GOLD OR NOTHING_Mauro Caruso and Andrew Zolin interviews_unused footy.
We had a little chat with Mauro and Andrew about the making of Gold Or Nothing…
Enjoy the extra footy.
[vimeo width=”750″ height=”434″]http://vimeo.com/60736788[/vimeo]
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MAURO CARUSO INTERVIEW
Mauro, all the tricks basically are filmed around your town in Sicily. Was it difficult to find the right spot for the right trick or were you just goin’ with the flow?
Don’t really know actually, I think both, because at first, since we only had 20 days the mission was to get just the tricks I had already shot with Sam for the Kingpin intw and make a raw clip to go along with it, then more stuff was coming so we started to film more, some random, some not and yes it came up like that! Actually we drove a lot! We really did, every morning we would be in the car already at 9,30 and missioning all around Sicily to find anything possible to skate, like the downhill lines or a few other tricks were just random… when we realized we could have done a bit more than a raw clip we did other two week mission down here!
Right now 99% video productions are filmed with expensive FULL HD Cameras.. here we have a lot of VX 1000 and century lens.. Do you want more HD Films or do you still like the VX1000 feeling?
What can I say?? VX for life! Ha ha, just kidding but for sure I think vx footage looks way better for the colors and the sound, it shows you the real skateboarding… skateboarding is rough and vx is rough… I look at hd footage as something else, can’t compare the two products… If this part would had been filmed all HD I think it would have looked way different so I think it’s a matter of what kind of product you want to achieve, some stuff look way better on HD, some on vx…this clip was meant to be filmed with the vx and I’m so proud we did it this way! Of course when huge companies step into this world, they bring innovation, they bring money, they want everything at the top and that’s why HD come in I guess, everyone wants HD footage nowadays and I understand it but that’s when you look at it from the business eye. From a skater I think it’s a bit different! HD is the present and the future, it’s a lot of money involved. VX is just magic.
What about your craziness? Do you still get mad to death (against you) when you don’t land a trick, or you’re more relaxed now?
I think it’s getting worst and worst! Ha ha I’m really trying to not do that but sometime it gets too crazy and I just loose the control of it and I kill my mind so hard that I get ridiculous to people, if Andrew would put out a clip with the madness footage I could easily leave this planet forever ha ha ha one day one of my good friend said that if you a really good at skating you can basically do anything you want in your life and I totally agree with that!! Skateboarding is so fucking hard, so mental, it’s just insane.. actually I get scared of it! When I’m on the bed after the whole day skating, after my brain got raped, after I did my trick I start to think at least for a good hour about the session, how it could have gone differently and the stuff I was saying while the madness was at the top and I seriously wonder what’s the limit of a human being, I wonder if I will ever get one day to that point where I will really sell my ass for free… ha ha ha
Which one is you “tramlane” trick? Switch bs flip, bs flip or fs feeble?
Don’t really know anymore! I haven’t skated a lot of rails lately so I’m missing out on my fs feebs! I like to try to have all my tricks done properly, can’t really do a lot of tricks but at least I’m focusing on have the more control possible of them…You know what the graybeard says: “You don’t do the trick, you are the trick.”
Hey now you’ve some pretty clean no complys! When did you learn them?
Never learned it yet! shah never done it down anything actually… I just really wanted to do a line there with the 2 ollies up and a tricks down but had no idea about which one since a lot of tricks already went down… I think I named all the nbd tricks possible but no one seemed to be the right one for a line like that (even because I wasn’t able to do a lot of them ha ha)… that’s when the no comply came up! I was already trying it for a while and it was so scared to pop it proper and stay on with both feet and then the rain came in… it’s crazy…rain is one of the few things that really gives you the biggest motivation ever! As soon as you see a little dot of water falling on the ground you know you have a few tries left and that’s when you really go for it! Rain came in, clouds were looking so sketchy and it happened right there! Andrew and I were so hyped on that!! Didn’t even have the time to put the camera away that it started to pour raining so hard!!
It seems your skating has changed a little in the last 2 years; from big stuff skating to full speed tricks goin’ downhill… How has your approach to skating changed and what pushed you to this way?
I’m just trying to evolve I guess! the more years you skate the more control you should get…I also think my approach to skateboarding is changing even because what I want from it is also changing…I used to think a lot about tricks over and over, new tricks, new combos, now I just think about trying to be as much natural as possible…. take it as it comes. I just wanna skate the city, don’t want to learn tricks at the skatepark (even because I don’t have one! Ha ha) and then go crazy to find a spot where i could do it, I just want to be ready for anything the city offers me, the spot makes the trick If I find a really nice good looking ledge and I like it I could easily stay there hours and hours to try a tech trick, if I find a steep fun downhill I will just go down as fast as I can!
Which has been the hardest trick to land from Gold Or Nothing? And the one you were more happy of?
I had hard times with lot of tricks actually, maybe the spots look nice and easy to skate but when you get there it’s always different… a lot of spot were really rough and had always something wrong like no run up, really sketchy flat, big holes, weird angles… don’t really want to stay here and write you about all the wrong things each spot had… it’s common, it’s classic, it’s street skateboarding, not skatepark! For sure what stress me out the most is when you are skating a spot, you know you could do your trick easy but because of the shitty spot you know it’s gonna take 2 hours more! I hate it but love it at the same time! those are the spots that really show you how good you have that trick or how much control you have of it…but for sure the hardest was the ss kickflip at the end, that double set is sooo long! more happy of? I think the last kickflip… it was a really good day, we were feeling good, drove all the way to this double set which is in random place in the middle of the volcano, had no pressure or stress at all, that was one of the last days we had and we knew we were about to be over with this mission, we needed the kickflip and the ss ollie there…I was so motivated and hyped to do that kickflip that came out in a few tries with the smile on both faces, no madness, no mind raping, the best!
