If you’re not familiar with Matt Bublitz’ work, I’m excited for you, you’re going to enjoy his videos. If you are familiar with Matt’s work, I’m excited for you, you get to read about what went into his latest piece, BACKWASH, and you get to enjoy his videos, again.

🌀: What’s up Matt! Stoked to dive into the video with you! First off, being someone who is a filmer/editor for Thrasher, what keeps you motivated to continue to make homie videos?

It’s kind of a natural thing. I think it comes from my friend group being motivated, just us being good friends even outside of skateboarding. It’s a no-brainer, honestly. It’s not like, “Are we going to skate this weekend?” It’s pretty much every weekend my friends are hitting me up to go skate. They all have full-time jobs but they’re still motivated to try and get tricks. I don’t really like set out like, “In two or three years I’m going to make a full length.” We just get footage and then at a certain point, there’s enough to make it into something. With every video that I’ve worked on, I get to a point where I feel like I’m holding people’s footage hostage if I’m sitting on it for too long, so then I’m like, “Ok, it’s time to make something, and do my part of the job.”

🌀: At what point in the process of BACKWASH did you get that feeling? 

The last video that we made was Wetlands, which came out in October 2018. We’ve just been filming since then, around 1 or 2 days a week. Like I said, everyone has jobs, and I’m usually working on Thrasher stuff during the majority of the week, so I don’t get too much time to skate and film with the homies. When I noticed people’s folders getting really big, laying it out on a timeline and realizing “Oh wow, this person definitely has enough footage for a part.” I just had the intuition that there’s more than enough to make a video. 

Ben and John DeMar have technically been filming for this the longest, just because Tom’s footage always ends up going to a company. And then Chris and Malakai getting involved was a really natural thing. Chris was always a friend, and then at a certain point, he just started coming out more regularly. Once I started skating with him one-on-one and he realized that I was down to film him and make something, he really stepped up and filmed his part in less than a year. 

🌀: That’s the beauty of a homie video! How do you balance filming your friends, your Thrasher work, skating, all on top of being a husband and now a dad?

It’s a lot of compartmentalizing and scheduling. Being a dad is the new part, so that’s the gnarliest one in the mix. You definitely have to be accountable, responsible, and available whenever. But before that, just balancing Thrasher work with personal skating things, I get assignments from Thrasher, short and long-term, throughout the week I’ll chip away at them and try to get them done by their deadlines. I’m pretty diligent and work pretty hard during the week. It’s a lot of computer work: filming interviews, cutting them down, transcribing, and stuff like that. I feel like the weekend is my free time to go skate, let loose, and have fun with my friends. Sometimes it gets complicated if a Thrasher thing carries over into the weekend and my friends want to skate, but work always takes precedence over just filming for fun, just because most of my friends aren’t sponsored and we don’t have to do it. That’s probably why the videos come out few and far between. It’s a lot of juggling, but if I’m being a good worker during the week I can always find time to skate for at least a day or two. As far as being a dad and husband, I get to work from home, so I’m always there. I can be like, “Let’s go to the park” on a Tuesday at 11, it’s not a strict 9 to 5 job, I can just do some work at night to meet the deadline. 

🌀: I know you mentioned the 5-year gap between Wetlands and BACKWASH, I think it’s kind of cool because it creates more excitement, and maybe it makes people appreciate the video more. Especially in a day and age where videos are released every day. 

Definitely. Ben and John had the most footage out of everyone early on, and we could’ve just done individual parts– that was the idea at the beginning, Ben’s part was going to be called “All Hands On Deck”. It was going to be an all early grab part. He likes doing that trick, but that’s kind of why there’s a lot of it in this part. I was just thinking about my older videos and I wanted to make at least one more that was a full-length, local, type of video. I feel like full-length videos stand the test of time a little xbit better than solo parts. They’re easier to go back and watch and remember them.

🌀: For sure, I feel like solo parts tend to blend together easily. I’m glad you touched on Ben’s early grabs, I had been wondering if it was deliberate or if it was just how he naturally skates.

I think it’s both, he’s naturally really strong, and that’s kind of his niche in skating. It’s a win/win.

