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Three ������ý filmmakers rolled the skateboarding experience into motion at the Vladimir Film Festival in Croatia with sound and lighting techniques that inspired a new perspective on the world.

On Sept. 19, graduate cinema students Andrew Frangella, Benjamin Stone and Brian Gray shared their participatory performance alongside Associate Professor and Cinema Department Chair Monteith P. McCollum, playing a multitude of effects to heighten the audience’s perception through skateboarding and art.

Stone and Frangella took a class together and put on a performance at the HCS Sculpture & Skatepark art center in Vestal, N.Y. After School of the Arts Founding Director Christopher Robbins saw their performance, he contacted the Vladimir Film Festival about it.

For months, they rehearsed in the classroom wing basement, incorporating cameras, paint, contact microphones, a green screen, loops and more.

“Using expanded cinema, we tried to recreate the way that skateboarding changes your view and the way that you look at the world around you,” Gray said.

“You’re navigating the world, and it’s changing in front of your eyes because you’re on a skateboard and you’re moving. We thought: How can we abstract that idea of constant movement and turn it into a performance?” Frangella added.

Adjusting for a new space

The performance in Croatia took place at the Astra Shoe Factory, an empty building with an open space down a long hallway that wasn’t equipped with much power. While it was a challenge to figure out exactly how to use the space, they came up with many creative ideas to make the performance special.

“It was a really interesting space to light and power and bring all these things into, because it was very much not set up for that,” Gray said. “The festival was very accommodating and helped us get all the things we needed to make this old building come to life and be this living, breathing participant in the performance for a night.”

The performance consisted of many scenes emphasizing the different processes they explored and using audience interaction to create new and exciting experiences. While they performed the whole thing twice, the scenes offered something different each time.

In one scene, the ������ý students used contact microphones and mylar. They had a few audience members skateboard over the materials, creating interesting sounds that the students amplified and manipulated. The scene also relied on cameras that recorded what was happening.

“The skaters were skating in front of cameras,” McCollum said. “And that was being fed into a video projection that was delayed.”

“The audience members worked together and played off of each other while we played off of the sounds they were making,” Stone added. “It was very interesting to see all the ways in which technology was interacting with them through us.”

Gray described how, in another scene, they had audience members use green paint on white panels.

“We had cameras pointed at the painters and then keyed the green out so that wherever the painters were painting, it would actually reveal video through the projection that we were feeding all of this into,” he said. “Some participants were more silly and playful about it, while others took it very seriously, so it was cool to see people approach that differently.”

Frangella described one more interactive scene, in which they had participants use instruments such as guitars, kick drums and even their voices to create music and visuals alongside their own 16-millimeter loop recordings. They also played with different lighting, flashlights and silhouettes to make images that were then incorporated back into the feed, forming interesting visual patterns.

“We had some fantastic musicians come in and totally augment the scene,” Frangella added.

Overcoming challenges

Their performance was a great success but came with a few challenges. The greatest issue they faced was packing and transporting all their materials from ������ý to Croatia. After being limited to the space of the classroom wing basement, they also had to figure out how to approach and make use of the new space at the Astra Shoe Factory.

“Taking what we had been working on and adapting it to this new space that we had 30 hours or so to finagle with and get used to was a challenge,” Gray said. “But we had been working really hard in the leadup, so we hit the ground running as soon as we got there.”

The students were able to transform the space into something incredible, and their performance received positive feedback from attendees and festival organizers. Robbins — who traveled to Croatia with the students — called the project “a standout” and praised their performance.

“They learned a ton, made so many connections and got to spend time in a part of the world they had never been to,” he said. “I believe the experience will have a lasting impact on their careers and vision, and I cannot wait to help put together similar opportunities for other students in the arts at ������ý.”