00s Greatest Hits
Tuesday 22 December 2009 | By jamie
It seems as if the internet has been providing live BMX coverage for years and that ultra fast edits of contests were around for years before that.....
As strange as it may seem, when this edit of the last Backyard Jam came out it was still taking weeks for contest footage to appear. The edits were polished but I never understood the time delay, so when fate left me with two cameras and one Tonash over a Backyard weekend it seemed only right to try something new......or at the very least, something I'd managed to completely miss.
I had a press pass thanks to the halcyon days of writing random stuff for Ride UK but Tonash didn't and nor did Pepi (rip), so we stood at the back and threw Snickers at people.....Pepi was suitably wasted thanks to a liquid lunch with Grant Smith. I decided to film the finals and was pleasantly surprised when Tonash offered to do likewise. The Jam was awesome (as they usually were) and I think between the two of us we managed to get most of the action...albeit from our lofty perches.
The night after the jam I decided to hammer out an edit when I got home from work. It was Halloween, so the music choice was pretty obvious to me. The edit was rough at the best of times and I had no idea of export settings, compression, and everything we take for granted nowadays....oh and Google video was still king, so it looked like a badgers arse (and still does). I think it was halfway through the following day (Tuesday) when the video was finally ready to view and for the grand premiere I posted a link anonymously on a forum. It might sound stupid with benefit of hindsight but I never understood the rules. Would Etnies be livid? Would Seventies be livid? Would Props be livid?
As it turned out, the edit found it's way onto Etnies website, no-one seemed too upset, and there were tens of thousands of views within a few days.......I'm sure the switch to really quick contest edits was imminent but I'm also pretty sure that's how it happened and no-one really knew or cared that it was Tonash and myself. The only people to get upset (I would imagine) are the media employees who now count 'staying up til 5am finishing edit, when everyone else is partying' among their list of duties on contest weekends.
I still like this edit; there's early Miller footage, Chase going nuts, Brian Hunt in a Man Utd shirt, Maggot, very early Jason Phelan, a mullethawk, Doyle and his fans + Danny Hickerson performing the impossible in Joe Cox's home town.