🌀: Yeah, I like when someone leans into what they’re good at and really makes it special. The build-up of his rail tricks was amazing, I was mind blown, especially because I can’t early grab at all. I also couldn’t believe the rails that you guys found for him to early grab into!

I know, the rail has to be so specific. I swear for every one of the early grab rail tricks there were 3 other rails that we went to for him to try those tricks, but they were either too high or too long, it has to be just the right steepness. He’s got it figured out at this point. 

🌀: It’s definitely exciting to watch! To quickly go back, what’s the story behind the title BACKWASH? 

As you probably know, all of my other videos are water related. Before this video, I didn’t even think twice about titles, I would just be like, “Oh yeah, let’s call it this.” Like LO-TIDE and HI-TIDE. Then I made Wetlands and after that, I felt especially pigeonholed to the water theme, for better or for worse. For this video, I was consciously trying to avoid that, I was like “I am not doing another water video. That’s so played out at this point.” Every other video title came easily–they were no-brainers–but for this one, I was throwing out a lot of random names that had nothing to do with water, but none of those names really stuck; there was no real connection. It was starting to feel impossible to come up with a name. BACKWASH was one of the names and at a certain point, Tom was like “Who cares, just go with how people know your videos, it’s cool to have a thing, it’s a way to recognize your work and it all ties in at the end of the day.” I’ve been skating with all of these guys for a long time, so I knew that I wanted to play into the nostalgia of them being young, and them being where they are now, a little older. I wanted a name to play into that and I thought BACKWASH hit all of the marks; it has to do with water, and it went well with going back in time. Also, if people thought BACKWASH was the spit that’s in your drink, that’s cool, that’s kind of a punk thing. Once I started saying it out loud and telling my friend group I was like “Ok, this is what it’s called.” But, this was only a month before the premiere. The video had pretty much been done, but I was holding onto it because I didn’t know what to call it for a while. 

🌀: I like that your titles have a theme, especially with the way that you mix in the b-roll! 

Thanks!

🌀: I love video premieres, they’re special nights. I always enjoy them, regardless of where they are, but nothing beats a movie theatre. Did you set out to lock in a theatre for this premiere?

Yeah, once I realized that I wanted to make a full-length, that was the first thing I thought of, that we had to do a proper premiere. I grew up going to a lot of sick videos at movie theatres and there’s something about everyone sitting comfortably, it’s really dark, and the sound is really good. I feel like it’s getting harder to do premieres at theatres because they’re getting nicer, they have leather seats and serve food, it’s becoming more of a luxury experience, so they’re not as likely to rent out their theatre to skaters. I purposely sought out low-budget theatres, I initially went to this theatre called the Starlight in Cypress. It’s really small and I thought it was the perfect theatre for what I wanted to do, but when I talked to the manager they said “We only have 2 screens and seat like 100 people, so we don’t really rent it out. We could play your video, but not that many people could sit there, but our sister theatre in Costa Mesa could do it!” I looked it up and realized that the sister theatre was at Triangle Square, which is a theatre that I went to a lot growing up. It was really affordable and they were really mellow with everything, they let me test it 2 different times during the week of the video. Even the night of the video, they let a bunch of extra people into the theatre which I didn’t think they were going to let happen, due to fire codes or something. 

🌀: Wow, that’s sick that it worked out at a theatre that you used to go to as a kid, that’s a full circle moment.

For sure, that might be the only theatre that I went to as a kid that’s still there. All the other ones are gone at this point.

🌀: That’s crazy! To transition to some skating; Tom is known for his spot searching, is that something that you do with him often?

He’s doing a lot more of it than I do. He does it during the week when I’m doing my Thrasher work. As you probably know, he’d go out with Jordan Taylor 2-3 times a week like all day, 9-5 type thing, just to search out spots. I try my best, I always have my eyes open and take routes to and from spots that avoid the freeway, just so I can go on random side streets. I gave him a few trick ideas for this part; he did a 50-50 on a 3 stair ledge then Front Boarded a handrail, that’s an OG spot in Irvine. I was there to skate another spot, Tom wasn’t there, so I took a photo of that because I know he likes doing those tricks where he’s grinding and jumps up to something else. That’s one of the rare times where I’ve sent him a spot and it actually worked out, where he was into it and got footage on it. For the most part, he’s pretty picky with his spots and tricks that he wants to do. He also knows literally every spot, so the majority of times that I think I found something new he’ll be like, “Oh yeah I went there 2 years ago.” It’s kind of impossible to find new spots for him.

