Getting Busted without Getting Busted

Skater: Ryan Mergl, Photographer: Hutch Gibbs

It's been a long term goal of mine to produce a full-length skateboard movie, it's proven to be no easy task. I'm used to being a one man team when it comes to my personal edits or two man teams when it comes to collaboration edits. I'm completely in uncharted territory with this one. I'm working with multiple people, multiple filmers, photographers and skaters. Today in Toronto has really put that into perspective for me....but thats a story for another day.

My trip to Toronto ties in with the general theme of this post, Getting Busted but not Actually Getting Busted.  When your the run of the mill regular joe filming in Toronto is a completely different entity and it's something I've learnt these past four years.  Despite people capturing news on their cell phones in the blink of an eye and amateur photographers swarming the city the process of actually filming in Toronto is cock blocked to a degree. We can't exactly film without going through Toronto Bureaucracy and filming offices, which we never do.

The thing with filming tricking and skateboarding it's an activity that either has the potential of damaging property when skateboarders are ignorant and tricking damages nothing but people often believe we'll sue them if we get hurt. A lot of places will sick security on us or pull one of these " do you have a permit" bits in the parks while they've walked by several people filming their kids riding bikes and so forth who you know don't have permits because they are filming on cell phones. The second you have a semi proper camera involved and anything extreme your getting busted because somebody will complain.

A long the way I have learned if you just apologize and say you didn't see any signage and pack up and head out, your not going to run in to any real trouble because most places have some sign in an obscure corner a skater isn't going to see and even more places have none and assume they we'd assume we can't be around it because it's pretty or whatever. The skaters who stay and argue the point it results in the cops coming out to play. Nobody wants to get busted while trying to make things happen as a young  person with projects that take money none of us have not to mention nobody wants to invest in. At least when we use our god given manners we can go back to a place enough times to get the footage and never be a real problem.