Zak Anders, frontside nosegrind as seen in *Respectfully*

By now you’ve likely seen Respectfully, after all, everyone has been talking about THE DARKSLIDE (yes, we cover it).

However, there’s so much more to this video than just that one trick. It’s a rare occurrence for a skate video to stand out as truly unique, as something that creates its own energy outside of the standard skate industry machinery we’ve come to count on for bolstering all but the most independent of videos. Even rarer still is the video that creates this energy through showcasing mainly skaters who have no form of sponsorship whatsoever.

Respectfully is that video.

Through visually stunning b-roll, music that seems purposely selected to feel out of place in a skate video, and skating that comes off as equal parts a product of the post-Cherry school of trick selection and something unto its own, this video has been on our minds since it debuted this past October.

We talked to its filmer and editor Chase Walker about everything we wanted to ask about, darkslides and Natalie Imbruglia included.

VP: How long have you lived in New York?

CW: I've lived in New York for about two and a half years now. I came here from Texas, and most of the people in this video did too. Almost all of us were friends back in Texas before we ever came here. We all kind of slowly migrated to New York and grew closer when we got settled here.

I grew up in Houston, some of my friends grew up there as well. Trung grew up in Houston, Zak grew up in San Antonio. One of our friends came from Dallas, a couple of them actually. So we're from all over, but primarily Houston was the starting point for filming with us. When I turned 18, I got out of the house and moved to Austin / San Marcos where I went to college.

I spent four years out there, got my college degree and never stopped skating. Filmed a lot of VX in Austin. Then I was like, “I want to get to New York.” It was always a dream of mine. So, here I am.

VP: What was the scene like down there?

CW: The scene in Texas was really good, It's very local. It's very inclusive. Everybody knows everybody. There's a handful of filmers and a lot of skaters who rip. Naturally, it's not as big as here, but there’s a lot of ditch spots and it’s a great time. Like a lot of places, it can feel like you’re skating the same spots over and over again.

VP: Right away, your video felt different from what we’re all used to - your viewpoint is interesting, and there seems to be a lot going on in terms of craft. What videos did you come up watching?

We saw this clip and knew we had to talk to this guy. The video creator himself in brown Accels.

CW: I started skating in 2008. When I was younger, I mean, when I was a kid, I’d watch old skate videos like the Workshop vids, the old Girl vids, stuff like that. The classics. The first video I ever watched was Fully Flared.

VP: So from your frame of reference, Fully Flared is a classic. It’s just a trip to me because I was well into skateboarding at that point, for sure over 10 years.

CW: I would watch it on my iPod Nano. And then as I got older, I started seeing the skate videos that really inspired me to make more of my own work.

Local videos hit it off first for me. 2009-2010 I got really into watching my own scene here in Houston. Dudes I’d see around the skatepark actually made the sickest videos! Filmers like Nik Lavigne, Eric Nguyen, Phillip Leach and John Danielson helped me fall in love with filming skating.

As I branched out, I got inspired by a lot of the videos coming out of Arizona at the time, like the Jackson Casey - like Boyish and Worship Friendship were the two I'd watch on repeat. Diego Meek was also one of my favorites. And then around the similar time, I got into the Bronze videos around 2013-2014. Paul Young’s videos as well - Bleach was an inspiration. Can’t forget the Static videos either.

VP: Was there anything specific that stood out about those videos?

CW: Yeah, it felt more like it felt more like a vibe I would like see. They would make think beyond skateboarding, and I could definitely tell that they were just like a bunch of friends having fun. That was very relatable to me at the time. With like, the Bronze videos, it was like they were just so out there and so different. I was like “Whoah, you can really push the limits with these things.” All the music I would hear and then In the Pyramid Country videos would get me super hyped.

That was where I felt like I took a turning point with skating and became obsessed. I started filming at around 13-14 years old with a Handycam. I became super inspired, and wanted to make better skate videos and take it a little more seriously. At the same time, I was just growing up.

This video’s look comes from a heavily involved process.

VP: That leads me into asking about the footage between parts - what’s going on there? It’s really interesting visually, and looks like something beyond what you’d see in a lot of videos.

CW: That’s Super Eight footage that I color graded. I just like went crazy in post over time. I was looking at all my Super Eight footage, and I knew want to make something textural, something that meshes well with the dynamic quality of the HD footage.

I really like color and color grading clips and playing with reaching the thresholds of different levels. I just wanted to apply it and see what happened, I didn’t want to use Super Eight in a standard way like how you always see it, it's been done so many times before. I wanted to throw some sort of spin on it.

That ended up carrying over to my HD clips as well. I love to play with the color…

VP: Really? Every clip in the video is color corrected?

CW: Yes.

VP: Wow. Okay, so, how long do you think you're working on this video?