🌀: I actually wanted to bring up that 50-50 to Front Board, I really like how you filmed that one, rolling fisheye in front of him, is there a certain filmer that inspired you to film that way? Fisheye in front isn’t something that you see all the time, so I definitely get excited when I do see it.

Thank you! A company that does it really well is Polar. The way Pontus filmed back in the day really inspired me, or whoever filmed Pontus. It’s definitely Tao in the newer Polar videos. Sometimes he’s doing a simple line but just the fact that it’s filmed in front and you don’t see what’s coming just makes it a lot more exciting.

🌀: Yeah! It really adds another layer to the clip.

For sure, I try to do that whenever possible. Also, Tom in particular wants to look a certain way on camera, as do most people. If there’s ever a question of how to film something, the number one answer from Tom is “Fisheye in front.” It’s something we both like, and I’m sure he’s inspired by the Polar videos too. A funny story about that; you know that pole jam to nose manual then he goes down the dirt?

🌀: Yeah!

It was probably a 4-hour battle to get the clip that I used in the video. After he got it he was like “Yeah, that’s cool. But like, do you think you could film it in front?” I was like “I don’t know, I’m going to be in front of you on this sketchy dirt hill, you’re going to be bombing it at me, there’s roots, twigs, and loose ground. I’m probably going to fall. I think the one that you got is fine.” And he was like, “Ah nah, I think you should try it!” So I was “Ok, whatever you say.” Literally, the first try that I filmed in front he did the Nose Manual and dropped down into the dirt and just as I’m halfway down the dirt hill, I’m not even looking back at him, I’m just trying to navigate the dirt, I either hit a big root or my filmer wheels sink into the loose dirt and I just eat it so hard and fly to the bottom where the asphalt is and rip my Polar pants. I had a bloody knee, which is fine, but I was just mainly bummed that I ripped these pants that are expensive and I like. Tom felt so bad, he was like “Damn, I made you do that. I feel so bad.” I was like “It’s fine, my mom can sew them with a patch or something, I’ll still wear them.” He was like “No, no, no.” So he went out of his way, went to Furnace, and bought me a new pair of Polar pants. 

🌀: Hahaha that’s incredible, what a story. Do you have the footage from when you slammed?!

I wish I had it, sometimes when you really fall with the camera it glitches and makes the clip an invalid file. Whenever that happens I’m bummed because some of the gnarliest falls that I’ve had filming I have nothing to show for it.

🌀: Yeah that is a bummer. But wow, the Polar tie-in from the filming inspiration to ripping the pants is amazing haha.

For sure!

🌀: So when you want to get a clip who do you pass the camera off to?

It’s always Tom. I feel like he knows what he’s doing at this point and I feel comfortable bossing him around, especially if he’s filming something fisheye, I’m like, “Get closer” or “Have me start in the left side of the frame and end in the right side of the frame.” At this point, I think he’s pretty comfortable with the fisheye. There are some days that I go skating and Tom’s on a different session and I pretty much write those days off as far as me getting footage. In that case, I just plot and plan to go back with Tom.

🌀: Next time you got some sketchy hill bomb spot you want to skate make sure to tell him to go fisheye in front…

Haha, I don’t even really like being filmed fisheye just because it’s my own camera. If I were to hit my own lens that would be the ultimate devastation. I trust Tom with the lens, but I would trust myself more so to move the camera out of the way better than he would. I’m sure he’d try his best, but it’s a complicated situation.

🌀: Yeah, I get that for sure. I want to hear what went into your Boardslide to Tailslide Kickflip, that clip really stood out to me.

