and the rest placed or one of the other non-pros manning a camera. We ended up shooting a bucketload of tapes but quality of footage was hit and miss for various reasons, with lots of long gaps of empty track - nothing happening. The big problem though was the fact that with mini-DV, the timecode on the tape can reset (So you could have multiple 1:23s on one tape) and is not a real time, but a counter since start. So you have a gazillion tapes (Way more than you can pull all of them off onto disk to edit at one time) with repeating timecodes (So you can't do an "offline edit") and no way to tell for sure what time on what tape from camera A is what time on another tape from camera B - so in other words a complete nightmare. In all hundreds of hours of work and a fair bit of money paying for tapes / cameramen / travelling and it just didn't add up trying to go so big when the market was so small.

Apart from the Purple Patch project, have you ever been tempted to put together a DVD? is there anything you have been quietly working away on recently? (apart from the new rem site!)
I did a compilation LARD DVD with a fancy menu system a while back, but didn't bother selling it, I just gave it out. But no, I think Purple Patch reminded me that I was doing this primarily as a way to record memories, so I am not too worried about trying to put commercial content out there.
I have just editored togther the footage from Courchevel 2008 other than that as you say, I am a bit busy with the Rem site at the moment.


With the BFC and One5 now established as riding/film crews and atbjunkies documenting the uk scene, where do think mountainboard film-making is going to go?
The american scene seems to be much more freestlye orientated, which is a pity as I believe mountain boarding films have more to offer in terms of freeride than say snowboarding. Don't get me wrong, I like a picturesque mountain with a rider coming down in a plume of powder and then zooming out to see the whole mountain, or in a heli following someone along a ridge, but it's been done a gazillion times and we just don't have that kind of cash sloshing around. I think cablecam is one solution, but that is one reason I am trying out some of these innovative methods such as those used in LARD 13, to try and foster some ideas that could bring freeriding in all it's glory to the viewing public. Yeah, freestyle looks great on camera, but freeride can too, more so I think than snowboarding, as you don't have all that powder flying around and can see that interesting terrain. A good example of that was Shralpdown - those HD shots of just terrain with no riders (The roots spring to mind) had me drooling like it was a porno.


Where do you think mountainboarding is going to go?!
Moutain boarding is a good match for the UK, and we have potential to make it much more popular, but in my opinion it is going too slowly and I think I see a reason for this.

People will often not want to spring for a board to try the sport out. Not having a board, they will probably also not want to travel too far to do it unless they have been persuaded by someone that it is worthwhile. Paintballing out in the middle of nowhere is one thing, you wont need much persuading to shoot stuff. Some funky sport, that looks dangerous, all the way out there, maybe not. If the sport was more established like snowboarding, then maybe, but something you haven't heard of or haven't played on XBox, then maybe not.

I think that in order for the sport to grow we need more centres closer to towns. They do not need to cater to the advanced rider or comp scene, they need to cater to learners, kids parties, school or scout trips, stag dos, that kind of thing. Priory is proof of this. It needs to be profitable (Profit aint bad if it keeps your centre open and in repair) and see a steady stream of customers. With Priory, 90% of this business could be acheived with half the hill and none of the advanced riders. Once you reach a tipping point a sport will take off because someone is bound to know a friend that does it and will drift in if interested, but beginner centres I think are the key at this stage. Knockhill shows what can be done with not a lot of hill. With a couple of places like this around, I think the sport would grow faster.

In europe, I doubt it will take that long to grow. They have the ski infrastructure in the summer, some of the places that cater to mountain bikes are starting to cater to boards - when I was in Bardo in Italy, the bike shop there did boards and bits. I also think some of the poorer european countries will try and muscle in on the action, somewhere too warm to get much snow or maybe even somewhere that gets snow now but has problems due to climate change, that could be the kicker to the Euro scene that foot & mouth was to the UK scene.

Do you have any influences?
Err, not really. I just make it all up as I go along.


Have got a favourite mountainboard video or moment?
Unrelated to me, something from Like This. Either Dave's bonk or beiran tanking it round that corner in courchevel scrubbing speed - he makes it look easy but you go try it.

Of my filming, I think that would be Tom's axle stall to 270 off the quarter towards the end of my remo knockhill vid. I was standing on top of the quarter with this huge pole, people taking the mick about me being "fishing", but that shot made it worth it all, pure gold in my opinion.

Of me - no contest. The shot at the start of LARD 13 where I filmed myself doing a palm followed by boardsliding about 30' of the sewage pipe. It took a couple of takes but it was worth the sore ass ;)

Onto the final part of the interview, The Remolizational questions!


How many pairs of shoes do you own?
Err, about 8?

How big d'ya think a mountainboard will be before it becomes the first mountainboard bus?
Whilst shredding the gnar on my dirtsurfer, I played chicken with a double decker and won.

Have you ever been to Radnage?
I don't think so, my geography is pretty lame.

What do you do on a Thursday?
We often have a midweek poker session.

Blue or red tyres?
Blue

Beer or Cider?
Cider - I cannot stand the taste of Beer

Bruises or scabs?
Scabs

Marmite: good or bad?
GOOD

Are there any good places to eat round here?
Err, I'm here, you're somewhere else, where is here exactly?