Video Days
Video Days is a skateboarding video produced and released by Blind Skateboards in 1991, directed by then-emerging filmmaker Spike Jonze.[1][2] Running approximately 24 minutes, it showcases street skating footage from key riders of the era, including Jason Lee, Mark Gonzalez, Guy Mariano, and Jordan Richter, emphasizing technical tricks in urban environments over the previously dominant vertical ramp style.[1][2] The video marked a pivotal shift in skateboarding media toward raw, narrative-infused documentation of everyday street sessions, blending high-speed action with casual interpersonal dynamics among the skaters.[3] Jonze's direction, utilizing innovative camera work and editing, elevated the production quality and storytelling, setting a template for future skate videos that prioritized authenticity and flow over polished montages.[2][3] Its release coincided with the decline of vert skating's popularity and the rise of street culture, capturing a transitional moment that propelled Blind Skateboards' roster to prominence and foreshadowed Jonze's transition to mainstream cinema.[3] Widely regarded within skateboarding communities as one of the most influential videos in the genre's history, Video Days continues to be referenced for its enduring stylistic and cultural impact.[2][3]Historical Context
Skateboarding Landscape Pre-1991
The skateboarding industry in the 1980s experienced a significant boom centered on vertical (vert) skating, driven by innovations in ramp construction and high-profile video releases from companies like Powell Peralta, which popularized aerial maneuvers in halfpipes and backyard pools.[4] This era saw rapid commercialization, with sponsorships, competitions, and product sales surging amid widespread backyard ramp building, but it also led to overproduction and market saturation by numerous manufacturers chasing trends.[4] By the late 1980s, the vert-dominated scene began to falter due to factors including frequent injuries from high-risk aerial attempts, community backlash against noise and property damage from ramps, and municipal bans on vert facilities, which eroded public tolerance and access.[4] Overcommercialization exacerbated vulnerabilities, as hype-driven expansions left companies with excess inventory and insufficient innovation in board design or riding styles to sustain growth.[4] These pressures culminated in a fragmented industry, with many brands facing financial strain even before external economic shocks. The 1990-1991 U.S. recession intensified the downturn, contracting sponsorship budgets and consumer spending on non-essential gear like skateboards and ramps, leading to widespread manufacturer losses and a contraction in professional opportunities.[4] In this context, street skating emerged as a practical alternative, relying on urban environments for low-cost improvisation—using ledges, stairs, and handrails—rather than expensive, space-intensive vert setups, fostering a perception of greater authenticity amid the backlash against vert's spectacle.[5] Early indicators included street-oriented segments in Powell Peralta's late-1980s videos, which hinted at shifting emphases toward technical urban riding over pure vert airs.[5] Blind Skateboards entered this post-boom landscape in 1989, founded by rider Mark Gonzales under World Industries distribution as a counter to established brands like Vision, emphasizing rider-initiated creativity in street contexts over manufactured hype.[6] Operating in a market wary of 1980s excesses, Blind prioritized decks and teams geared toward innovative, ground-level skating, aligning with the organic pivot toward street as a resilient, economically viable path forward.[6]Founding of Blind Skateboards
Blind Skateboards was founded in 1989 by professional skateboarder Mark Gonzales in collaboration with entrepreneur Steve Rocco, under the distribution of Rocco's World Industries.[7][6] The brand's name was selected as a deliberate jab at Gonzales' former sponsor, Vision Skateboards, reflecting an ethos of irreverence toward established industry norms.[7] This formation arose amid frustrations with the restrictive team management and growing commercialization at major companies like Powell-Peralta, which Blind and World Industries later satirized through provocative ads and graphics, such as the "Dear George" series mocking Powell's leadership.[8][9] Blind prioritized skater-driven creativity and autonomy, diverging from corporate hierarchies by fostering a looser, rider-led structure influenced by California's West Coast DIY skate culture, which emphasized grassroots innovation over polished vert ramps and freestyle contests.[10] The initial team centered on Gonzales, with Jason Lee as the first pro rider, followed by the recruitment of young talents like Guy Mariano and Rudy Johnson, who were signed away from Powell-Peralta to bolster street-oriented skating.[11] This assembly highlighted Blind's focus on transitioning from freestyle influences—exemplified by figures like Rodney Mullen in the broader World Industries ecosystem—to raw street progression, laying the groundwork for the company's inaugural full-length video project.[12]Production
