New video from local skateboard filmmaker showcases skate community's growth
In a province where the locals joke about getting only two weeks of summer, many may think that skateboarding isn't worth the effort.
But, for those dedicated to the sport, the effort is what it's all about.
Jared Hawco knows a thing or two about going the extra mile. The 30-year-old has been skateboarding for 20 years, and making skateboard videos for over a decade that feature local talent in locations that spread far beyond the confines of St. John's.
He and some locals have made it their mission to foster a community of skateboarders and create growth within the sport.
"The scene seems a little bit flat, but it is slowly growing for sure. I do see new kids skating sometimes," Hawco said from inside the CLB Armoury where local skateboard company, Avalon Skateboards, hosts indoor skate sessions during the colder months in Newfoundland.
"We just actually helped design the new Kenmount Terrace community skate park. We worked with the city, and worked with landscape architects, and the skate park designers and stuff through a few different sessions that the city hosted for us."
Hawco said he notices new faces at the newly built park, many of whom have picked up a skateboard as early as this spring.
He credits the new park's proximity within the developing subdivision for peaking young interest in the sport.
A new video
Hawco is launching what he is calling his final full-length skateboard video on May. 25, complete with a full fledged video premier at Memorial University's Bruneau Centre and an after party at Peter Easton's Pub.
Greened Out is third and final part in a trilogy of videos produced by Hawco over the last 10 years called the Green Series.
The video features seven local skaters, including Hawco, who take their talents to the streets of St. John's, Montreal, Calgary and even as far away as Barcelona.
"We decided to go over there for a couple of weeks just to kind of get little extension of our own summer and get some last minute filming done for my new video," Hawco said.
"Certainly the focus of the video is to try to get the local content here, and show the Newfoundland spots and unique flavour that we've got going on here. There's a certain east coast aesthetic in skating that people kind of like. So, we've definitely got that in abundance. ...but definitely getting a trip to Barcelona is like icing on the cake."
No digital cameras
An added touch to Hawco's newest video is the fact that he shot the entire thing on film, staying away from digital video cameras to pay homage the skateboard videos that came out of the 1990s and early 2000s.
The Sony VX1000 was his instrument of choice, along with a German made Super 8 video camera to shoot the B-roll.
"It basically has a cult following in the skate industry. [The] people who make skate videos, that's the classic camera that kind of gave us the feel and the sound that skate videos are, kind of, supposed to have," he said.
"A lot of the most influential videos that were made in the '90s and 2000s — kind of when most people were growing up skating — were made on that camera. It has its own special place in skateboarding. ...If this may be my last full-legnth video there's no way I can make a bunch of skate videos and not make one on a Sony VX1000."
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