Is it true you rented a car for 20 days to go around Sicily to film this video part? Who paid for that?
In my family we only have one car and my father uses to go to work…if you take out the idea of stealing a car there were not many other possibilities left!
So you are about to leave for the States… where are you going and how long will you stay?
Yes yes I’m leaving on saturday! So hyped to go there again! I haven’t gone for 3 years now so it’s gonna be really good to meet up with the crew again! best crew ever! I will be staying in portland area, Oregon, will go down to cali for sure and after that I’m going back directly to berlin for the whole summer…or at least that’s the plan! hope to not run out of money way earlier!
What’s next trend in skateboarding in your opinion?
1 million dollar question right there! Don’t know, really have no idea but i can easily say that in 2013 anything could happen! things are going crazy and really quick, it’s getting bigger and bigger, huge companies get in and huge companies get out like nothing, people are being really intense, both tech and gnarly sides, old school tricks are coming back so hard… it looks like there is everything right now! but for sure something is still missing, someone is going to come up with something for sure! water is boiling hard for sure!
Have fun Mauro! Gold Or Nothing.
The story behind this name is funny for sure! basically the day we got the line with the 2 ollies, the nollie flip and the smith in the plaza we were super hyped on the light there was that day…blu sky crazy good light, got the line, looked at it in the camera and we were just stoked on it! So we are sitting there a bit before taking off, to enjoy the sun and we start to talk about how important is the light to get good footage…”light is so important, blue sky always makes everything different, golden light and bla bla bla… at one point we are getting in the car and right there Andrew sees something write on the wall next to the car…it said “Gold Or Nothing!” We got super psyched! Started laughing and got so hyped ha ha ha crazy to think! On the way back we were trying so hard to think who could have ever wrote something like that on the most random plaza ever in the most random place ever in the middle of nowhere and especially why would you even write something like that! from that day that was our motto for sure! it became the reason to keep going every single day trying to do better and better!
[vimeo width=”750″ height=”422″]https://vimeo.com/61249866[/vimeo]
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ANDREW ZOLIN INTERVIEW
How many days did you film to finish the videopart and how many flights did you take to fly down to Sicily?
I took 3 flights, 40 full days of filming, from 9 in the morning on.
How does this project started?
One day I got a call from Mauro, where he asked me if I wanted to film some tricks he already shot for an interview. It was supposed to be a short clip. During the first mission we got more footy than we expected to get, so we decided to film a full video part, so the following week I flew down to Sicily for the second (but not last) time!
How many tapes did you film?
18 tapes!
That means you are not using HD cam but the good old VX1000, why you are still using the VX? What’s the best thing about this cam?
Money! Ha ha ha I don’t have enough money to buy a new HD camera and I don’t really like to film with photocamera. I would not make a 20 minutes video without zoom! VX1000 is skateboarding. The noise of the records, fuck, you can buy a microphone for the photocam but it will never be like the VX! And the Century fisheye itself makes the difference…
I know a few days before deadline you flew down to Sicily one more time to film 3 tricks that were missing… 7 days and 2 flights for 3 tricks….
Yes! That was an hard thing to explain at home to my family! But after 3 days asking myself if I should or shouldn’t go, Mauro bought me the ticket because I was broken and I took a bus to the airport. We believed 100% in our project. Gold or nothing!
What was the most stressful thing, attend Mauro’s madness while trying a trick or editing the video part?
Hard choice! But I like more to film than edit so definitely edit the part! Ha ha ha Mauro got mad skating, me editing (together with Mauro Peduto who really help me a lot). He was like: “Andrew, you are the painter, I’m just helping you to hold the paint! Ha ha ha, thanks Rame!
Was the song “Volare” your idea?
The story is this: I would like to use an italian song, and one night I saw a special on Lucio Dalla. The first thing I thought was, I wanna edit the footy with “Caruso”! The title of the song is the same of Mauro’s surname! Amazing. But it is one of the hardest song to use for a skate video part! So I asked myself: “What is the most known italian song?” Volare by Domenico Modugno! But the problem was the same! And one day, during the second mission to Sicily, Cristian Mantovani (who came with me just to skate) put his MP3 player on the radio and the guitar of Gipsy King started playing that song. Me and Mauro watched each other like: “Whaaaattt? It would be perfect for the video!” And so we kept this song.
Have you ever threatened to kill yourself filming Mauro pushing downhill at that speed?
I fuckin’ love downhill! During summer I do a lot downhill so I’m used to it! But with the VX in my hand it was a little bit scarier! More than a little bit…actually.
What’s you favorite trick/clip of the video and which one has been the hardest to film?
My favorite long lens clip is the krooks on the hubba! My favorite fisheye clip is the line with the no comply in the end, with the drop coming in the fishey, it seems like a tear. Romantic! My favorite trick? The hardest stuff to film was the line ollie up-fs noseblunt-fs blunt pop out. We went there 3 times, 3 hours filming, but every time something went wrong! Till the last day when we got the goods.
I wanna say: “Thanks” to Mauro, he is a special friends for me. I’ve learnt so much from him. Smile buddy, smile!
(Interviews Davide Biondani and Guido Bendotti_ Life photos: Jonny Parasiliti)