Ophelia Wynne’s i-D Meets: New Skater Girls is a stylistic video portrait documenting the expansion of skateboarding through the eyes of UK-born female skater, Rianne Evans. Sharing her personal story, the 21-year-old observes how skateboarding is constantly expanding to accommodate and ultimately embrace the presence of girl skaters; a sentiment that, in essence, forms the crux of my group’s documentary. What’s more is that audience members are given insight into skateboarding’s transformation from an obscure subculture—and one that is seemingly only exclusive to male skaters—to a sport that has seen more and more women skating alongside other skaters as equals. The documentary’s lighthearted, albeit effective filming style, depicts how women are not simply reduced to their gender nor is it an indicator of their capability to accomplish the same lines and tricks as men. Rather, it is the symbiotic relationship between men and women in skateboarding that deeply aligns with my own philosophy and ergo, the philosophy of my own documentary.

Still of Ophelia Wynne’s documentary i-D Meets: New Skater Girls. Watch here.

Wynne’s purposeful employment of crisp and vibrant cinematography is evocative of the youthful, care-free and even sentimental nature of skateboarding. Indeed it her simple, albeit powerful, use of camera angles and the overlaying dialogue of Rianne, that Wynne is able to convey the mirthful joy of skateparks and the child-like bliss that stems from being in the company of like-minded individuals; all of whom share the same passion for skateboarding as Rianne. This is made especially apparent within her wide-shot angle depicting Rianne, surrounded by her friends, sitting blissfully along the rim of the skate drop-in bowl. This sense of camaraderie between the documentary’s central character and her friends is further emphasised within the overlain narration of Rianne explaining that it is the support of her skate-friends that “is inspirational for young girls and that’s why it’s going to be a bigger thing”. The combination of Rianne’s social group against the dimly-lit backdrop of a bustling skatepark sheds light on the endearing and unthreatening nature of skateboarding. It is the sense of community shared between men and women from diverse backgrounds that Wynne speaks to the heart of skateboarding as an inclusive and beatific space, even in spite of skateboarding’s reputation as a notoriously ‘cut-throat’ environment.

Wynne makes the growing camaraderie of female skaters especially prominent within this wide-shot camera angle of Rianne and her friend, who is also female, skating across a graffitied drop-in bowl. Filmed in slow-motion, this scene captures the free-spirited and general bad-assery of women in skateboarding in a way that is both cinematic and compelling. Seeing two females at the forefront of this clip while the male skaters watch from a distance, is exceedingly refreshing to see as it was often common within skate culture for men to take the helm at the skatepark and for the women to remain at the sidelines. Rianne and her friend, however, are depicted as performing a slightly more difficult skate maneuverer, which only further underscores the notion that skate culture is becoming more and more inclusive of all individuals.

Board in hand “ripping” and “shredding” the parks, as they say, the documentary’s central character, Rianne Evans, clearly expresses her forward-thinking perception of skateboarding as one that is continuously “expanding” and is, ultimately, a philosophy that deeply aligns with my own. i-D Meets: New Skater Girls beautifully encapsulates skateboarding’s core values as a subculture that is not only receptive to women but accepts them wholeheartedly.

Thursday’s presentation served as a forum that granted us the opportunity to hear from a panel of media and film professionals, many of whom suggested that we steer our documentary into a more gender-focused trajectory. Although I had considered the ‘rise of the skater girl’ avenue before, I nevertheless decided against this because I feared that pursuing an issue that fixates too heavily on gender would, inadvertently, turn our group’s documentary into a fight against the proverbial patriarchy. However, my initial apprehension of pursuing the ‘all girl-skater’ angle was immediately placated after hearing how receptive the panel was in seeing our group realise a film that fixates solely on women. I vividly recall the point being raised that, for once, we ought to leave the “boys out of it” and just have the girls pictured at the forefront of a sport that is practically synonymous with masculinity. Echoing this sentiment, Paul Ritchard understands that there isn’t enough coverage of women in skateboarding. In the Thursday tutorial following our presentation, Paul reiterated that our documentary would allow women to receive some of the exposure in a subculture that is typically dominated by males.

According to Paul, deciding to focus on the growing emergence of female skateboarding was “one of the good things” that came out of our presentation.

