Sometimes you have to make your own opportunities. That’s what Patrick Ridder, Tony Cheetah, Kåre Lindberg and Olav Norheim did in order to create their new project, TV.EU. These four blade brothers traveled and bladed and filmed and then decided they had so much fun they wanted to do it all again. So they moved their project from “free” to “VOD” and now we’re here to help you know more about how TV.EU came to be and how making the flick impacted these four dudes. Without further adieu, here’s the story behind TV.EU as told to us by Patrick Ridder.

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You guys have the worst credits of any video I’ve seen (that I can think of). Which is to say you don’t have any damn credits. We just start with you and your track pants. So please tell me, who did what?
Ha ha,Tony came over to my place and we chopped it together. First idea was no text in the whole video, but I decided to at least say “thank you” to everyone who helped out. Who wants to read the credits?

What’s the exact story with TV.EU — when did the team officially take shape? And of course we saw today that you, Patrick, made your way onto the valo-brand.com team page. Nicely done.
Thank you. I think it was there already but it took shape the last 10 months.

What is your blading history like together? Were you guys shredding together on the reggs before this came along or was it a concerted effort like “Hey guys we’re the Valo EU team and no one’s gonna make this happen unless we do it ourselves?”
Two years ago Olav, Kåre and I went to Cali to blade, film, and hang out with Ivan Narez. We didn’t skate that much but we had an amazing time. So we became closer friends. Early this year Tony was on board and we decided to meet up in Barcelona after Winterclash and film a lil Valo Monday Maneuver deal. At the end we said, “Oh, we could do a proper Valo edit.” But then Tony came up with the idea to make a short video. We all get support from Valo but that was not the main reason to do this. We became very good friends and we like to skate together even though we all skate very differently. And we say thank you to the brand with this. Like Kåre said, we are friends with the same skates.

How about how this particular project came together; what was the Genesys (LOL Razors reference) for this edit and can you walk us through how it was planned and whatever? Where all did you end up traveling?
There was nothing planned, no concept, nothing! Just collecting clips and to see what we can get. We all filmed separately as well. Maybe people don’t know this but Kåre is from Denmark, Olav from Norway, Tony from Spain and I’m from Germany. So we all have pretty decent distances between us. But anyway, we met up in Barcelona, Oslo (I was in Chicago during that trip), Berlin, my hometown Mannheim/Frankfurt, and Olav and Kåre went one more time to Barcelona. It was very hard to meet up ‘cause we all struggle with money, and of course free time is very rare thing too.

Who came through with the housing and tour-guide hookups for you guys when you were out and about? Anyone deserving of some special attention?
Casa del Marc Moreno, five stars to him! Olavs’ place in Oslo. In Chicago I stayed at Matt’s parents’ house and at the “D.” I had very good times there. It felt like most of the time we stayed at my place or at Marc’s in Barcelona.

And how’s about you guys share a story about some funky shit that went down while filming? Good, bad… whatever. I know how it goes when you’re trying to DO something, so just spill the beans already.
Damn, I really can’t tell any specific story… there was a lot of funny shit every time we met up.

Olav is a very big fan of the rapper Future, and Kåre almost went fully insane ‘cause of the amount of trap hip hop that was played in my car. The car music was a funny issue every time with these hesh boys.

A bad story is that Olav fucked up his ankle very badly and had a blue elephant foot for a couple months. And Kåre broke his leg as he tried his ender.

So let’s talk the blading — is the flashing TV.EU logo animation a marker for everyone’s favorite clips? If not, what are each of your trillest tricks?
Good idea but no, it’s just an animation. Man, stop thinking so deep! Ha ha. My own favorite clips are the last three of my part. Olav’s neg acid on that long ledge was also very gnar — it had started raining and the ledge felt like ice. Tony has a quick maneuver, it’s a soul ao toe roll revert out. It’s a very sick picture with the sun in the back. Kåre’s ender is all-in-all my favorite clip in the video.

How many tries for you to get your line of backslide to shuffle to cab 180 to table roll to gap topsoul?
The one in the video I think is the second or third try. But I did a couple more after that cause I didn’t like that one at first.

