The Down to Earth guys are precision boarders with straight teeth and more friends than you can shake a stick at. They are dudes you can count on to stick their tricks and not throw a fit if they don't get it. They are good friends that go with the flow and don't zeach. They decided to hit the road and put all their boarding talents together into one movie this season. Benny Urban, Dominik Wagner, Basti Rittig and Marc Swoboda were followed by equally talented camera geeks Rene Gallo & Karsten Boysen. We sat down with these two filmers to talk about making the movie and nerded out about editing in general. If you haven't seen the movie yet, press play and then enjoy our discussion. If you have already seen then watch it again! Look out for the print feature in an upcoming issue of Method Mag to see what the riders had to say about the season.Looks like you guys filmed on both sides of the Atlantic. Where did you guys travel to while working on the video?
Rene: Yep, we filmed in Europe in a bunch of places, like Finland, Austria, Italy, Germany but I didn’t go across the ocean. I had some trouble with the visa and Karsten Boysen jumped in to take my place and did a hell of a job! Big up to him!
Karsten: Thanks, Rene. Street-wise we filmed mainly in Finland and in the States we went to SLC and Minnesota. Powder-wise we were in Bavaria and Austria.

What were you shooting with? 
Rene: My current setup is a Panasonic HPX170, a Panasonic GH2, plus an old VHS cam for that dirty old look.

Who in the crew usually sticks their tricks first?
Karsten: Probably Benny or Wögna, but Wögna still does the same trick again until the light is nearly gone and nobody else but him could see the difference in the last 10 tries.
Rene: In my experience I would say Marc lands the trick first, but that's just so he can go play his guitar sooner!What is the best way to play it off when you aren't ready for the shot?
Rene: If I am not ready for the shot, I just call "battery switch"! :D
Karsten: I claim that the camera is still rendering. You can get away with that when shooting super-slowmo's. 

What was the randomest place you ever got your power source for the light at a spot?
Rene: The funniest is when we were riding a fence and needed to go over it to plug the lights into some sockets in this building. We all crawled under the gate and got all our shit over the fence, took like half an hour. Then some girls came through and just opened the gate, and we were like, OK we should have tried that!

How does the Fiat drive? Those things look like they would good to deliver mail with.
Rene: The Fiats are pretty cool, except they froze up in Finland one day.
What is Swoboda's favorite song to play on the guitar? Does he take requests?
Rene: Marc is still learning to play, nah, just kidding, he is really good at it! He plays a lot of songs.

Do you actually film some VHS or is that all filters?
Rene: We filmed some VHS, no filters needed.

Rene, was it nice to not have to shoot with girls this season? C'mon, tell me one thing you miss about the Lipstick crew.
Rene: With the girls it was maybe a lil' more laid back. The boys mean business!
How was it to be making a movie out of such a small crew? You must have been kind of happy about that one when you finally had to sit down and edit all this.
Rene: Yeah, in the beginning we started with just 3 guys, then Basti joined us which made a pretty tight crew. It was great to finish this movie and watch what we did throughout the season.

Man, these guys have a lot of friends, that was a big friends part. Did you shoot a lot of that or did you have to round up that footage.
Rene: Woosh, the friends section was enormous. The guys just sent the emails out to our friends and we got a few shots from each of them.

Was everyone like a Japanese tourist in Paris when you got to Salt Lake City, "Look at this, look at that, remember this from that movie…" They must have geeked out a little bit.
Karsten: Yes, exactly like that. Especially when you have Knut and Bob Plumb showing you around the city.Was it crowded in SLC? Did you guys have to wait in line at spots?
Karsten: Not really, with the exception of Rail Gardens, but when we got there in March there was hardly any snow left in the city anymore, so all the other crews were probably done already. Once we drove up to Minnesota we bumped into two different crews at the very first spot we went to.

Are the Rail Gardens too small by today's standards to use in a legit part?
Karsten: Yeah, I guess that's why you have to get as technical as Marc does to be able to use it in your video part.

Was it weird to see Benny Urban in the backcountry? Maybe you should change his rider name in the corner to "Benny Backcountry" for the pow parts!
Karsten: You would think so, but Benny is quite diverse in his riding. He even rode park and pipe contests back in the day with quite some success.It seems like down rails don't cut it for an edit anymore. Does a trick have to have a wallride out, 4 kinks or a donkey dick slap out to make into a part now?
Rene: Yeah, nowadays everyone is looking for different features, a down rail is too common. Everybody is looking for bigger and harder stuff. If you want people to go "wow", you need to have an original or interesting spot.

Why does that rail at the end of Swoboda's part have a glove on it? Did someone lose a hand?
Karsten: It's just product placement gone wrong.

What is a good ratio for ramping, say one in every 4 shots? What program do you use for ramping?
Rene: Ramping depends on the trick and of course, the place that clip has in the part. You don’t want to have ramp, ramp, ramp... It's nice to spread them around a bit. For that I use After Effects.Anyone try to go sideways on that wooden drop-drop-drop spot that Wagner ends his part with?
Rene: Dominik's ender was actually the first shot of the season! In the back of my mind I somehow I knew it was going to be an ender! As for going sideways on that thing, I don’t think so, :D

Do any of these riders ever get all pissed off and start throwing their boards? They don't seem like the type. No one even gave me the middle finger or pointed a knife at me during the whole movie!
Rene: Nope, they don’t usually break stuff, they are pretty down to earth fellas, ;)
Would you prefer a woman who is "Down to Earth" or Down to Fuck"?
Karsten: A combination of both sounds good to me.
Rene: It would be cool if the new movie was DTF but the Helgasons beat us to the punch.

This movie is called Down to Earth but how High off Earth did you guys get, what the highest point you went? What is the highest rail you guys hit?
Rene: I am scared of heights so I usually stay low to the the ground with the fisheye.

How high am I?
...

Cover shot by Markus Rohrbacher
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