Development and Pre-Production
Planning for Video Days occurred during the early 1990s U.S. economic recession and amid distractions from the Gulf War, which began in January 1991, contributing to a post-1980s skateboarding industry contraction where vert ramp access diminished due to reduced sponsorships and venue availability.[13] These factors, combined with Blind Skateboards' limited resources as a nascent street-oriented company founded in 1989, necessitated a low-budget production emphasizing improvisation over elaborate setups.[2] The creative direction prioritized street skating's inherent challenges—repetitive attempts against gravity and urban impediments like curbs and handrails—over the more controlled, ramp-based vert skating that dominated prior eras but required costly infrastructure increasingly scarce in the downturn.[2] This approach reflected a deliberate shift toward documenting authentic, unscripted progression rooted in environmental constraints rather than polished spectacle, aligning with Blind's ethos of raw innovation amid resource scarcity.[13] Blind recruited emerging photographer and filmmaker Spike Jonze, then in his early 20s and associated with skate magazine editor Andy Jenkins, to direct the video, leveraging his familiarity with the subculture for a narrative structure incorporating skater interviews and personal anecdotes to convey organic flow and motivation.[14] Jonze's involvement, utilizing inexpensive consumer camcorders, enabled a guerrilla-style pre-production that avoided permits and formal crews, focusing instead on spontaneous outings to capture emergent street techniques.[14]Filming Techniques and Locations
The production of Video Days utilized a do-it-yourself (DIY) methodology, wherein Blind Skateboards' team members participated directly in footage capture during informal street outings focused on enjoyment rather than scripted sequences.[2] This approach, directed by emerging filmmaker Spike Jonze, leveraged VHS camcorders prevalent in early 1990s skateboarding videography, yielding handheld shots characterized by unsteadied, low-resolution visuals that preserved the unvarnished dynamics of motion, crashes, and environmental interactions absent digital post-processing aids like stabilization.[2][15] Filming prioritized urban accessibility and inherent hazards, selecting spots in Southern California—primarily the streets of Los Angeles—that facilitated street skating's guerrilla ethos against formalized public infrastructure.[2] Common features included schoolyard benches, concrete ledges, and handrails, which offered low-barrier entry for repetitive progression while underscoring skating's tension with authoritative spaces like campuses and municipal areas.[16] Specific venues encompassed the double-kink rail along Santa Monica's coastline, emblematic of the era's push toward elongated, technical slides on improvised urban fixtures.[17] Additional sequences drew from Northern California locales, broadening the scope to diverse terrains within the state.[1] To foster empirical authenticity, sessions spanned sufficient duration to record skill evolution organically, incorporating camaraderie-driven interludes, environmental quirks, and incomplete maneuvers alongside successes, eschewing contrived perfection for documentary-like candor.[2] This technique mirrored the medium's constraints—limited takes due to analog tape and battery life—while amplifying street skating's iterative, risk-laden reality over aesthetic idealization.[2]Key Contributors and Direction
Spike Jonze, then known primarily within skateboarding circles as Adam Spiegel, directed Video Days as one of his earliest forays into filmmaking, predating his mainstream Hollywood projects.[1] In this role, Jonze focused on capturing raw street skateboarding through rhythmic editing that highlighted skaters' personalities and unedited sequences of attempts, successes, and failures, eschewing special effects or polished narratives in favor of authentic progression.[18] His approach emphasized the cause-and-effect dynamics of trick execution, presenting skateboarding as a direct, unvarnished process rather than stylized spectacle.[2] Mike Ternasky, founder and driving force behind Blind Skateboards, served as the primary producer, providing creative oversight to align the video with the company's rider-centric ethos, which prioritized showcasing team members' individual styles over commercial gloss.[19] Ternasky, who established Blind under World Industries in 1989, ensured the production reflected a philosophy of empowering skaters like Mark Gonzales—Blind's inaugural professional and a co-inspirational figure—by centering their unfiltered performances.