CW: Respectfully took roughly a year and a half to make from start to finish. I capture footage over time and I have a master timeline. As that timeline builds, it's literally just like clip number one on to clip number 190. As I'm going, I start color grading. I've taken the approach in the past where I haven't color graded as I go and that takes days and days. So I just try to go as I get the clips. The process is lengthy but the truth is that life stops you from doing things as quickly as you’d wish.

VP: So another thing that stood out to us, and to a lot of other people, is the music in the video. What’s going on with this first part?

CW: Our friend, Nick Jaros, who goes under the name Double Knee is the one behind this first song. We used a couple of his songs in the video because I felt like it was important to use Nick’s music. While I was working on this video, he was putting this album together. It felt appropriate as he’s one of our closest friends.

It's a whole friends montage leading up to Zak’s part, our immediate friends. This is who was going on the trips and out every weekend. Rowans clips are in here along with my own. I was hoping to make a part that would make people smile, while also building up the intensity going into the meat of the video. I just wanted to make a part in the beginning that showcases the friendship that we all share and relate it to a track.

Zak Anders, bluntslide shove-it as seen in Chase’s earlier effort, *Bike Lane*

VP: So Zak Anders’ part, let’s talk about that. Tell us about Zak.

CW: Zak's from San Antonio. It's the quieter city in Texas but Zak always held it down out there. I used to go down there to skate and San Antonio always had amazing spots. Zak’s an expressive character for sure and one of my favorite individuals to be around. His part is special not only because of the tricks and amount of tricks, but the contrast displayed. Going from this super hardcore Skourge track, to the most ambienr, angelic track for the more drawn out tricks. The all blue section was a last minute decision. I ran the idea by Zak a few days before the premiere and he was down.

Going back, Zak had the last part of my video Play Time. There's also this video I came out with in 2017 called Bike Lane. In filming for that, that was when Zak and I met each other. I was really excited one day when Trung told me that he was about to move here. And I was like, “No way. Let's get this whole thing going!” That fall/winter Trung put together a really sick video called Late Night Stars Ep.1 along with Play Time.

VP: Your video seems to have music curation that's a lot more…free. Do you think that’s related?

CW: Well, first off, I used the Deftones song because Trung is such a huge fan of Deftones. (ed. note - he knew which song I was talking about without me mentioning it)

VP: Yeah, because at least for someone who was around when Deftones were popular, they we definitely not considered ‘skate music’. There wasn’t a lot of overlap.

CW: A big thing I wanted to do with the music in the videos, I wanted to use music that was going to represent them (the skaters) 100%.

It's also something that we can all identify as together. Like, we really all like these different genres of music (metal, ambient, rock, etc) , and we wanted to put them together. And I was like “Alright, I want to just use it all and take the audience on this roller coaster ride and build up lots of tension for the last part.” Especially with Deftones. For those who know, it's perfect.

Trung brought up the idea to bring that Deftones song into his part. And we went through a bunch of Deftones songs one night, and he mentione Pink Maggot. I was like, “Yeah, I see you skating to it.” He even asked me “Are you sure?”, and I was like, “Yeah, absolutely. This is for you.” It was a cut decision right then and there.

VP: So, is there a story with that one board? I think you know the one I’m talking about.

CW: He just wanted to buy that board for nostalgia. He saw it online one day and was like “I got this board.” That was like Spring, early Summer.

We had probably gone to the Canal fountain for this video like six or seven times, trying different tricks. I've seen Trung do body flips on the Canal fountain probably two or three times, like so intensely.

VP: Really? I mean, it's kind of impossible.

CW: Yeah. Oh, it's like the most uncomfortable spot. It's perfect in a way because it's marble - sure. But, yeah, there's a lot of hazards. We've all seen Max Palmer kill it. He owns that spot.

Also, Tillary ledges are Trung’s favorite spot - the C ledge. One night he did those three tricks in a row, he did the back tail big flip in like 20 minutes. The 3-peat was unreal.

He put those Rowley XL Twos when he left the house and he wasn't even intending on skating those shoes. He got those off eBay and he went out and got one crazy trick, they became his good luck shoes after that. Then he filmed half his part in them.

VP: I think the two like elephant in the room is the darkslide set to the Natalie Imbruglia song - we’ve got a lot to process there. So let’s start here: has Trung had darkslides?

CW: He's been able to darkslide. Trung started doing darkslides in like 2019, when we all filming Play Time together. He does a darkside on Tillary in in that video, that was crazy for us.

After he did that one Trung was like “Dang, I can darkslide.” Trung went to Los Angeles on a skate trip with some friends. He came home with a crazy clip: a darkslide on the flatbar at the Santa Monica courthouse. So he's like, “Chase, I’ve got dark slides on rails. They're actually easier than ledges - where's what's the perfect rail I can darkslide?” The first thing I said was the Marcus Garvey rail. I was like “You did a C ledge. Let's do a C rail. Marcus Garvey curved rail. That's the perfect one.”