That spot’s really cool. We went there a long time ago, I actually filmed that same exact trick 5 years ago for Wetlands on the DSLR that I was using at the time, but the footage was really dark and I think Tom might’ve cropped out my landing on the one that I did best. I never went back and got it for that video, so when I was trying to get some footage for this video we went back to that spot to re-film it. I rolled my ankle on it, which wasn’t fun, it was a few tries before I ended up landing it. Tom’s really good at motivating me, probably every trick in that part had a moment where I get broke and I’m like, “I’m so over this, I don’t want to do this anymore.” But he’s like, “Dude just try it again!” and that was kind of the situation. I rolled my ankle pretty badly, it was kind of numb and I couldn’t tell if it was going to be an actual injury or one of those where you just stretch your ankle. I just tried it a couple more times before it swelled up to see if I’d get lucky, then I was just magically rolling away on one and I was glad that Tom encouraged me to keep going. 

🌀: Wow, that’s sick it worked out like that! Was it a pretty long battle?

It was kind of a battle, it was mostly a battle because the ledge wasn’t sliding super great. Also, you have to get into just the right Boardslide to get into the Tailslide. There were a few attempts where I’d get into a Lipslide because I was too far to right, or if I was too far to the left I would get on a really saggy Tailside. It was more so just annoying because you have to get on just the right Boardslide for it to work. From the moment that I got onto the Boardslide I’d know if I’d be able to actually try to flip out of it. 

🌀: Yeah, that seems tough. I was really stoked on Chris’ 2 clips at the Los Alamos curved ledge, The Nollie 180 SW Crook Shuv and then the Back Lip 270 once it was skate stopped with that pole. Was that his idea to have a clip on the ledge with both poles and then a clip on it when it just had one pole?

It’s funny, those clips are actually in reverse order. He did the Back Lip Pretzel behind the polls first, that’s how the spot was for like 15-20 years, the polls were in the way and it was knobbed up. He and Pierce are really into resurrecting spots, especially if they’re nostalgic or classic. Since Los Alamos bench was skated a lot in the videos that they grew up watching, they wanted to make that one happen. They de-knobbed the bottom ledge and then cut out the pole in broad daylight, which is pretty crazy because it’s in a neighborhood. They only cut out one pole for some reason, maybe because it was sketchy, I don’t really know why. From the moment that he made that spot skateable he went there every single day, that became his skatepark. He works in Costa Mesa and that spot is in Fountain Valley, so he’d drive like 5 minutes and skate there like it’s a good spot or a skatepark, but in reality it’s not a good spot. The ledge is so chunky, half of the time that you try to grind it you’re going to hit your kingpin in a chunk and completely stop. For some reason, he can skate chunky ledges and old spots pretty well. 

🌀: I know you mentioned how nostalgic he is, so it’s cool that he was able to get that spot in his part. 

For sure, there’s stuff like that floating in his brain like 99% of the day; Geoff Rowley and videos from the early 2000s. It’s crazy because they’re (Chris and Pierce) also some of the youngest people that I hang out with. It’s uncommon for someone that young to have a nostalgia for an old time period, you’d expect Ben, Tom or me to be into it, but they’re double into it. 

🌀: Yeah, I love their appreciation for the past. Another standout, John DeMar’s Back Tail Back 270 Heelflip, which was the most mind-blowing trick in the video for me personally. At the premiere when he had his feet set up like that in the Back Tail I was like “Wait, no way he’s going to do this…” and I was so shocked at how perfect it flipped. What was the process like for that one?

Yeah, that was like a 10 year battle. The first part that we worked on was in HI-TIDE, he tried it for that part and he’d get close, but none of them were usable in the actual video. Then he had a solo part and tried it for that, he tried it again for Wetlands, that was the gnarliest attempt at that. He skated that red curved ledge that goes down a hill and whips around really fast, he did Back Tail Back Heel on that chillin’, he’s really good at that trick. He went back there probably like 5 times at least. He landed a few of them, but very tic-tac, again, it wasn’t good enough to use in the video. We went back to that same spot a few times and the same thing, he didn’t get a good one. Then we started trying different spots, we tried that loading dock ledge that drops off a 2 block looking thing, he’d get close, stick them, tic-tac the hell out of them, but didn’t get it. I forget whose idea it was, but that ledge in Laguna Beach came up. But, it had been knobbed forever. We were like “Oh let’s unknob that spot and make it happen there.” To go back to Chris being down to liberate spots; I just mentioned it to him and that night he sends me photos of him taking the knobs off, he clear-coated it and everything, and made it really perfect. We went to that ledge the following weekend and he landed one easier than he had at any other spot. He did it pretty good, but especially after how much of a battle this had been for him, he wanted to get it perfect. This was the best one he’d done so far, to the point where I was like “John, it’s fine. I’ll definitely use this.” But he was like “No, I want to go back and get it exactly how I want it.” So it took 2 trips to that Laguna Beach ledge to get the one that’s in the video. I guess it was a crazy battle with all of the different spots and scenarios surrounding it.

