Tag: Sarah Meurle

I have the feeling that I stumble over the name Sarah Meurle quite often lately. Besides her skating and photography it seems to be her open-minded personality that causes people’s attention worldwide. Recently, she even got interviewed by the Dooonuts Mag, which is, if I’m correct, a magazine from Seoul, South Korea. The reason we like to share this interview with you is first and foremost that we appreciate her work a lot and secondly we like you to read it as a preview for her little contribution in our upcoming print issue as well. Shout out to Dooonuts, too! Read the full interview here (English version included).

Thumbnail by Sofie K Austlid

Photos below by Sarah Meurle

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Robin Pailler has been around the block a couple of times, he knows his strengths and he is not afraid to talk about his weaknesses either. He has been responsible for some of the more enjoyable edits this year, videos like Cleptomanicx’s Stadt.Land.Skate and his depiction of Remy Taveira stood out to us. His latest work just dropped on our site yesterday, so we had a little chat about that and more.

Let’s start with your latest work, how did you get to know the Poetic Collective?

I think I discovered Poetic Collective about a year or so ago, probably around the time they released Surfaces. I just really loved the whole vibe they had going on, it had this really stylistic feel, the way it was edited, the use of Marcel Duchamp’s voice, it just seemed really different from most skate videos/brands out there. I think just after that they introduced Sarah Meurle to the team who I’d met a year or so prior and got on super well with, so I was stoked to see her on the team and it just seemed like a really tight knit crew with a shared vision and really artistic approach to skateboarding.

Tom Botwid told me that making a video was your idea, leaving you with complete creative control, a special thing to do for a brand with a strong image.

Yeah, the project happened pretty random actually, I bumped into Sarah Meurle at the Bright earlier this year and she introduced me to Tom. We got to talk and I mentioned that I’d love to get involved in any future projects, so we exchanged details and kept in touch. A few months later, I was planning my trip to CPH Open and was going to the Vans Pro Park Finals in Malmö the following weekend, so from there I realized I had like 4-5 days free in between. I reached out to Tom, asked him if he’d be down to shoot some stuff and we got the ball rolling. In terms of my input adding to the overall look and feel of their company, it’s a bit of tricky one. I think what really helped was that Tom showed complete faith in me. He didn’t try to tell me how to shoot or what sort of vibe to go for. He made it clear this was my project, so there was no pressure to try and fit into any image so to speak. He wanted it to be my own independent vision featuring Poetic as opposed to me trying to emulate a Poetic video.

How important are the scenery, the city and it’s spots to you when creating a video?

I think in terms of scenery, the city, architecture etc. it always plays quite an important role in the stuff I do. Seeing as a lot of my previous videos stem from a documentary approach as opposed to pure skate clips, you kinda become accustomed to capturing as much b-roll of your surroundings as possible. It kinda becomes secondary function because cutaways play such an important role in the editing suite when it comes to making documentaries. Malmö itself has some fascinating architecture, too. I guess for those guys they’re used to it, but I was really in awe of stuff like Santiago Calatrava’s “Turning Torso” building, or even the Central and Hyllie Metro Stations by Metro Arkitekter. Swedes just have a good eye for that stuff and I couldn’t help but be impressed by the look of the whole city.

More in detail you work a lot with sound in this edit fading in and out even mid-line. What prompted you to do that?

I’ve always been a fan of playing around with diegetic and non-diegetic sound, which again possibly stems from documentary work, but I’d be lying if I said it was all pre-meditated. Seeing as a lot of what we shot was on super 8 and somewhat impulsive (plus the fact I was shooting the whole thing on my own), I didn’t always have time to ensure I was recording sound externally. The use of fades on a lot of occasions is simply playing with the smooth, gradual transition of the edit as opposed to an abrupt cut off sound entering or exiting.

At the 3:14 mark you have that line with the hippy jump, then a cut and the line continues did you film that with two camera’s simultaneously or did you make the skater do it twice?

Haha, yeah shout out to Samuel for that, sorry for making you do it twice mate. I wanted both angles on super 8 but I always feel bad asking people to do shit again, especially when you’ve just met them. Luckily, Sam was super cool with it, he would’ve done it again anyway, don’t be fooled by the baby face, he’s a beast.

Music is something that is important in skate videos and to skaters in general. Can you tell us about the music that you chose for this video and why you picked that style?.

Yeah well, Tom’s brother Paul is a super talented musician and he actually composed a lot of the pieces for Poetic’s previous clips, so I kinda wanted to continue that. Tom put us in touch and we discussed the use of ambient reverb sounds, which I’m a massive fan of. Paul actually composed a whole 8-minute piece that was super dope, but I only used the first minute or so in the end. I had been struggling with music choices and one morning whilst on the road, ‘Holding Horses’ by Colleen randomly came on shuffle and I just knew I wanted to use it in the clip. As for the final track, it’s a classical piece by Paul Misraki from the film Alphaville. I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a complete film geek. And perhaps being half French, I’m naturally really heavily influenced by the early work of Jean-Luc Godard. I can’t help but want to pay homage in some form. I think both Tom and me are really similar in our love for conveying emotion through music. We are both suckers for that “romantic epic-ness” in music, you know? That shit that gives you goosebumps.