He tried it for a long time. He actually even landed a really bad one - he touched his hand on the rail and flopped out. He was like “That doesn't count.” We were stoked for a second, and he kept trying that day but ended up rolling his ankle really badly. So that was trip number one. Once I put the idea in Trung’s head it never went away. We talked about it for a year straight until it happened. He was always like “I’ve got to heal up for the darkslide.”

I remember we went back in the Fall for the second time. One go, same thing. He rolls his ankle, and he's just like “Fuck, how am I going to land this darkslide?” So then the next Spring we go back and he tries it a few times. He didn't roll his ankle but he ate it so hard he gave up on it and and he ended up doing a feeble to back smith around the curve. So that was that for the day. Once summer came rolling around. Trung and I were both getting ready to go on trips. We have footage stacked and needed to start wrapping up the video.

For a year we knew that the darkslide had to be the banger. We knew we weren't going to see each other for a month so it was just like “Fuck it. Let's go to the C rail”. We went one day, he started getting warmed up on it and just started going for it like I'd never seen him before. He started going around the curve over and over again. Try after try, wrapping all the way around going so fast. He stuck one, kind of stuck another, and then on one he just rolled away. That was it. There were some people in the park, they were just amazed at what was going on, probably just from seeing us so amazed. I know I was myself, after…holy shit, like a year's worth of a journey into that.

As for Natalie Imbruglia… (laughs) God, I’m so glad we used that song. Over the summer Trung and I were trying to find a song for his part that would be the ender. We were going down the rabbit hole of fun, early 2000’s pop as that was the desired direction. On the 4th of July our friends from Houston were in town and we went on a mission to Jersey looking for fireworks. One of them played Torn in the Holland Tunnel and we were all like “Wow, this has got to be the one.” I kept playing that song for a few months straight and its hype only grew. Also, we found zero fireworks that night.

The other, possibly more significant darkslide. Also by Trung Nguyen.

VP: What was the deal with the bumpy darkslide?

CW: That one is in Commodore Barry Park in Brooklyn, and he did it pretty quick. And it was like, “Well, we got one out of the way.” We were hyped on that one.

VP: Yeah, I love how it ricochets off the side. It was on the Element board, too.

CW: Yeah. You know, that was actually the day before the Marcus Garvey one. Bumpy rail on a Tuesday, C rail on a Wednesday.

One other thing to add to the tale. An hour later, we were driving back from Marcus Garvey screaming and celebrating. It's just me Trung and our homie Justin. We were freaking out driving down Amsterdam Avenue past that Church on 110th (St. John the Divine). We saw the scaffolding on the rails and Trung was like “Stop, let's go look at it.” Right away he was like “I'm I'm just giving it a go.” I filmed a line that day, Justin got a clip too. That day was just one of those magical days you could never ever forget. I remember every second of that day.

Dustin Eggeling is sponsored and can execute a hardflip manual at this very historic spot.

VP: How did Dustin Eggleing end up in this? He’s the best, but doesn’t seem to fit the vibe.

CW: (Laughs) Dustin is actually part of the reason I ended up in New York. I met Dustin in Austin at SXSW. He put me and some friends on as a production assistants, that was the first time I’d ever worked as a PA.

I was a few months from being done with school and I knew I wanted to move to New York. I also had no idea what I was about to do professionally, so it felt like a way I could tap in. Dustin & I would film together in Austin too. We would work a 13 hour day, get two clips, then have a 7am call time the next day. Looking back, those were the best times. Once I actually moved to NYC we kept working together, skating and filming together.

VP: Is he the only sponsored skater in the video? For such a heavy video, it occurred to me that he’s the only skater in it I could identify as having a board sponsor.

CW: None of the other guys in the video are really sponsored. Brian is sponsored by Roger & Vans... but that's it along with Dustin. The motivation came from just wanting to make a video and go hard. Just for the love of skating & friendship. We've all been skating for like 10 plus years.

VP: Speaking of vibe, certain trends and looks can take a long time to reach the world at large. Have you heard much criticism / pushback about how the skaters featured in Respectfully?

CW: I've seen some people leave funny internet comments about how we dress and some will even hate and say how we look slummy. Someone said we look like we sleep on mattresses without bed frames. For the record - We have jobs. we don’t smell (that) bad. And we’re nourished (McDonalds bangs though).

No, it's cool though. People can say what they want about the video, or my filming techniques, or all blue skate footage. Lots of people loved it, others will say what they say. Personally, I just want to grow with what I started, I want my videos to be a little crazy.

We're not bummed on it in any way and the video has received a lot of good feedback. Some people don't quite understand it. And that's okay.

Talking 'RESPECTFULLY' With Chase Walker