Started with a bang. Ended with one, too.
“In the end, you think about the beginning.” - John Smith
The first video I ever edited even related to this Feld Motorsports/Pace/SFX/SRO/USHRA/ClearNation LiveChannel company was a Michael Jordan video. It was maybe 70 seconds and I asked one person to watch it and that turned into five or six. Horrifying. We stood in a room, I started sweating in weird spots, and we all watched grainy slow-motion footage of His Airness dunking on Patrick Ewing and John Starks, throwing some no-look passes…
“Cool.”
That’s it. And nobody tells you this, but when you show fellow artists your art, whether it’s a pencil sketch or a scaffolded neon light structure, if it’s not Pantheon-worthy stuff that’ll get crowds to roar or girls to cry, they’ve got better things to do than watch your lackluster video or read your ho-hum poetry. They’re busy trying to create their own excellence…hopefully.
Not too long after my MJ “double dribble” did I get assigned the task of editing a full-length video. Taking blade tool to timelines on footage nobody had seen and doing so knowing the final product definitely would be.
This video is the first I edited that went beyond the cubicles. Out into the world. People that I’d never meet were going to watch what I had assembled.
…and dammit that felt good.
And I don’t take even mildly swearing in text lightly. Nana is probably going to read this, guys.
…But she’ll get it. 20 bucks says she understands what I do and what it means to me at a level known only to fictional grandmothers in movies like Grandma’s Boy.
My Nana understands how much this stuff means to me. Both grandmothers of mine are and were named Norma and not that that matters but after I showed this to them have, both would assuredly ask me if what I’m doing makes me happy.
If it does, then go forth towards the horizon at a supersonic speed.
Grandmothers are motivating like that. Say something. Do something. Go be some thing that is palpably beneficial to the world because that’s a dream.
Supercross has afforded me the opportunity to live out quite a few of my dreams and, in turn, purvey and showcase the dreams of others. This is the last dream I was able to get out into the world. A competitor’s dream, fraught with action, dusted off from our tape vault and resurrected on technology that is our only bridge to that past.
Preserved for your pleasure in the link below, my vote for the most dramatic moment in the history Supercross and one of the last videos I put together for them.
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2011 ATLANTA - CHAD REED vs. JAMES STEWART
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Insane, right?
Sorry about sending you to a different page. Rusty with Squarespace at the moment.
I mention the word above, “preserved,” because it often isn’t but should be an accoladed talent: keeping records.
The Library of Alexandria is something I think about often. Always been aware of it, but moreso lately…
I think about all the knowledge that must have been in there that we apparently lost due to neglect and apathy and cruel measures by shortsighted halfwits. What it’d look like today if pages in those books had only gotten bronzed by time rather than burnt by fire.
World-ended-a-week-ago scenarios have been popping into my head a little more often these days. Random, right? No clue why…
To be the keeper of the books is one thing, but to be an ambidextrous librarian in a digital age is something that requires each aspect of a “video producer director of media content and edited deliverables” to be maxed out.
Cheat code levels of memory, spatial recognition, lower back strength and verbal skills in the face someone that has authority over you but has little-to-no idea what you’re doing… True Swiss Army Knife stuff.
The real job done was like most “glad I got it but I sure hate it sometimes” jobs: it’s the stuff nobody sees.
Storing and moving and labeling north of 50 years of footage. Keeping the 25-year-old tape decks in working order. Gently editing on tapes that’d probably been shipped and stored in a cold UPS garage for more times than you’d think and wait how the hell do you get footage on a tape…onto a laptop?
I put it together in the way you see above, and I can say some of my Supercross stats are solid, but I’m nowhere near All-Madden levels yet. The true guru that taught me the way was my boss, Doug Cabrera.
DC’s the guy who’s previous job I inherited and I’m proud to say I’ve had one of the best bosses in the history of jobs. Upfront but caring, logical but enthusiastic, aware of it all and, like all of us that worked with Supercross, a die hard fan. Always said it was a blessing and a curse: he knew everything about the gig because he had literally originated it, so I could learn from him and draft behind him so as not to make the errors that might have tripped him up before… but he wouldn’t let one aspect be wonky or off-putting and any excuse I could imagine would never leave my lips because I knew whatever I was doing was 5-times easier and 10-times faster than when he had to strap in to the edit bay.
So shouts to Doug, not only for building the sport and the audience we filled stadiums with but for capturing, preserving and allowing me the chance to inherit the content we all got to work with.
Doug walking into Angel Stadium for the first time as Director.
Can’t say if I’ll be back. Sure as hell wouldn’t mind it. Nothing quite like walking into a stadium full of people and filming dudes on dirt bikes flinging themselves through the air as fireballs explode above them.
Can’t say a whole lot that’s future-related with what’s going these days.
One concrete aspect I know is that, regardless of where or when the next job comes, for me, it’s get down or lay down. Vigilantly create. Gotta make something happen because even though I started at Feld with a bang and ended with one, too, I’m sure as hell not done making noise.
As this Chicago-built beacon of broadcast television always finished his shows, “Take care of yourselves…and each other.”
TH