How does this project vary from your past videos?

I guess the major difference is that this was purely a skate edit. Most of my previous work has been documentary driven, so it was especially refreshing to break away from the constraints of following a narrative. Quite often my work has focused on certain personalities within the skate world, offering a somewhat intimate insight into their character and everyday life, and often a lot of those pieces are shot within a short time frame. It can be an almost invasive experience for the subject. They’re obviously very conscious of the image they’re portraying to you, their sponsors and I guess the internet as a whole. There is a lot of pressure for you as a filmmaker to build a good rapport. You have to gain their trust, all whilst pointing a camera in their face, asking them to divulge a lot of personal information.

You also filmed a video for Cleptomanicx recently.

I guess I was also really fortunate in that I’d filmed a skate trip in the German province with Cleptomanicx a few months prior, too. That was the first time I’d really produced a piece that was purely skate driven. I was lucky in many ways because I really feel Clepto and Poetic have a similar vibe and principles. Both crews have that super outgoing family vibe and in both cases, I felt they really showed a lot of patience towards me. There is always that fear when meeting a crew who’ve never heard of you, never seen your work, are they gonna be like “alright who’s this kook?”. They might think you’re from MTV or the fucking Ride Channel and I have a very different approach to film skating, there is not a lot of fisheye in my work. Because I’m lanky as fuck, so I really suck at it. I’m never gonna be like a fucking Ryan Garshall, Tor Ström or Ben Chadourne you know? Those guys are absolute fisheye machines! I’ll leave that shit to the best. So I guess in that sense my technical approach is way different to the norm, so it’s all about earning people’s trust, in that, you’re gonna produce something they dig but perhaps in an unorthodox style. In the end, it’s all about that love and support you show one another within skateboarding, that’s what makes it so special.

All photos by Robin Pailler

Robin Pailler hooked up with the people from Poetic Collective in Malmö and received total creative control to document the group as he saw it. He chose to mix up different styles of filming with music that was in part created for this clip, something that goes wrong more often than it goes right but here it works like a charm. Enjoy the video!

Poetic Collective is a brand that is trying to do things in their own way, the name of the company suggests that there is a group of people working on the project and that is the truth. The company has its roots in the art world with multiple artists or art students contributing to the collective look and feel. We had a talk with Tom Botwid about Poetic’s new collection, their team riders, the nostalgic vs. the contemporary, and drawing inspiration from outside of skating. We are happy to present their new collection together with Tom who provides some extra context to the whole thing. Enjoy!

This is your sixth collection isn’t it?
So much has changed from our first collection up until now I am sitting in my apartment right now and I have a board from each collection and the first one only had one t-shirt and one board and I did that while I was still studying art in Berlin. There I was making a lot of things that were very conceptual and I wanted to break away from that and make something that would speak to me aesthetically but didn’t necessarily have that strong conceptual background to it. So I talked to some people and they were interested so we made some boards without thinking too much about it. Just making something that you like to look at and skate on. Since then we progressed a lot, the first video I did the filming, my brother did the editing and we got a lot of good reactions. Now it is a proper company that is growing fast, maybe too fast when you have a normal job as well and then I feel like we progressed a lot aesthetically as well. We were trying to do something different and over time we dared to take bigger risks and that started growing us more and more into our own. The basic idea stayed the same, though we draw our inspiration from outside of skateboarding. I.E. when a new company comes along and has graphics inspired by an 80’s or 90’s company they are still referencing skateboarding and “skate art” but there are so many possible aesthetic influences that can be introduced into skateboarding. So to me, it was very limiting to only look inside skateboarding for inspiration. So much in skateboarding is wrapped up in nostalgia right now.

I noticed that Sarah Meurle has her own board can you tell me how that happened.
I think it is nice both to show the skills she has combined with her interests in photography but also to give her a platform that will draw attention to the fact that she is one of the best female skaters in Europe. She has been working hard and she has been sponsored for a long time already and done so much so we want to give her a platform and the good thing is skateboarding has been opening up to female skating as well.
I see Sarah’s board more as that she gets to do something with her photography than as a pro board, then we would want to get more guest artists in to do a series. We want to invite people in that fit in with our themes that at the same time allow us to reach over to other platforms and draw in different audiences. As for Sarah, it was important for us to let her do this on her own terms because a lot of female skateboarders only get portrayed by men and we wanted to have her express herself as she wants.

So do you select riders of their interests? Is that a factor?
Not of their interests but I do want them to have an understanding of what the company is about and I want them to be able to relate to that and be able to stand behind the ideas and product we produce. Because as a smaller company I can’t offer the riders that much so I feel it is important that they really want to be a part of it and are willing to invest themselves. Not everybody on the team has a big art interest but everybody has an understanding of what we are and are trying to do.

