Buckle up your temporal lobes and hold on tight to your amygdalas because they are about to be taken on an emotional ride. This is a snowboard movie of a different kind. This is "Farewell Flowers", starring David Struber, Sebastian Müller, Gerald Fuchs, Florian Galler, Simon Reichel, Georg Ischepp, Florian Pötzl, Georg Obermeissner and friends.Turn off the lights, put on the headphones and press play. Then, enjoy a little chat with filmer and creator of BLV/NTHNG, Lukas Lerperger. The name of the game might be to believe in nothing and question everything, but one thing is for sure: we believe in these guys!
Are you guys going somewhere? Why "Farewell Flowers"? Are you guys going to be like one of those bands that makes a rad album or two and then disappears forever?
It could be, haha. No, I don't think any one of us will disappear and the name wasn't meant to be a metaphor for us or anything, but in fact, things will be different this winter and in the future. We won't go out filming with the goal of making a full movie again. We want to let things come together naturally by themselves. So far we have a few projects in mind, including some with other European crews that could work out perfectly...
I think most will agree that this movie gives you a different feeling. How do you accomplish this, black magic?
I hope it gives you a different feeling, although the movie didn't turn out as different as I wanted it to be. Everything we create features, of course, the stuff that we dig. I guess the movie is different than the average "freestyle flick". The feeling comes from the music, our film look, the spots, how the boys ride the spots and of course all the visual inspiration from movies, skate & snowboard videos and art that floats into the movie.
Would you consider yourself the director, the stylist, the conductor or the nanny with a camera of the whole crew?
I've had a lot of positions in the crew. I would consider myself as the "dictator" of BLV/NTHNG, haha. Last season I was organizing all the business stuff, communicating with media, searching for spots, organizing our crew... I acted like a director a little bit, like giving the boys ideas and telling them what I think would look cool and whatnot...
There is a vast amount of full movies flooding the web. How is it possible to stay afloat and still be noticed and watched? Is threatening everyone by saying your movie is online for only 24 hours the key?
Really hard to say. I mean, it could be that it helps a little bit, I guess some marketing guru invented that whole spiel for a reason. But still, I would say there are two factors that influence the success and reach of a movie the most. First is the content itself, if it's something completly new or just the BANGER movie of the year, and second is the image of the crew, or at least one of riders in your project. For example, if there is a new Polar skate promo clip out, people will dig it no matter how good it is. Polar is just so well-known as a company that it is self-perpetuating, basically. On the other hand, you can have the shittiest movie but if you have a big name in it, people will watch it.
Is there a formula to make a cool movie that kids will watch till the end?
I think this is something that's getting harder & harder every day to achieve. I think about this a lot, like, how can you present your visual work so it keeps or even gains value? Going back to DVD's doesn't seem like the right path for me. The idea of putting your film onto something physical is pretty cool, I think, like vinyl with music or photographs in books, but DVDs, BlueRays... those don't mean anything special to me. I would rather make a movie on real film and then provide film rolls to the people, but how many folks still have a projector at home? And it would be sooo expensive!
So in the end I think there is no real other way at the moment besides the WWW, which of course opened up a lot of doors for people, especially for small crews like us without the mega budgets. The internet made it possible to present our stuff easily to a big audience. Unfortunately this opens up the floodgates for countless movies, webisodes & edits and it's just not the same anymore. It's not like back in the day, when I would watch my Toy Machine VHS movie literally 100 times. People nowadays already feel there is TOO much content online, so they naturally start to filter that content more and more aggressively. For me, the two keywords to get past that filter are, again, IDENTITY and CONTENT.
Why does atmospheric, melancholy music make some people feel good? Why do others just call it "emo bullshit"?
I heard "emos" are the new high school quarterbacks. I guess it's just a matter of taste. Some like it, some don't. I just feel that melancholy music is a lot deeper in so many ways most of the times, and I also I felt that this genre was under-represented in snowboard films.
Is Vienna the new Helsinki of street snowboarding?
Haha, NO! Vienna is great and there are actually a lot of things you can/could ride, especially if you're not searching for "the perfect down rail", but there's some creative, good-looking spots. The other good thing is that you don't have tons of international crews coming to ride all the time. Basically, it's only us, the DTE boys and 1 or 2 other crews. So you can still find so many new features, and also still ride most of the well-known spots without fear of their being blown out.
Now here is the negative side of Vienna as a snowboard town: in Vienna you only have good snow in the city for more than a week probably once every 5 years, haha. The average Vienna winter is cold but pretty dry. Last year was pretty good, though.
Was the Gatman around to help Sebi pull the bungee?
No, man, Gatman hates the bungee and so do we. A winch is even worse! In the future, it will be exclusively spots with natural in-runs... hopefully.
Seems like Flo Galler can ride any terrain. Do think he could dominate boardercross or even kiteboarding as well?
"Gallsn" is kinda like the best "ATHLETE“ there is, haha. He is good at everything he tries, like beach volleyball, cliff diving, surfing... oh yeah, and snowboarding. He also studies "sports" at school. But for real, he is so good. He can ride park kickers, pow kickers and is super tech on rails. It was just too bad he was injured almost the whole last season. We filmed his part in probably 1-2 weeks.
Is David Struber a real person or is he just a hologram that impersonates all of our dreams and aspirations?
No one really knows who or what "Damo Streusler" really is, sometimes I even think he's a ghost flying through my apartment, haha. He is something similar to that message that Sebi paints it on his JLA art work... "David is Snowboarding".
Is Simon Reichel going to help change the world?
Yeah, I think so, but I'm not sure if this will be a good thing or not. For the moment he will only help change the creative world, together with Tom Elliott, producing some high-end artsy stuff over there in the UK.
Does everyone in the crew wear Obermeisssner's wild Crumbed Snake gloves? Does he take design requests since he makes them by hand?
Yeah, I think pretty much everyone got at least a pair of them, except ME. I am still waiting for my black cross mittens, haha! Georg plus our friends Martin & Davo are pretty much the design/production team. They just made square gloves designed by David, I think.
If kids wanted to emulate your color grading, would you tell them how to do it or would you tell 'em to "fuck off and come up with your own shit"?
Nah, I am cool with that, I see it as a compliment if kids wanna copy our stuff. I mean, I won't tell them exactly how to do it or send them my presets, but I would tell them what tools I use and how they can create their own look.
Is a veggie schnitzel tasty? What do they put into that? At least a baby cow will get to be old enough to go play at "calf-garden" with the other veal...
Haha, I've never tried such a thing but I guess they put in the same stuff as any other "fake meat“ veggie product, which is soy, seitan and a lof of spices, I think. But who really needs that stuff, there are millions of great veggie dishes in every culture. I should cook for you guys someday, ;)
What is the comfort or visual balance you find in the "//"? URL's have had that double backslash shit going on since the beginning of the internet, is that where it all started?
Haha, I didn't even think about that too much, but I guess this is my personal version of the colon, you know, this thing, ":". I just prefer the backslash as a punctuation mark. There is a lot of room for interpretation...
Old Wolfgang was quite avant-garde for his time. If he lived today what do you think Mozart's music would sound like?
I think he would be kinda like Falco was back in the 80's, not only because of "Rock me, Amadeus“ but also because they had pretty similar lifestyles.
Lukas, how and in what direction is your filming going to progress in the future?
I am going to definitely be focusing less on the "action" and more on capturing stories, experiences and emotions. Or just make some weird, artsy shit, haha. 
Sorry, I hope I didn't answer the questions too poorly, but I did this in the car just right now on the way back home from Innsbruck from our last premiere. Thanks IBK! Thanks Method Mag!