🌀: Wow, that’s gnarly. It was definitely worth it with how amazing that clip turned out!

For sure, yeah!

🌀: That trick seems really hard to do well, so it makes sense that he landed so many of them with tic-tacs. He made it look sick.

I know, yeah. A lot of people have been like “That’s the first time that trick’s ever been done!” and I’m like “Well, Shane O’Neill did it switch and Wieger did it in a Nike video.” I’m not taking anything away from John’s, John’s a big Wieger fan, so he’d be the first to tell you that it’s a Wieger trick.

🌀: Other than those two people, I don’t know who else has done it.

I want to say Wieger is the only person to do it regular. Shane O’Neill is insanely good and I know some people say “That trick is easier switch” but I can’t do either of those tricks, so I can’t really speak to that.

🌀: Definitely. I was stoked on the Tom Knox cameo in the friend’s section, had you filmed him before that?

I don’t think so, no. I’ve hung out with him a bunch of times, but I had never properly filmed with him. He was in town because he had to do some New Balance thing and he was staying at Tom’s house. He came out skating with us and I seized the opportunity. By the time we were already out skating New Balance knew that he was with us and Kyle Camarillo (NB# filmer) hit me up like “Can you film Tom Knox for the New Balance video?” To film for their video you have to use a 4K camera and film at 24P to have it look a certain way, but I was already out skating and I don’t use that camera very much, so I didn’t have a charged battery. So I just filmed him with the HPX and we ended up getting those 2 clips in one day. The friend’s section is so random because it’s Tom Knox next to my childhood friends, next to Gabbers; it’s all over the place. That’s kind of how my life is.

🌀: That’s the fun part of a friend’s section, you have no idea what you’re going to get.

For sure, yeah. I was definitely stoked on the Tom Knox clips, I wasn’t expecting that.

🌀: They were super sick. It was cool to see him skate that spot where he did Switch Hippy Jump, Fakie Tre then Ollie, that definitely seems like something he would like.

For sure. I remember Tom (Karangelov) was thinking of spots for Tom Knox to skate and we instantly thought of that. Once we got there, he took to it super easy just having fun. He was doing Switch Hippy Jump Fakie Flip just chillin’. Then he started doing Switch Hippy Jump Fakie Tre just for fun but I just filmed it and it ended up looking cool.

🌀: That’s amazing, I feel like everyone loves his skating. There’s one more clip that I want to talk about; Justin Reynolds Manny Front Heel. A very rare and cool one. What’s the story behind that one?

We had filmed that exact same trick on a different manny pad but he was like “That was weak, I don’t want to use that one.” So I was like, “Ok, let’s find a different spot for it because that’s a cool trick.” I remember stumbling upon that spot, no one had skated it in a long time. We happened to be in that area at the end of the day and decided to go look at it. He ended up trying it and I had to pull out the camera light, which normally annoys people, just having light shine in their face, especially on a manual. He handled it pretty quickly. It’s super impressive how he can fully rotate the Frontside Heel properly.

🌀: Yeah, that’s a dope one. Lastly, any other projects in the works?

Nothing on the immediate horizon. I think we all dug really deep in terms of spots and tricks we could do for this video, even the few weekends that have passed since the video dropped it’s like, “Where do we skate?”, and I’m like “Shoot, I don’t even know.” I feel like we went to every spot that we knew of and tried our best at all of them. It’ll be a little while until we’re filming again. But, there’s some Museum stuff in the works with me and Tom, so we’re just chipping away at ideas for that. BACKWASH felt like an extracurricular activity in terms of my job at Thrasher, so I’m just putting my head down and working on Thrasher stuff mostly right now.

🌀: That makes sense, it’s definitely tough to get right back into filming when you just finished up a full-length video all done locally. Looking forward to the Museum stuff! Thanks for taking the time to do this!

Definitely!