To further provide inspiration for our now female-oriented documentary, the panel recommended that we research Skate Kitchen an all-girl skate gang comprising of young, diverse women who are essentially democratising the skatepark with every kickflip, ollie and kickpush. Taking heed on the panel’s advice, I found that the group’s name is intended to reclaim the narrow, but equally widespread, expression that “women belong in the kitchen”. Adopting an ironic approach, Skate Kitchen purposely names themselves after this misogynistic tagline and not only redefines it through a feminist lens, but with a group of diverse women who are resoundingly unapologetic in the way they choose to live their lives.

Along with my group members, we put this research into action by chatting and acquainting ourselves with different skaters, both male and female, in order to divulge the feelings of intimidation as well as the eventual feelings of acceptance and self-acceptance that comes with being a woman entering such a masculine territory. Hosting an All Girls Progression Session every Thursday at 6pm, Riverslide saw a range of girl skaters coming together to hone in their technique. Some of the girls were as young as pre schoolers to young adults and ranged in skill level. It was refreshing to see so many girls attempting and successfully landing tricks in front of everyone even in spite of their skill level.

After traversing the park and acquainting ourselves with the skaters, we came across Jenna, a 22-year-old female skater who had recently moved to Melbourne from California. Speaking with Jenna made it apparent that while she may be many miles away from her neighbourhood, it is the feeling of liberation, community and friendship, afforded to her by Riverslide skatepark, that she is able to find that connection between her home in Melbourne and her home in California. A sentiment that will help to form the basis of our documentary.

The pitch delivered by Shanahbelle, Judrina and Bonnie was well-prepared, thorough and accompanied by compelling, evocative images. The decision to explore a young woman’s relationship with the ocean—and its role in alleviating some of Lucile’s turmoil during her battle with mental illness—is as interesting as it is provocative and will translate well into a documentary. The visual component afforded by film gives members a breadth of opportunity to capture the serenity of the ocean and, more poignantly, gives members the creative freedom to portray the healing impact that the ocean has on Lucile.  

The accompanying portrait of the documentary’s central character by the shore, effectively situates Lucile within her neighbourhood and sets the film’s tone as a plaintive, although expressive, exploration of Lucile’s journey in overcoming her mental illness. In addition, the following images depicting a wide landscape shot of the beach and Lucile in her bedroom, beautifully contextualises Lucile’s struggle with mental illness and how she is subsequently working towards overcoming what still remains as a social taboo today.

Although a wonderful topic, one that sheds light on an issue that often garners discomfort from audiences, the sensitivity of mental illness places a larger onus on members to ensure the care and safety of their interview subject. This means that their relationship with Lucile should be handled dutifully and with compassion. Overall, however, I am eager to see how a woman’s ongoing encounter with mental illness will translate into a documentary. The accessibility of the beach as well as Lucile’s home will make permission to film on-site much easier and stays within budget.  

Today’s tutorial was dedicated to familiarising ourselves with the cameras and sound equipment and developing our competency in filming our subjects eye lines and capturing them from different angles. To do this, my group and I completed a series of shots of our main subject, including a mid, close-up and wide shot as well as some moving shots where we tried to track our subject’s eye lines while walking pass us.

This exercise was helpful in experimenting with different angles and ranges of shooting to see how we can best capture subject. As this was both mine and my groups first time in using these cameras and sound equipment, the footage we shot could have been filmed with less exposure and more consideration of background noises.

Some of the struggles that arose from this exercise was getting our subject to speak unabashedly and responding in complete sentences. At first, we simply asked our subject who she is and why she chose this studio in particular. Assuming that she would reply in full sentences, our subject instead answered our questions as though it were a Q&A, making it difficult for us to incorporate flow within our segment. This parallels with Kim’s comment that in order to obtain fluid interview responses, our questions need to be pre-planned and framed in a way that gets the subject to answer these questions as though they are telling a story.

These past tutorials have been dedicated to planning and fleshing out the ways in which we would like to carry out our first shoot with Jenna. Understanding that she lives deep in the suburbs, away from the city, we wanted to be considerate of her time – as well as our own – and sat down as a group where Grace, Claudia and I, used these past two tutorials to come up with a detailed scheduling plan and shot-list plan. In these documents we organised a thorough list of shots we wanted to capture, from filming establishing shots of Riverslide Skatepark and Alexandra Garden, to close-up shots of compelling details of the subject (including bruises, scars or tattoos), we made sure to leave no stone unturned when creating a variety of shots that will enrich the diversity of our documentary. In addition to this, we put together an equally thorough scheduling list that we organised hour by hour, including additional information and comments embodying everything we wanted to achieve in that hour, how we are going to achieve this and how we will accommodate for any delays or interruptions during our filming.

