Sometimes we feel so lucky, not because of all the obvious reasons but because we get to take a look inside of some of the coolest scenes in the skate world. San Diego is one of those places and Jackson Sjogren is one of those people. His video is inspired by the world around him and the people in his atmosphere. This video is a testament to that, and so we asked him to give you, the viewer some insight into why Stuck Between Moments is the way it is. Read, enjoy and learn.
Text, Photos & Film By Jackson Sjogren.
Hello Place Magazine readers, my name is Jackson Sjogren and I’m a filmmaker out of California.
Footage from Stuck Between Moments ranges from December 2017 – December 2020, during which my friends and I attended universities throughout California. Nearly all of the footage for this project was captured on the breaks we had between school or the small trips we managed on weekends. In 2018 I really had no intentions on making a full length video, I was mainly experimenting and finding my own style in filmmaking. It wasn’t until 2019 when I started to see the project take shape.
Early inspiration for Stuck Between Moments came from the soft, dream-like quality of Julian Klincewicz’s work. I distinctly remember being hyped on a series of Julian’s videos, then spending way too much money on Super 8 film, and continuing to shoot it all with no set plan. This led to a partial panic attack but also to much of the footage seen in Stuck Between Moments. I was also inspired by experimental filmmakers like Richard Kerr who utilized double exposures and motion blur to defamiliarize the world around them, and films like Gummo by Harmony Korine, that create a sort of visual collage rather than a coherent narrative. I wanted to blend these worlds of experimental cinema and art with skateboarding. I really didn’t have a set plan when gathering footage for this project, I generally shot the different environments and spaces we inhabited through skating, experimenting in any way I saw fit. The editing process is where the video took shape.
In 2019 I began the process of separating out all the footage I had, based on themes I saw arising. Themes like exploration, discovery, memory, motion. I edited all the skate footage into sections and looked for ways to disperse my Super 8 and VHS clips throughout the video. I remember talking with a fellow filmmaker and friend Wesley Banford, about editing skate videos. He told me what Pontus Alv said in an interview, to never subject the viewer to more than 30 seconds of skating at a time, which is what I’ve pretty much lived by since hearing it. I always try to supply ample breaks to make sure the video feels balanced. It’s a difficult harmony to reach but you usually know if something feels off.
Never subject the viewer to more than 30 seconds of skating at a time
Pontus Alv.
One of my favorite aspects of this film was working on the color grade. I knew I wanted the stylized footage to be saturated, grainy, and full of contrast. The imagery was meant to be more impressionistic, separate from the objective world of skateboarding, inhabiting a more dreamlike space. I also wanted the video to feel fluid, and cohesive. creating a project where every element from beginning to end felt related. I had created videos in the past where there were different clips from other filmers in it, a random collection of songs, and footage that felt unrelated. I was avoiding that at all costs. It was important that for this project everything came from me so at least it all felt connected. This led me to choose all the songs for the video, so the music felt linked as well. It’s always hard to pick songs for other people because everyone’s taste differs so much, but ultimately I think all my friends appreciated how the music adjoined each section of the film. As for the fonts and graphics used in Stuck Between Moments, I took a lot of inspiration from Gregg Araki’s film, Totally F***ed Up. I loved how he took a really simple font and played with a TV static fill, adding texture and making it pop.
I’ve always had trouble naming my films, I feel a lot of pressure to come up with something meaningful but everything always sounds too forced or cheesy. For this film, I decided I’d keep it simple and quite literal, a name that can take on multiple meanings to me. Stuck Between Moments captures a period of time where me and my friends were on the edge of entering contemporary adulthood. It’s a video that I hope elicits the same feelings of exploration and discovery that were taking place in all our lives, dedicated to those brief moments we have together, while everything around us changes.
