photo: cameron strand
Yesterday we put up a video filmed and edited by Real’s Davis Torgerson, but we wanted to get the full scoop on whether dude is hanging up the Formula 4’s for filmer wheels or if this was just a one-off project he made while trying to come back from his injury. As usual, Davis was cool enough to put up with some of our questions – even the ones about his jizzface logo. For anyone looking to get into filming, this is a good introduction to the hardships inherent in being on the less glamorous side of the lens.
So you wanna talk about the video? It’s pretty solid, I like the music selection a lot.
I get nervous talking about it cause it’s like, I’ve never made something like that before. I’m like, tell me what you think honestly?
You can tell sometimes by people’s reactions on their face or when they just say, “Oh yeah, it was pretty cool,” or some generic comment.
Which is normally what I get for the video. [laughs] At the end of the day it’s just a long, dorky, throwaway montage, so it’s cool when people are stoked on it.
Wanna back up and tell the readers why you started it?
Yeah, basically I got hurt last summer and I had surgery on my foot. I couldn’t skate for like 7 months. I knew I was gonna have a part in that Transworld video, and it was all VX, so like a month after surgery I was like, fuck it, I’m gonna buy a VX1000 so that way when I’m not skating with Chris Thiessen [the Transworld filmer] I can hand my friend Tim Fulton the camera and can just film wherever I am, you know.
I bought the camera but my injury kind of lingered so it took a super long time to recover. So I was like, fuck it, I’m gonna just jump in the van and start filming people. I was telling everyone like, yeah, I’m gonna make a video, and I basically just got in the van and poached all of Tim Fulton’s angles. [laughs] So I kept saying like, yeah, let’s make a video, and eventually I had all the footage and was like, oh shit, I should probably stick to my word and do something with it.
What’s with the chick with jizz all over her face for the video logo?
Dude, I’ve never even looked at it like that. [laughs] I’m going to see it like that now that you say it though. I have no idea. I got all that shit from my homie. He’s made videos with friends using his animations, and I just thought it was cool so I basically just told him to send me whatever, I would be stoked to use whatever extra shit you’ve got that you’re not going to use.
Yeah, I think it looks awesome, I’m just trying to think of perverted questions to ask you.
Yeah, maybe subconsciously we’re trying to get people to talk about it. He sent me the file and the name of it was “slimeface”. So I don’t know what his motivation was. The graphics in the vid are all real simple, he has way sicker stuff out there too.
And what about the name, Naptime?
Oh dude, there’s nothing there, I just thought Naptime would be funny. There’s no meaning there at all. Should we sit here and think of a meaning so we can tell people? We can go deep and inspiring, like, “You know when you’re like dreaming about skating?” [laughs].
Apparently you have some boards coming out based around the vid? Tell me about them and where these graphics are from?
When I showed the video to Jim [DLX President] he just got super stoked. He may have mentioned a possible graphic to go with it, so I hit Josh Manoles (who did the graphics in Naptime) up and mentioned that to him and got him in contact with Andy, the art dude at Deluxe. Honestly I’m just hyped that with this stupid video we were able to do some cool boards to go with it. I didn’t really have much say in what the graphics were, I trusted them. But I’m pretty psyched to be able to look back at these graphics and remember this time period.
What was your favorite skate video growing up? Any current video influence Naptime?
Fuck thats tough. I guess the Sorry video had a huge impact on me growing up. It was my first video, and those are the dudes I looked up to for a couple years. Every time I watch it it brings me back.
As for inspiration now, one would have to be this video called Double Crossers. It’s this homie Jake Durham that made it, along with Josh Manoles’ graphics. So that sort of got me psyched on Josh’s little animations. I also get super stoked watching that lurknyc shit. I love anything that’s just raw skating. Like all of the Emerica b-sides and shit like that. Miner is probably my favorite skate filmer and editor. I almost put out all the footage I had just raw cause I find it so much more interesting. You’re not really being persuaded with editing and slow-mo or shit like that. Just pure skating.
Favorite non-skate movies?