By putting together a detailed scheduling plan and shot-list, our minds were finally at ease as we all had a clear understanding of what we need to accomplish in the few hours that Jenna is able to come out to film.

Today’s focus was the importance of pre-planned and considered questions that need to be established before recording an interview, or before putting anyone before the camera. Kim also raised the ethical obligations that we as film-makers have towards our subject, in which they should not feel a sense of separation between themselves and us as the interviewers, nor should we probe them for a desired response, or ask any questions that are intrusive or have the capacity to compromise their trust in us – this is what is known as a duty of care towards our subject. What this entails is a number of ethical considerations that need to be put forth when conducting an interview. This means that our relationship with the subject should not end once our documentary has. More specifically, we need to understand that the lives of our subject continues even after the interview ends, and how we portray them should not impact or cause harm to their reputation or emotion state if publicly viewed.

Thursday’s week 6 tutorial was dedicated to familiarising and becoming more confident in shooting different camera angles and movements. To ensure everyone had practice in a variety of filming styles, the class was allocated into groups of ‘hand held’ and ‘tripod’. Having been allocated to the ‘hand held’ camera group, the girls and I chose RMITs back alleyway as the sole filming spot to shoot our exercise. Interested in seeing how we could follow the prompt of shooting hand help clips, my group and I chose a rather unconventional mode of filming tracking and moving shots while still maintaining the clips stability. We achieved this by using a skateboard and turning it into a sort of dolly-tracking device, and having each member step on the board to film while another member pushed them either in front of or behind the character of the film. 

Admittedly, more work could have been done in order to achieve a better standard of filming such as setting up the camera, doing white balance and mic checks before shooting. Watching the playback in class, it was apparent that we needed to take more care in terms of lighting, ensuring that clips are not overexposed and, in particular, we needed to have better audio which could have been done by using a lapel mic instead of the standard mic that is, by default, attached to the camera.

We had the opportunity to look at everyone’s filming exercise which acted as forum in terms of refocusing our camera techniques and identifying the different areas of filming that need to be improved. Ultimately, the tutorial helped in showing us the importance of pre-production and refining our camera and filming technique to ensure clear and more crisp footage.

 

Located in Alexandria Gardens, the heart of the Melbourne Central Business District, Riverslide Skatepark is the city’s “biggest and best skate facility”. Bringing together skate pros and people of all ages and skill levels since 2007, the park has since become an iconic street landmark encompassing the nostalgic past of skateboarding as an underground subculture. At its core, Riverslide is reminiscent of skateboarding’s evolving nature from a sport, once replete with roughed-up masculinity and obscurity, to a mainstream sport that is now, more than ever, a widely accepted subculture of Melbourne and of the rest of the world.

Home to a wide breadth of individuals who all embody different ethnicities, ages and social backgrounds, Riverslide serves as a cultural site bringing together a community who look to the park as a place of acceptance, camaraderie and, in essence, a place of galavanting and belonging. Indeed, it is for this reason that Riverslide remains as a central facet of upbringing and identity for many locals, tourists and, for people like myself, a place for those who reside on the outskirts of the city and deep within the inner suburbs.

Yet, before this sentiment of comradeship, and the need for brother and sisterhood emerged as one of skateboarding’s core values, the culture itself was often met with public abhorrence and concern; particularly from those who dismiss the sport as a site for troublemakers engaging in juvenile misdemeanours and delinquency. In its initial years, Riverslide Skatepark was often looked down upon by a public driven by their preconceived notions of what skate culture represents. Indeed, it is these connotations of criminal, immoral and anti-social behaviours, associated with skateboarding, that usually took precedence over the culture’s genuine advocacies for diversity and support across all aspects of character, including race, age and gender.