Where is the ledge Olav does roll to bs roy to acid? That spot looked like a lot of fun.
It’s in Oslo. Oslo looks very sick and is full of spots, but it can be very cold up there.

What’s up with the random Tony clip at 6:50 while Olav’s been shredding?
Nothing, it’s just there… As you could see the whole video is different. There is no intro, the friends part comes second, no real credits… so there’s no mystery about Tony’s clip in there. I also have one clip in Tony’s section.

And let me just add real quick — that Kåre line backslide to ao topsoul fully out WAS HOT.

Oh yeah, who freaked the fish on Tony’s sweaty on the channel curb?
That was me. I just learned to film more twisted with the fisheye. You seen 18+? I like that kind of filming a lot.

What kinda sources did you guys pull inspiration from when it came to editing? Anything in particular come out that influenced the execution?
Not really… my skateboard homie said you can see a lil bit of the Supreme video Cherry in it ‘cause of the black/white, but there were no influences at all. Just playing around with Final Cut.

And what is everyone’s thoughts on the results? That’s not to say that the edit isn’t fun to watch or show a lot of really good blading — because it is and it does — but I make stuff in a lot of industries and it’s easy to get done with a project, be stoked on it, release it or whatever, and then immediately see the flaws or the things you wish would have been better or came out better or gone more smoothly along the way. So, like, what do you think about that? Anything come to mind?
First we thought “Fuck, we don’t have enough” ‘cause this summer was the worst we’ve had in Europe. But it turned out better then we thought. I’m also kinda new with my Panasonic HVX and I learned a lot about the camera while filming for this video. Like color, shutter speed, frame rate and all that.

I saw you ranting on the Book of Faces about receiving less initial support than you guys expected. I’m sure that it’s picking up with word-of-mouth, so I’m bringing this up because of your online comments and because I think expectations are a tricky thing. How many views do you think this edit would have had if it had just been posted on Vimeo and linked on Rollernews?
I don’t know… maybe not as much as a KCMO or a Franky edit. But probably 100 times more than it been downloaded so far. We will see when we get it out there for free one day. I just didn’t expect that it would only be a couple hundred paid downloads.

It’s cool what K
åre said “good quality content should be worth something no matter if it is a dvd or a download” and I agree. But it does seem like even though we all claim to know better, that a lot of people still get hung up on social media numbers and feedback loops. How do you feel about the quantity (of clicks) vs. the quality (of content) debate that’s ongoing in all facets of media these days? Would you have traded a small nest egg towards your next outing for a higher play count?
Of course quality over quantity. I got nothing to prove and I don’t have a goal in blading, ha ha. I just want to have fun, meet nice people, and do whatever I like to do. If you’re on the mission to turn pro, well, get in Franky mode and bring out 1,000 edits next year. But I stopped caring about stuff like that. Because I’ll go to work tomorrow and after that I’ll enjoy my free time. We got very good feedback from people I care about, so that’s cool with me. And I got a couple people stoked to go out and blade, and that means more to me than 50k clicks.

I just don’t get all these babies crying about what blading “needs” and “support here,” “support there,” but “Oh, $3.99 for some guys from Europe? No way!” They complain about paying $10 to see Kelso having a blast with his homies.

I don’t even think about if I should pay or not, or is it right or wrong taking money. Just pay if you like it, if not it’s okay too. I buy everything I like. $4–10 is no biggie. But yeah, there is nothing wrong with paying for people’s work.

Okay I’ve probably asked way more shit than you expected and sorry to get heavy. I could have just said “Yo these doods is tight buy dat flick” but sometimes we need more than that. And on that note, have I missed anything you guys want to talk about?
I think not. Well, we’re working on something very nice for spring/early summer. And yeah…”buy dat flick.”

Then that’s it! Get out of here and go do something productive like take a shit or drink a beer.
Alright, Burgermeister. Thank you!

But before we go, one last thing — the flick is all black and white so I just want you to let everyone know, did you guys cover the small orange wheel quota?
Ha ha ha, those Canadians got too much free time. No color wheels in this video and no wheel is bigger then 57mm.

Buy TV.EU HERE

Watch the trailer: