En Passant – Flo Mirtain
Filming a part is obviously never easy but the level of nause Flo put himself through for this one is almost comical… And I’m not just talking about the global pandemic / lockdown, that’s been the same for everyone so that doesn’t count. I think I’m just going to use this ollie as example as I’m staring at it. Fabien Ponsero who shot this (along with the rest of Flo’s interview) lives in Barcelona, so that means flights to a different country, which in 2020 was of course not something that could be done particularly easily. For that exact reason even if nobody was around to film, on days when Fabi was in town Flo kind of had no choice but to make the most of it and try shit anyway… Like this ollie. Actually first maybe take a good look at how ridiculously far that ‘bank’ is, the state of those cobbles and try to imagine trying to retain any kind of speed on the rollout. Now after having successfully flung his carcass off that bench and onto that thing a few times for the photo, Flo went back to do it again with Guillaume Colucci, only to later find out that the VX had decided not to record the trick (ah the joys of being so emotionally attached to cameras that came out over 25 years ago…). Then on day 3 of this nonsense, the already fragile piece of audio-visual equipment was completely obliterated on an attempt where he kicked his board out (ah the joys of filming with people that love to get up close and personal with that fish-eye…). On his 4th time back he did eventually end up getting the footage but still, that’s a whole lot of splatting for a 3 second clip, and I’m sure the extent of just how much ‘skateboarding sucks‘ sometimes was probably once again very palpable for our dear Flo. Especially given the decision to use this pre-historic camera was taken a few month into working on the project, meaning he’d already had the pleasure of refilming a bunch of the tricks he’d already logged in High(er) Definition, which in itself is kind of funny when you think about it. But it of course wasn’t Flo’s first rodeo (in fact his interview in the new mag is all about nostalgia and the feelings that come with suddenly realising you’re no longer the youngest guy in the van) and he ended up smashing it regardless. I think the amount of humans that have rolled away from mid-ledge flip back noseblunts (as in back to regular and coming from the side) can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.