To further explore the changing nature of Riverslide Skatepark and – contrary to earlier popular belief – the overwhelming support that accompanies it, I plan to interview locals who frequent the park, employees of the park’s accompanying café and even those who are not regulars of Riverslide Skatepark. Through the eyes of seasoned skaters, I am able to get a retrospective look at the park’s rich history and the developments that the site has seen since its establishment. After visiting the park, I spoke with one of their employees who had inadvertently shared some of Riverslide’s physical changes and briefly revealed how the site has grown aesthetically. In the beginning, the park, which hosts a variety of skating terrains including a selection of ramps and half-pipes, started off as only a foundation of brick and cement intended as the park’s actual skating ground. However, as time went on, an architectural trend seemed to form and every couple of years, the park would undergo a vibrant makeover that saw the skating obstacle course painted over in one bright uniform colour. Kenneth, the same employee I spoke with, went onto describe the ongoing trend, its consistency and how this has, in turn, become a unique ritual of Riverslide. Starting out as the cement’s natural colour of grey, then to a bold shade of red, then green to its now distinctive blue, Riverslide is eager to constantly renovate and freshen up the park’s aesthetic. Perhaps this is a cheeky ploy to have locals and spectators return to enjoy the updates made to the park.

When filming this documentary, I am eager to have my shooting style reflect the free-spirited nature of the skatepark as well as the different, but equally interesting, personalities that occur in this space. This will include handheld tracking shots that follow the skaters as they skate along the varying terrains of the skatepark; a decision put forth in order to showcase the raw talent and often cut-throat nature of skateboarding. In addition to the carefree atmosphere that I would like to convey, I am interested in capturing the street grime and grunge-like feel of the park, the literal blood-shed from shredding too hard and the determination to land the trick. To do this, I will shoot close-up footage of different artefacts built throughout the skatepark, zoning in on the street-art, graffiti and the contrasting garden-surroundings of the park to highlight the gruff nature of the sport. When conducting interviews with the skaters and spectators, however, I plan to incorporate a mixture of mid-shot angles set up on a tripod during moments of dialogue, so as not to distract from the message being communicated by the interview subject.

Through this documentary, I will convey the shifting perception surrounding skate culture, one that involved the initial but wide-spread belief that skateboarding is a sport more invested in rebellion than community and acceptance. In addition to the changing public bias placed on the culture, I am especially interested in exploring the increasingly diverse pool of people that come in and out of the park. Indeed, Riverslide Skatepark, one of Melbourne’s largest and most well-known skate facilities, has evolved drastically, not just in the sense that it has seen seen its fair share of physical renovations, but also its growing reputation as a space accepting of all people, from different walks of life. Hosting popular events from teaching kids to skate, to competitions sponsored by street-fashion giants like Vans, to having a girls-shred day, I thought it fitting to make the film’s tagline: skateboarding is not a crime. A sentiment that, now, people are slowly coming to terms with.

Link to video here

Our most philosophical tutorial yet, the class was posed with a series of questions that provoked discussion over the different meanings attached to neighbourhoods and these meaning often extend beyond the physical components of architecture and location. At the heart of today’s tutorial, we established that neighbourhood experiences can vary depending on scale, meaning the size of the neighbourhood geographically and distance. In addition, the identity we ascribe to a neighbourhood – or the characteristics that become innate to a neighbourhood – usually becomes more embedded depending on the amount of time that a certain community has stayed in the one place. However, this point was contradicted when we established that neighbourhoods, and the different connotations we associate with them, can change depending on the people who populate their area of residency.

We later discussed neighbourhoods in relation to ‘home’ – how the idea of ‘home’ is actually intangible, it is something that can be taken with you or change and develop as you do. It is a completely personal and subjective definition that can only be defined by the individual who has the power to ascribe the meaning of ‘home’.

 

This week’s tutorial saw us split into groups and sent out into the CBD under the instruction of performing various filming prompts. ‘Spectacle’ was to be the focal point of today’s tutorial and, in turn, the subject in front of the lens. Some would define the word ‘spectacle’ as something to “marvel at”, it is subjective and varies depending on what different individuals deem worthy of their attention. While others raised the point that ‘spectacle’ could be inherent within the architecture of different landscapes – triggering and recollecting memories – regardless of whether or not we are familiar with these places.

While out galavanting with my group, we admittedly weren’t the most creative or adventurous when carrying out the different filming prompts. Out of sheer convenience and time allowance, we shot at places including the State Library, the tower at Melbourne Central and the corridor connecting Emporium. Despite the simplicity of these location choices, it was how we filmed these artefacts, including our use of panning, close-up and panorama shots, that allowed us to communicate stories from the rich history of State Library and Melbourne Central to the modern urbanisation of Emporium.