Rewind: Mini Video 22 – Ben Vance Does Nashville

Rewind, Skating Videos

Mini Video 22 – Ben Vance Does Nashville (unoffical recreation) from Josh Ellis on Vimeo.

A reasonably accurate recreation of Mini Video 22 from February 22, 2001.  Nearly 20 years now.

I have the original web sized .mpg from 2001, and I found the raw footage on a Hi8 tape earlier this year.  I put the old file in the timeline and overlaid the raw footage over it.  The audio is original to the 2001 .mpg.  Making the “cool” animations was more annoying than it should’ve been.  But I persevered.

Comparison of today vs. 2001 web quality.  People used to wait 20 minutes for videos that looked like this to download, and they loved it, damnit.

Anyway, back to the past.  The crew wanted to skate.  It was too snowy and cold in Milwaukee.  I remembered a great plaza in Nashville I had skated once on the way to Florida a year or two before.  Might as well drive the ten hours.

Driving the Dodge Neon very far with no plan, to skate one spot. How did we get there? How did we find a hotel? I was there, before the Internet, and I can’t answer the question. The car blew the head gasket on the way back, and I traded it in the next day. They were none the wiser. Karma got me though, the new car was a piece of shit too.
I had no idea how to shoot a skate photo. Some would say I still don’t. Ben crooked grinds, Mike films. Pictured is the Canon GL1 I still use to this day. Used as recently as last year to make WAZPZ.
I’m not familiar enough with Nashville to say how different it looks now. Let’s say: some.

Nashville – Legislative from Josh Ellis on Vimeo.

Here’s some contemporary supplemental content of Greg, Mike, and Ben skating the plaza.