Two weeks ago the Youtube algorithm suggested a video to us… now a lot of the time the suggested videos are either videos you already know or you end up clicking on someone skating in their parking lot. Both are fine and a good parking lot video is a lot of fun but when we clicked this video we saw something else… We quickly discovered that the maker of the video had dropped us a DM with VIVID’s “time kills all things” in it. We loved the video and its great aesthetics and wondered how Jacob Ortega had made all these “effects”. Long story short, we ended up asking him and his answers shine another light again on a project we hope will be influential in its own right. Enjoy the video and Jacob’s words, we sure did!
Text & Interview by Roland Hoogwater.
Video by Jacob Ortega.
Tell me a bit about yourself.
The other day on the bus there was a strange girl that kept smiling at me, she wouldn’t stop staring at me. There was a fat man next to her who would cover her eyes at some points.
(laughs) That is very detailed, so one more basic question, when did skating enter your life?
When I was ten I really loved this Sector 9 longboard and then I lost it, two years later I got a real skateboard so it’s been like 6 years now.
So, back to the video, when did you start filming for this project and how did the connection with Darkknightsvividlight come about?
I started filming for this video about 9 months ago and then edited it off and on for about 2 1/2 months, we were still getting clips during that time as well. As far as Vivid goes, it has been around for like two years. I hate calling it a “company”, or a “collective” it just is what it is. I wanted an outlet to make videos so I could experiment as much as I wanted.
Tell me about the title of the video “time kills all things”, how does it tie in with the content of the project?
Well, the video is a loose concept of trying to portray the decay of the mind of a person with dementia. You watch their scarce memories slowly rust and break. Everything in the video in some way ties into how a mind can slowly rot away into nothingness. I really didn’t want it to ever feel like a skate video. I want someone who doesn’t even care about skating to be able to experience it and enjoy it.
“The video is a loose concept of trying to portray the decay of the mind of a person with dementia.”
Jacob Ortega on “time kills all things”, 2024.
The crew is eclectic how did you gather all these people to be in your video?
With a really big lasso.
Tell me a bit about the different scenes we are in multiple cities so how did that come to be?
The little money that we make from the clothes we sell pays for some of our trips so for this video we went to London and New York. Some of us went to San Francisco and took day trips to San Diego and Escondido. We all just really love to travel and explore so we try to get out as much as possible.
Is this your first video with a strong concept? What came before, and what is different this time around?
Well I mean I guess? I don’t know (laughs). This is the only video that is this video… what came before were videos that had their own essence. When I make a video I don’t feel like they have specific categories or boxes that they fall into, they are all their own unique things that represent all that I know or feel.
We need to know about the visuals and sound editing, tell me how you came to make the video like this. Tell me your general process of creating the glitches or AI faces and how important that is to you and the project.
Well like I said the project has the concept of a video showing the perspective of a person with dementia so everything is purposeful. With the music specifically, I wanted to make it progress so It feels like you’re falling deeper and deeper into this strange world with small glimmers of lucidity. All the glitches and digital noise feel like the fuzziness of trying to recall a memory that you can’t quite grasp anymore. The AI faces are how I imagine it feels to have someone tell you that you’ve known them for so long yet you can’t recognize their face anymore.
Technically, how did you create these glitches, they don’t seem random, but they are also not easy to create in such a directed manner.
So most of them are real corruptions to the files, I used this old editing software where you can delete P-frames from videos, and once you save and convert it back to an mp4 you have a glitchy video. This process is called data moshing. The rest of the visuals were made by pushing the color grading or certain effects wayyy further than they were supposed to go. A lot of people do that already to just cook their image and I kinda hate how those look so it was fun to find the right balance.
“A lot of people do that already to just cook their image and I kinda hate how those look so it was fun to find the right balance.”
Jacob Ortega on “time kills all things”, 2024.
Any special stories you would like to share about your project?
In London Justice Lora was skating this crazy bank to drop, on his backside there was at least a 30-foot drop onto some train tracks and on the other side, there was a spiked fence. We were all so nervous for him to try it, he was just gonna try a simple kickflip into the bank, well he landed primo, fell forward, sliced open his arm on the spiked fence, and was about 3 inches away from falling off the drop. He definitely would have died. It’s really scary to think about what could have happened and I’ll never post the footage lol.
That sounds quite gnarly! OK one final question, will other projects be coming in the future?
Maybe! Who knows… it is hard to keep going when I put so much into the whole vivid thing, the videos and clothes and just building an overall image, but it all stays so stagnant. It feels like I’m swimming against a current. You can try and try but sometimes things aren’t meant to be. This would be a nice way to leave things, some nice clothes, and a decent video. Realistically I think I’d miss it too much.
Time kills all things 😉