I love Fargo. That might be biased being from Minnesota but I just love the Coen brothers. I guess that dry/quirky humor. I like Inglorious Bastards a lot as well, I guess for the same reasons as Fargo. I’d say I’m a fan of Quentin Tarantino movies, some more than others. And besides those I’m all for stupid shit. It doesn’t get much more classic and quotable than Dumb and Dumber. Never mad at a nice mind numbing movie at the end of a long day of skating…
Favorite porno movie?
Oh you know, anything VX. Fisheye all up in there, maybe throw in some rolling long lens to spice it up. [laughs]
davis torg getting down / photo: matt bublitz
Where’d you get the VX1000? Aren’t they hard to get now?
Dude, Amazon refurbished! The fisheye came from Mikey, and he got it from Ty [Evans], so that’s kind of cool. So any time someone was filming a trick and struggling I’d be like, look, dude, this is Ty Evan’s fisheye, you gonna let this thing down? Refurbished VX1000s are probably like $800. The fisheyes are like $500 still too, which is a lot.
Considering you were a filmer for a little bit, is there anything you learned from the experience that gave you newfound respect for it?
So much respect. I don’t have the patience for it. I remember Jack did a line at these green ledges, but it took him a while (a while for Jack is maybe like 30 minutes or something). I remember towards the end I was like, holy shit, I’m fucking tired. Basically like, “Dude, just land it already!” [laughs] It made me think like, wow, I’ve been this dude so many times. It’s a lot of work, people don’t realize.
Also, filmers have bags, so people are like, do you have the wax? Do you have the tool? Do you know the spot? In a way I feel like skaters don’t even think about what spot they wanna go to, you know? It’s just like, “Hey, what spots you got for me?” And I know that first hand. I read something somewhere where someone was saying that basically filmers make video parts and the skaters will skate and do what they do, but the filmers will take them everywhere and make it look good. They’re like the creative directors.
Would you consider continuing to film or become a filmer if you get a good reception?
Naaah, I think I’m gonna try to be a one hit wonder. I actually sold my camera already. Full quitter. Maybe I should focus on the actual skating part now.
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June 22, 2016 8:20 pm
yeaaa! those are some cool real boards! good to see some serious raw shit. Though the video lacked frontside airs and little to none hesh at all = melty techno edit and white shoes. stoked
June 24, 2016 3:30 am
Coen Brothers*
Not Cohen Brothers
June 24, 2016 1:53 pm
Thanks, That guy. Fixed.
June 25, 2016 5:14 pm
Boards look rad!
June 29, 2016 7:34 pm
Davis Torgerson’s “Naptime” video was certainly quite decent, but so was Wylie Tueting’s review of Torgerson’s Transworld “Substance” video-part.
You better start recognizing it, Mr. Jenkem, so here’s the proof:
What Davis Torgerson’s Career Finally Has: “Substance”
By Wylie Tueting
For anyone who’s ever worried about how much the brutally leisurely lifestyles of Mikey Taylor, Sean Malto, and Mike Mo have affected Davis Torgerson’s skating, I can tell you now that the answer seems not much at all, according to his Transworld “Substance” part. This is his most deliberate part yet, so too it is his finest. The tricks are relatively simple but the surrounding details are rich. Don’t let yourself feel otherwise. Torgerson’s part is a thing of ambitious Art.
But what are those rich surrounding details of the part? Well, it follows on the heels of several fractures that disabled Torgerson (which is badass); it is not a showy YouTube upload but one of several parts that contrast with but don’t compete with each other (which is collaborative); it carries no particularly noxious southern California spots, but instead carries mostly pleasantly exotic spots (which is stunning, that Torgerson could find the willpower to avoid such California spots); it displays a familiar visual aesthetic, given the VX quality, but not an entirely familiar visual aesthetic, given how agile the filming is, so agile in fact that it leaves the viewer space to spy other things (like the clothing, footwork, textures, gestures, windows, placards, etc.); and it etc.
So the surrounding details of Torgerson’s “Substance” part are rich. Yet by themselves they prove little about how his skating triumphs around such details. Thus, allow me to join the surrounding details with some specific details, in order that we glimpse the unity of effect.