I know what you mean, sometimes I watch a VX1000 filmed skateboard video and my girlfriend says “Did they film this in the 90’s?” and the crazy thing is I don’t even notice the fact that the quality looks vintage for me the VX1000 is still up-to-date.
I thought about that but you do notice when something is very contemporary, like the clips Johnny Wilson is making, that instantly feels like today. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like VX footage, the nostalgia works but when I stop and think about it I want our stuff to looks contemporary.
But when you come to clothes and boards it is hard to do something that is not pre-set for us. Meaning that you have a body to work with and you have the shape of the skateboard reinventing those are big challenges.

That is why you need those other outputs like video, so you have more freedom still, we always try to keep an open mind when it comes to those two things. Then again references can be fun! We are doing the Muska thing in this collection which is ironic because he is moving away from skateboarding into the realm of art. At the same time, it’s fun because some will get it immediately and other will be like Muska who? First, we wanted to call that the noseslide stuff but this works better.

So for the Muska thing the colors were set but how do you guys choose the other colors that make up a collection?
In the beginning, we worked a lot with black and white, which are art references, we also had a red dot in reference to the selling of art but then Free skateboard mag came about and we decided to drop it. But as we progressed there was so much black and white being used in skateboarding that we felt like we wanted to work with colors more. A lot of the colors we use come from paintings and looking at things we want to use color tones that are not that in your face, we want to have it flow nicely together and combine that into something you would want to wear, even as a grown up.

Even as a grown up (laughs)!
To me, pink for instance has always been the opposite of what is black & white which are like “hardcore cool” and pink transforms things into something else and that is interesting. For a while, though I was doubting the pink on Sarah’s board because it seems almost cliché because she is a female but it actually worked well and she liked it. To me, the pink that we used doesn’t represent gender it represents something softer.

We are a group of people that hang out together and skate together but at the same time, we don’t want to push that part as a “cool” thing. It is not like ‘we are the shit, fuck everybody else’, it is more like a love thing and to me, pink represents that.

Alright! So since you are definitely into balancing things out well, how did you choose what type of clothes to make and what kind of fit to use?
I look at a lot of fashion outside of the skateboarding realm and as I said before that connects back to the point I made earlier that influence can come from different directions. At the same time, we still make a lot of basics as well. At the same time, I would like the company to grow so I can do some more obscure stuff as well. As for the fit, we spent a lot of time finding the right fit but it’s hard cause the next color way can have a different fit.

What about the boards?
As far as the boards go there is a lot to choose from! But the thing is people have their own preferences, they always say what about that shape what about this? I like them how we make them now and a lot of people do so why change that?

So what kind of people would you love to collaborate with?
Karin Mamma Andersson who is one of the biggest Swedish painters that is totally removed from skateboarding I wouldn’t necessarily want to do that Mark Gonzales guest board. I like something that is so far out that it becomes interesting.

Catalog photos by Nickolina Knapp
Lifestyle photos by Robin Pailler

For their project inside the Museum of Modern Art in Malmö, Sweden, the Poetic Collective asked themselves two central questions.

What happens if we strip away everything
but the actual act of skateboarding?

What happens if we put it in a space where we
highlight the expression and movement as any other artform?

This video is the result of those questions being put to the test, the answers are not given to you in words and even the music was handmade for this clip so one can say that the answers to those two questions are being presented to you in a “mood”. Enjoy!

“We boys need to talk.” We are not really sure where this is coming from but it is a very crucial wake up call for all the casanovas in our world. Although we (as in the Boys) are definitely in superior numbers, there is no world without female effects. Shout out to Lacey Baker, Elissa Steamer, Leticia Bufoni, Steffi Wolter, Sarah Meurle and all the other girls out there.

Neues Jahr, neues Heft, neues Glück! “The Photographer Issue” ist der Titel unserer ersten Ausgabe in 2014 und markiert zugleich eine Hommage an die Fotografen, die uns in den all den Jahren begleitet und begeistert haben. In dieser Woche findet ihr unsere neueste Perspektive auf die Skateboard-Welt im Skateshop, Bahnhofskiosk, oder Zeitschriftenhandel eures Vertrauens. Die Ausgabe enthält unter anderem folgende Fotostrecken:

Kevin Metallier – Alone In Ordos

Phil Boyd – The Hothouse Chronicles

Sarah Meurle – Extended Grey Tuesdays

Brian Kelley – A Friendship Formed Throughout The Years

Davy van Laere – Silhouettes Gallery

Außerdem gibt es ein Special Feature zum CONS Space 002 BLN mit eigenem Backcover featuring Roberto Cuellar.

Wir wünschen viel Lesevergnügen und angenehme Entschleunigung!

Hier geht es zum Abo.

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