It’s one of the best feelings in the world to see something that truly captures what you love. In this case, it’s a skate video that perfectly shows why all of us here at Salty’s love our great state. We are blessed with some of the most amazing and passionate subcultures, all working in harmony to make Salt Lake and beyond a friendly, unique, and fun place to live. Out of all the various subcultures, skateboarding is one of the most diehard, with tons of crews and locals living and breathing the Salt Lake scene. That’s where the eloquently titled Local comes in. Even the title perfectly sums up what this video is all about in one simple, clean word. Local was filmed entirely in Utah by Sean Slobodan and features a heavy roster of some amazing local talent, so check out what Sean has to say about the project below [especially about the moon shoot], then enjoy the beauty of Utah skateboarding.
Words from Sean Slobodan:
“Inspired by the photography of my good friend Weston Colton (westoncolton.com @westoncolton), and featuring local skaters from the Salt Lake and Utah Valleys, this film was only made possible with the help of countless friends and the support of a beautiful wife. Thank you Weston Colton, Luke Jackson, Wayne Nilsson, Davis Ngarupe, Steve Aaron, Kurt Hale, Andrew Hair, Connor Prady, Zac Eskelsen, Jacob and Katie Schwarz, James Winegar, Grant Davis, Olivia Crellin, Brian Grow, Brenan Klain and everyone else who volunteered their time and advice.
The music was written and performed by my good friend Micah Andersen specifically for this project. You can check out his talents here micahdahl.com
Major thanks to the skaters who took the time to come out and believed in the project. Specifically Daniel Roman, Alex Washington, Logan Summers, Chandler Siepert, Matt Winskowski, Matt Bergmann, Levi Faust, and Tyson Bowerbank.
Cameras – Sony F55, Phantom Flex 4K
Aerial Photography – Helivate Films
A little info on the Moon shot –
We filmed in Western Utah. I used the Sony F55 and a Canon 800mm lens with a 2x converter, so effectively it turned it into a 1600mm lens. With the 2x converter the widest you can go is an F/11 so light became a bit of an issue. I found the hill we shot Daniel on just through Google Earth. Luckily it was only about an hour drive from my house so it allowed us to scout the location multiple times over the course of about a month. I had seen a similar shot here vimeo.com/56298775 and kinda took the info I could find on it to piece together what we wanted. I was shooting from a little over a mile away in massive field. Because this was just on the top of a dirt hill we had to build about a 100 foot track made out of plywood for Daniel to skate on. The main difficulties at that point were lining up the moon, the skater, and the camera, and then just finding the moon in the sky, which, when you’re focused on such a small area and there’s nothing to visually reference because it’s dark, can be very difficult. We had guys up on the hill with flashlights trying to marl edge of frame, which helped. We ultimately ended up shooting three nights in a row. This was from the third night. First night we got it pretty well, but it was dusky and not totally dark. The second night was a total bust cause I had messed with some settings and by the time I fixed it the moon was up. We ended up being wrong in our camera positioning by about 300 feet each night. So when the moon first started to peak we had to grab everything and run until it was lined up, set down the camera, find the moon again, refocus, etc. Slightly stressful 🙂 From the time the moon first touches the horizon line to when it’s already fully above it is a little under 2 minutes. Ultimately there were probably 20 people who helped make this shot possible.”