__________
The first VX clip is a two-trick line, and frankly it’s not likely to thrill you, unless you force yourself to rewind. You must force yourself to rewind, because if you do you’ll notice that the two concrete wave bumps that he pops off are oriental in design, and spaced a peculiarly challenging distance apart. They’re not inviting easy lines, nor breezy 360-flips. So, as much as his ollie off the first one and kickflip off the second one seem together to be basic at best, the line itself is impressively initiating, because those wave bumps are spaced peculiarly as hell.
There’s something going on with Torgerson’s landing standards here, and it’s hard not to find it charming, even innovative. I’m talking about his new foot flexibility, the way a foot can be seen hanging on, askew. There are several vivid examples, the first of which occurs after he ollies off that incline and counter-intuitively bs-bluntslides to pop-out up that ledge, and his back-foot rides it out quite obliquely.
Another example – not as oblique but surely more elegant – occurs later in the part, after he lands a bs-boardslide to pop-out to fakie off that out-rail, and his front foot tweaks forward distinctively, relaxedly, naturally before he hops off his board to dodge some chairs. There are further examples, rest assured. And while I’m not saying that his new landing standards are the easiest to talk about, what I am saying is that it’s hard not be charmed.
To say that Torgerson’s clothing varies much throughout the part would be a stretch, just as it would be a stretch to call his clothing bland. He mostly sports undistracting T-shirts and khakis, set below an orderly hat; occasionally he sports a collared shirt of some type, set below a not necessarily orderly hat. Whatever the case, his clothing choices don’t hinder his style or tricks. And yet there is one major oddity – or retro perfection – that can be caught in two separate clips. Both seem like clips out of Transworld’s “The Sixth Sense,” not “Substance.”
In the first clip we see him rolling on a residential sidewalk in a grey sweatshirt, faded denim, a black beanie, and black DCs, before he does a switch bs-heel off a sidewalk incline gap. (That could actually be Caine Gayle.) The second clip is a line, in which he sports similar clothes while doing a bs-bluntslide on a marble ledge, an indifferent nollie bs-180, and a switch flip to Suski grind. (That may be Torgerson, or it may be Robbie McKinley.) So Torgerson plays with form in this part, whether consciously or not, and leaves you considering something more than tricks.
Getting back to those tricks of his, there are many highlights, all of which are such for their own particular reasons. (That’s how highlights should work.) Of those tricks that are exquisite in their simplicity, look upon his fast-moving line of a switch bs-5-0 on a ledge to then immediate switch heel up stairs, or his fs-5-0 off a bench that drops him down upon a narrow dock landing. Of those tricks that seem most creative, observe his dropping in on that mini roof, to drop onto a flat roof, to ride-on fs-50-50 to pop-out off a guardrail, with the spot itself feeling like England; or his wallie up that loading dock that he curves around on before rolling up to a windowsill on which he does a bs-180 to switch nosegrind that grinds, tweaks, then sticks until he pops out into the Spanish sun.
And of those tricks that are clearly professional, there are very few luckily, and yet they still deserve examination, as in the case of his switch flip over that green handrail and down that embankment, which might as well be in Africa; or in the case of his line at that place with the silky grey pavement, which is a line that moves smoothly from a switch fs-tailslide, to a nollie heelflip to crook, to a bs-180 off a grate and over hedges; or in the case of his definitive kickflip over that sizeable handicap ramp, definitive especially because his arms are outstretched in midair, to facilitate a kickflip that he never really catches, but which he lands and rides away from quickly in spite of his hat fluttering away. And those are only some of the highlights.
__________
Now we can understand why Torgerson’s “Substance” part is his finest yet. It has the glamour of ambition, sobered by the reality of previous injury, uplifted by collaboration between skaters, captured by the agility of great filmers, in locations near and far, and produced with just enough refinement to allow us to see what makes Torgerson an individual. None of his former parts allowed us to see such. But this part does, so feel proud to support it as well as to support “Substance.” Then pause, and feel prouder to support Torgerson, who for all his apparent skill and notoriety, has just begun to attain Honor. Well done, Davis.
July 5, 2016 3:11 pm
u rule