[20] This direction maintained fidelity to street skateboarding's improvisational reality, avoiding contrived setups that might dilute the sport's inherent risks and innovations. While specific cinematographers are not distinctly credited beyond Jonze's hands-on involvement, early collaborators handled filming logistics to document spontaneous sessions across urban environments, prioritizing sequential footage that traced trick development from ideation to completion.[21] Editing by Jonze further reinforced this by intercutting personality-driven montages with literal cause-effect chains, such as repeated line attempts culminating in makes, which became a template for subsequent skate videos.[22] This team dynamic underscored Blind's commitment to truth in representation, distinguishing Video Days from prior videos that often favored highlight reels over comprehensive process.[23]Content Overview
Video Structure and Segments
The video opens with an introductory sequence depicting the Blind Skateboards team embarking on a road trip in a rundown Oldsmobile, which establishes the raw, communal ethos of street skating and frames the production as a collective journey rather than isolated clips.[2] This narrative device recurs as a transitional motif, linking otherwise standalone street sessions into a cohesive arc that emphasizes mobility and camaraderie among the skaters.[24] Spanning a 24-minute runtime, the content is segmented primarily into dedicated parts for each skater, sequenced to build momentum from introductory profiles of emerging riders to more polished showcases, fostering a sense of progression within the team's dynamics.[21] Group montages and interstitial clips, including encounters like street protests, punctuate these individual sections to maintain narrative flow and contextualize the skating within everyday urban escapades.[25] Throughout, elements of humor—such as exaggerated fails and lighthearted team banter—are interspersed to balance the intensity of the athletic footage, portraying the skaters as relatable figures amid their pursuits.[26] The structure culminates in Jason Lee's extended part, which integrates stylistic flair and comedic vignettes as a capstone, reinforcing the video's blend of technical skating with accessible, human-scale storytelling.[27]Featured Skaters and Performances
Video Days featured dedicated sections for five core Blind Skateboards team members, filmed during street sessions in 1990 and 1991, emphasizing adaptations like extended manuals and urban obstacle navigation over aerial emphasis prevalent in prior eras.[2][28] Mark Gonzales' part exemplified artistic flow through fluid lines on stairs and ledges, incorporating creative sequences that prioritized movement continuity and environmental interaction, set to John Coltrane's "Traneing In."[2][29] Jason Lee's sections demonstrated technical precision, including early popularization of the 360 flip and grabless vert transitions adapted to street curbs, with sequences showcasing speed and controlled power to drop-offs.[2][30] Guy Mariano, aged 14 during filming, contributed raw power via aggressive approaches to ledges and manual variations, with footage capturing repeated attempts underscoring grind difficulty on urban handrails.[2][18] Jordan Richter adapted his vert background to street challenges, performing manual balances and bank tricks in raw urban settings, as seen in his segment to Black Flag's "My War."[2][3] Rudy Johnson's performance highlighted consistent street progression, focusing on switch-stance maneuvers and obstacle-specific lines to Dinosaur Jr.'s "Just Like Heaven," reflecting the era's shift toward versatile technicality.[2][31]Notable Tricks and Innovations
Mark Gonzales' segment exemplified switch-stance proficiency, wherein skaters execute tricks with their non-dominant foot forward, necessitating recalibration of torque and weight distribution to maintain stability on ledges and stairs—fundamentally extending freestyle's emphasis on board manipulation to irregular street geometry.[32] His wallrides, involving perpendicular board contact with vertical surfaces before transitioning to slides or grinds, relied on precise impulse forces to redirect momentum, bridging controlled freestyle pivots with unpredictable urban inclines. Gonzales further adapted the darkslide—a maneuver inverting the board to slide on its trucks—to a handrail in caveman style, showcasing empirical mastery of inverted balance and frictional control under dynamic loads, predating broader street applications despite Rodney Mullen's foundational invention in flatground contexts. This required sustaining center-of-mass alignment against gravitational pull and rail curvature, highlighting causal links between torque-generated spin and post-landing equilibrium. Jason Lee's sequences advanced grind variations, including 50-50s on edges, which demand sustained axle-to-surface friction and corrective micro-adjustments to counter oscillation, serving as precursors to more complex rail maneuvers by quantifying balance under prolonged lateral forces.