Ride Snowboards and Parrish Isaacs just dropped Red Ceiling, featuring Jed Anderson and Jacob Krugmire. We caught up with Parrish to talk about the now heralded train shot, being hesh, Bookclub, and more.
Interview by: Matt Norris
Photography by: Mike Heikkila
Alright, you're on the record, man.
Alright, fuck. Cancel me now.
Where did you guys start filming at?
Krugs and I filmed a couple things around New York City when it first snowed, but the first real trip after that, we just went straight to Stockholm. We went there for about two and a half weeks, just us and Freddy Perry, then we linked up with a couple different photographers and shit. It was pretty sick. I think we did the math; there were like a hundred snowboarders or more there when we were there, but we didn't run into many. It's a big-ass city. The days there are probably only an hour shorter than they are in New York at the same time of the year. The sun never comes up all the way, so you just kind of feel like it's still dark all day. So one weekend I started taking vitamin D and that helped a lot.
Is that where the train shot was? Whose idea was it to film it out of the moving train?
Yeah, it was in Stockholm, that spot is a train station so it was relatively convenient for that shot. I think it was Jed’s idea, we went back for that three times. The first time we just filmed it fisheye at night, then we went back the next day with Liam to shoot the photo and film it long lens, but we ended up running out of light. I’m not sure if we had the idea to film from inside the train before or what, but Jed did a bunch long and we had plenty of time, so we thought fuck it, lets try.
Krugs and I hopped on the train with two cameras, one on the tripod and one handheld, but no fisheye, and we went back and forth twice. We came back down and showed Jed what we got and it was cool, but kinda sucked. I was kinda whatever about it, but Jed was like “We should do it again if you think it could be sick.” I hopped back on the train with just the fisheye and that's the clip in the video, I’m stoked on how it came out. I’m super grateful my friends value filming a lot, and push me to do my best.
Did you guys time it right first try?
For the timing we just watched one go by and figured out what car it made the most sense for me to be in. I think it was something like the middle window in the second to last car. Jed timed it himself, watching the train to wallride the fence right when that exact window was passing by. I think the first one he was a little off, but the second and third tries he wallrode right past the window I was filming out of, which is pretty insane [laughs].
It felt like all the spots were super cutty. No popular or blown out spots, was that a conscious choice?
I think a spot nobody has seen before is always going to be the coolest, especially the first time you see the video, you create an immediate visual connection with it. Everyone is going to connect to different moments and clips in a video, but at least for me, I connect most with stuff when I see a cool looking spot for the first time. I was watching that Blake Lamb part a lot this winter, the 13-minute one. I feel like he's riding things that aren't even spots.
Sometimes with filming snowboarding it feels like the spots have more influence than the rider, like the spot dictates what you do. A lot of snowboarding now feels like people are always searching for these perfect clips, where the spot is like asking for just one thing, sometimes it's cool to go to a spot that isn’t really like that, its kinda a piece of shit, and you have to be a little more crafty to make something interesting happen. Side note, Krug’s last clip, that backlip, is actually a super OG spot, I think JP Walker and Kareem El Rafie hit it back in the day.
The video also seemed super hesh to me. It felt gritty, and there was a lot of personality.
I feel like we tend to gravitate towards stuff that's grittier. That’s what's going to look better, you know? Just more, like, captivating visually or whatever. I’m trying to think of how I should respond to that [laughs].
It's funny because there's this whole talk about people doing a lot of 50s and boardslides, some people don’t like it, they just wanna see a bunch of hard tricks, but that's been done a lot already. A lot of snowboards are really interested in the overall aesthetic of the clip now, how the whole thing comes together and works in an edit. The spot, the clothes, how you ride into the spot, the way it's filmed, everything. The priority isn’t to flex on people that you’re the best, it's to make something that reflects who you are, and hopefully looks a little different. To find a spot that films really well, you’re going to be narrowing down the spots you want to ride. A lot of the spots that look really cool are sketchy and shitty and scary, and it’s almost impossible to do anything other than 50 or boardslide. It’s a visual medium, I think a lot of snowboarders now think of it more like that; they’re making a movie, they wanna make you feel something. It's not a fuckin’ sponsor me tape, if you’re bitching about 50s and boardslides in street videos, go watch the fuckin’ x games. You’re not the person we’re making these for.
Do you think Jed and Krugs share that sentiment?
I think so. I mean, they trust me a lot which is really cool. Jacob and Jed are always pretty patient and understanding that it’s almost a trick for me as much as it is for them. Some of the shit Jed does, like the switch back lip on that down rail where he goes under a tree. He had to do so many times for me to film it just right. I just kept ending a little too low and cutting off the top of the tree archway.
When I say hesh, I mean the fits, too. They looked like they were extra civilian.
Yeah, I feel like most people in the streets are kind of on that nowadays, don't you think?
Yeah, but Jed's wearing jeans.
Yeah, they're vintage jean snowpants, I think [laughs].
Krugs is always hauling ass and boards with reckless abandon. Does it ever make you nervous?
Yeah, I mean Krugs is pretty insane with how he just fully commits. Like, if he gets smoked, he kind of just keeps going, and keeps trying something, usually until it gets dark or he can’t do it anymore.
Everyone has a different process. Some people like to really feel stuff out, but Krugs is just like, I'm going to fully commit to this thing and if something goes wrong, I'm going to make it to the bottom.
Is that stressful?
Dude, honestly, not really. I feel like filming with Jed and Krugs, they'll get smoked, but they're really dialed. Like, they're really, really good at falling. I do get scared, of course, at gnarly spots. But honestly, with them, I feel pretty comfortable.
Krugs’ second to last clip, the board slide, was pretty scary. Like, there was no fucking snow. That was probably the scariest one of the year, I would say.
What was up with that clip?
That's in Long Island City. Krugs has wanted to hit for a really long time. We traveled around most of the winter, then we came back home to New York there was still a little bit of snow, but not much. It was like 55 degrees outside. There was absolutely no snow at that spot except the snow pile underneath the stairs. We just transported all of it to the landing. It took forever. I went down the road and bought pallets from some food distribution place and loaded them up in my car and brought them back for the drop-in.
Ben Colen pulled up to shoot it. That was the first snowboard spot he'd ever shot at, which was a pretty crazy one. I'm glad we made that one happen. Ezra (Racine) pulled up too and helped out, which was sick.
"I brought the Blackmagic and my normal camera in there without the fisheye on it, and it was just kind of ass."
Did Ezra get any clips?
We’re saving those for the Bookclub video.
Sick. What’s the hardest part about making snowboard videos today?
I think the hardest thing is actually just that there are a lot of videos and a lot of stuff has been done.
So it's really hard to make something that looks a little bit different, but then you also don't want to be doing something for the sake of it being different. You have to ride this line of trying to film stuff in a way that's different or or using B-roll that's interesting without taking away from the medium, so it’s quite restrictive.
You still have to do things pretty much by a certain set of rules and there's only the slightest margin that you can deviate from that. And it's within this really thin margin that things that can be really cool or look like everything else.
You don't want to film the whole thing all crazy or weird. You have to be able to capture the tricks. You have to be able to capture the people and what they're doing. Anything that deviates from the normal path exists in a very small space and once you step out of that then it's going to take away from the snowboarding.
I think that's always something that I struggle with, but also working with Jed and Jacob I feel like they have cool ideas and are pretty open to different ideas I have on how to film and edit shit.
Last one, why is the video called Red Ceiling?
Watch RED CEILING here.