Devin FeilOSS team rider/filmmaker Mike Mastroni in Denver, with pastry.This week, OSS is releasing their second DVD, a follow-up to last year's "Football" DVD. Entitled "DNVR NGS," the anti-vowel video was based around the team spending a month in Denver, Colo., and the DVD will be available free of charge with all OSS clothing orders. As the arrival of the DVDs approached, Adam Grandmaison of OSS hit us up with the idea of doing a short Q&A with the DVD's filmer/editor Mike Mastroni, and because we like dudes that ride weird stuff like cows, we of course said yes. This is Mike Mastroni on the making of the new OSS video, available via the TheComeUp web store.
ESPN.com: Who is the hardest OSS team member to film, and why?
Mastroni: I definitely couldn't narrow it down to one person in particular but we have plenty of people on the team who are very set-up oriented riders, like Tate Roskelley, myself, Jake Seeley, Alex Platt. And then there are guys like Craig Passero, Charlie Crumlish, and Gabe Brooks who can pretty much kill you put anything in front of them. Usually the set-up guys are more picky and usually take longer to find their stuff and all that, so naturally they will be harder to film than the others.
Who is the hardest OSS team member to edit, and why?
Again, I wouldn't say there's one. I couldn't see editing a section of one person being any harder than another really. With this video though, the real trick was making every section flow nicely when working with clips of Platt or Gabe (who are usually doing something big and fast) vs. groundhogs like Adam or Charlie. Putting many different types of riding together into mix sections that aesthetically made sense to me was definitely the hard part.
Putting many different types of riding together into mix sections that aesthetically made sense to me was definitely the hard part.
--Mike Mastroni
Do you have to commit to putting down the camera to get your own clips or do you just wing it and hope for the best?
When I am healthy it can definitely be frustrating, but on this trip it wasn't too bad because I pretty much came onto it still recovering from ACL surgery in May. My mentality was pretty much 100% filmer. Towards the end of the trip though, I had seen a few specific things I felt like I could do and managed to designate some time for those clips when we had a smaller crew. Honestly I'm just really happy I was able to get as much stuff as I did given the circumstances.
What lessons have you learned about filming and editing a BMX DVD since the first OSS DVD?
I think maybe just a 'simplicity is better' kinda thing from an editing perspective, and as far as filming, I think now I just tend to look at things from more of a VX-style standpoint, vs. trying to make the DVX look HD or epic or something. More camera movement, more faces, more personality, more zoom, more fish, and solid angles were all things I kept in mind during the whole process. Basically we set out to ride an entire city for a month, have a bunch of fun, and create a video that really captures that vibe and conveys how our time was spent as a team to the viewer. I feel that was accomplished, so I'm stoked. It was also the first DVD I've done since "Football" and from that, I've definitely learned many lessons in things like audio, frame rates, nerd knowledge.
Devin FeilBump jump over the channel to feeble by Charlie Crumlish.Why did the team choose Denver to make the follow-up DVD, and was Leif Valin spotted at all during the making of the video?
I think Adam and I were sitting around the living room with everyone and we were just kinda pitching cities back and fourth. Denver was in the mix and we agreed that we should go somewhere that we felt was relatively untapped in terms of street riding, as we felt it was, and then the wheels were in motion. Leif Valin was not spotted. However, at one point, we drove by a bike shop and Dustin Arp was like, "Oh by the way that's where Leif Valin works" or something like that. I think it was him. He could have also been talking about Adam Baker. How I could ever get those two confused is a mystery to me but it was something along those lines.






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