[27] His repeated 360 flips illustrated rotational physics through coordinated pop and flick impulses, achieving full board inversion and realignment in air, thus empirically pushing the limits of aerial torque application beyond 1980s flatland norms.[33] Collectively, the video's skaters escalated street progression by integrating tricks on multi-step stair sets and down handrails, departing from the 1980s' predominant focus on low curbs and manuals toward higher-risk drops and slides that tested impact absorption and speed-generated stability. This shift, evident in sequences like Mariano's ledge transfers and Lee's rail attempts, marked a quantifiable evolution in obstacle scale and commitment, fostering causal advancements in protective gear and technique resilience.[2]Soundtrack
Track Selection Process
The soundtrack for Video Days was curated primarily by the featured skaters, who selected tracks for their individual sections to synchronize with the tempo and stylistic nuances of their footage, prioritizing raw alignment with skateboarding's improvisational flow over polished commercial synchronization.[34] This approach underscored the video's commitment to unfiltered realism, drawing from punk, hardcore, and alternative genres that resonated with the DIY independence of the early 1990s Southern California skate scene.[35] Director Spike Jonze oversaw the process to ensure cohesion, but deferred to skaters' personal choices, as exemplified by Mark Gonzales opting for John Coltrane's "Traneing In" (from the 1957 album Blue Train) in his segment, where the track's winding, exploratory solos complemented Gonzales' abstract, balletic maneuvers like off-kilter grinds and inventive ollies.[35][36] Similarly, selections like Black Flag's "My War" (SST Records, 1984) and Hüsker Dü's "Real World" (Warner Bros., but rooted in indie punk origins) emphasized aggressive, underground energy that amplified trick rhythms without relying on contemporary radio hits.[37] Tracks were sourced from independent and alternative labels active in 1991, such as SST for fIREHOSE's contributions and Amphetamine Reptile for Helmet, reflecting limited production resources and the era's preference for accessible, non-corporate licensing within skateboarding's insular network rather than high-cost major-label clearances.[2] This method avoided mainstream pop, instead favoring material that echoed the subcultural rebellion of acts like Black Flag, thereby reinforcing the video's ethos of street-level authenticity over broad market appeal.[36]Integrated Role in Video
The soundtrack in Video Days serves a narrative function by underscoring sequences of failed attempts followed by successful tricks, thereby emphasizing the causal process of perseverance inherent in street skateboarding's trial-and-error methodology.[2] This musical layering conveys emotional highs and lows, fostering a rhythmic assembly that connects viewers to the skaters' iterative struggle and triumph, as director Spike Jonze articulated in reflections on effective skate videos incorporating music to evoke emotion and rhythm.[38][2] Unlike the bombastic, heavily synchronized editing common in earlier vertical ramp-focused videos, Video Days employs a naturalistic approach to music integration, with eclectic tracks selected spontaneously to complement footage without precise beat-matching for every maneuver, preserving the raw authenticity of the DIY street ethos.[2] This restraint avoids contrived spectacle, aligning instead with Jonze's directive to minimize distractions and prioritize unfiltered depictions of skating's creative and social dimensions.[38] The choices reflect a broader 1990s crossover between alternative rock and punk influences in skate culture, reinforcing skaters' self-identification with an expressive, anti-commercial underground identity distinct from mainstream trends.[2]Specific Tracks and Artists
The soundtrack of Video Days comprises seven tracks, each paired with specific sections or skater parts in the 1991 VHS release, drawing from funk, Motown, hardcore punk, jazz, and alternative genres to underscore the video's raw, eclectic energy.[39] These selections, unaltered in subsequent re-releases, emphasize high-energy rhythms and instrumental prowess that aligned with the era's street skating ethos of improvisation and defiance.[39]| Skater/Section | Artist | Track Title | Original Release Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theme/Intro | War | Low Rider | 1975 |
| Guy Mariano | The Jackson 5 | I Want You Back | 1969 |
| Jordan Richter | Black Flag | My War | 1983 |
| Mark Gonzales | John Coltrane with Red Garland Trio | Traneing In | 1957 |
| Rudy Johnson | Dinosaur Jr. | Just Like Heaven | 1988 (cover) |
| Jason Lee (Part 1) | Milk | The Knife Song | 1991 |
| Jason Lee (Part 2) | Hüsker Dü | Real World | 1983 |