FtS hopes to unify and expand the tricking community by spreading news, creating original content, and establishing a foundation for the next generation of trickers to push the movement to new limits.
“Welcome to the world of Tricking, Breaking, and Parkour; the new global phenomenon taking the extreme sports world and Hollywood by storm. These 3 urban athletic disciplines have captivated our youth and become a global sensation from their vast performances in almost every film, commercial, video game, or TV-show that features acrobatic stunts.” - http://hollywoodfilmandmedia.com/
There’s a new documentary out there featuring tricking, and I was lucky enough to be at the world premiere. My only regret about this film is that I should have shown up more than 15 minutes early as I was forced to sit in the second row, but let me tell you, a little stiffness in the neck was completely worth it. The film follows Travis Wong’s road to transitioning from stuntman to producer, King David’s journey to perfect his parkour, and Sammy Styles (aka one of the directors) road to overcome his chronic back injury to stay on top of his game as a breaker. After a year of development, the directors Samuel McKaig and Ian McKaig have produced something every tricker will be proud of.
I think the directors did an outstanding job showing how these three movements all have similar crossroads in the Hollywood scene, but yet are three distinct disciplines. The film starts out by giving a brief but concise history of each discipline. Throughout the film, the directors played close attention to keep each movement looking completely distinct from one another. The film does a great job balancing equal time to highlight parkour, breaking, and tricking. The tricking primarily features Travis Wong, but also shows Sammy Vasquez, Micah Karns, Marc Canonizado, Jacob Pinto, Cody Sanders, and a number of other tricking bosses.
The McKaig brothers did a fantastic job shooting and editing this project. Without ruining too much, there is a scene of the breaker Sammy Styles in the gym working out, and they put in a few special effects which blew my mind (as an editor). Also the way they shot King David’s parkour scenes with a steadycam was pretty amazing as well. I will critique the tricking shots though- as many of the shots were a little too close for comfort and sometimes it was difficult to see exactly what the movements were, but as a tricking editor, I probably am being a bit overly critical.
If you want to learn about the struggles of being a real athlete and trying to find a way to turn your abilities into a career, this is your Chapter 1. I believe this is a film every single tricker on the planet should see. I am very excited to see how this film progresses over the year through his film festival run. I have been told there will be a free screening sometime in April 2012 in Santa Barbara, California with 800 seats waiting to be filled. To find out more about this film, visit http://hollywoodfilmandmedia.com/.
This film is HUGE for tricking. It’s wonderful exposure and it brings tricking on the same pedestal as breaking and parkour are at now in the Entertainment world. 2012 is going to be year we got tricking known!
It’s Called Tricking - A documentary on the history and culture of martial arts tricking
It’s not tricking if you’re not having fun. Originating from martial arts kicks, tricking is a form of self-expression that blends kicking, twisting, and flipping into creative combinations. The tricking phenomena, driven by online video sharing, is a global community of athletes who see their art as not only an alternative sport, but a lifestyle.
Throughout 2010, Jacob Wolfman traveled around the country, grabbing whatever camera he could find, and went out and filmed some of the best trickers in the US and the World. Using only the equipment available at the local library, Jacob developed a 50 minute long documentary about tricking by simply letting the trickers in their own words, explain what it is that they do.
Featuring: Sesshoumaru, Gemma Nguyen, Mike Welch, Ben Atkins, Mike Chat, Jefferson Lewis, Emerson Doyle, John Vanek, Dave Cheatwood, Vellu Saarela, Michael Guthrie and MORE!
After you watch this project, be sure to check out Jefferson Lewis’ parody, “It’s Called Bombing” featuring Ben Atkins & Scotty Skelton:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFoqvrbsYYM ~~ Hahaha I love it Jayel!
This documentary’s creation of a result of a number of things happening in my life at the time. It was my last year of college, and I felt I would never have a greater opportunity right then in my life to make something like this happen. Secondly, through a wild happen-stance, I ran into an old friend, Jarius King. I hadn’t seen him in six years, and when I spoke with him, he told me that he was organizing an international bboy jam in our hometown, and that he was going to fly in trickers Grant Duong (GDong) and Sean Ellis (Sesshoumaru) to be judges for the first ever martial arts tricking battle at a breaking competition. I about lost my mind right then, and I insisted on being part of this project. Martial arts tricking - it was the perfect topic for my video project idea. I was a long-time follower of NASKA (see my other Youtube account, OldSkoolKarate if you need proof of my obsession), but yet at the same time, I was not really “a member” of the scene we know of as “tricking”, which made me one of the most well educated non-trickers in the game. I could and can throw tricks, but I never considered myself a tricker in the same sense that it’s used today. I considered myself a marital artist who can throw a few trick kicks. Anyhow, that’s getting off track. The point is, with the combination of my desire to film something, and two hugely inspirational trickers of mine coming into my hometown, I decided to take action. The plan… well there was no plan. I read a book about how to make a documentary. From there I decided I would have my project filmed and edited by the end of summer 2010. The plan was to film Sesshoumaru, GDong, and local Madison trickers and ‘see what happens’ from there. I had heard of Epic through Facebook, but I had never thought to go until then - I decided that’d be a great way to wrap up the project. At this point in my life my editing skills were minimal, and I everything was a learn-as-I-go process. I did not own a video camera, and oh yeah, I did not have a computer fast enough to edit/render the footage. All footage was captured through scrapping together cameras from here and there, and all the editing was done using the computers at the school library along with portable external hard-drives.
The first shot location, Breakin the Law: 7 Deadly Styles, in Madison, turned out to be AMAZING. I tried my best to get as many trickers to come as possible, and I even resorted to searching for random trickers on Youtube. That’s how I met Ben ‘Towels’ Atkins and John Vanek. Prior to this adventure, I had no idea who they were. I simply sent Ben a message on Youtube inviting him to come to Madison, and they drove the 8 hours and actually showed up. Between the time I invited these guys and the BTL7 weekend, I had become a huge Ben Atkins fanboy because I went through and watched a bunch of his hilarious tricking-related videos. To me, Ben and John were the fresh perspectives I needed because I had NEVER heard anyone treat tricking quite the liberating way the soon-to-be “Tricker House” would treat it. During BTL, I was in for another treat when it just so happen that THE Gemma Ngyuen was there too! I’ve watched Gemma grow up on NASKA, so it was quite amazing to run into her. BTL7, up to that point in my life, had been one of the best things that had ever happened to me. Ben and John told me about MG010, and from there it was on.
Going to EPIC Summer Gathering in Washington DC was an adventure. During BTL7 I was able to borrow my roommates super expensive camera, but there was no way he’d let me bring it with him on a road trip. Through a friend of a friend, I was able to get ahold of two handheld HD (1080i) cameras, and another friend had one of his own. I grabbed my two friends, hit the road, and drove from Wisconsin to Washington DC in one 18 hour drive. Days prior to our roadtrip, someone broke into my home and robbed me of my credit card, debit card, ipod, and digital camera. I filed a police report and was able to get the $1,000K robbed of me back, but in the meantime, I had took the trip to Washington DC with about $80 to my name. I sane person would have waited until their funds were fixed, but I felt I couldn’t pass this experience up for anything. I also missed my brother’s high school graduation for this trip. At Epic, I got to meet THE Vince Johnson, another big hero of mine. I also met the host, Jefferson Lewis, who I was shocked to find wasn’t a cocky egomaniac like I would suspect a person hosting an event this epic might be (pun intended). I also met THE Chris DeVera. I remember the first time meeting Chris D. When I told him I was the guy on the internet who posted all the old skool sport martial arts footage, I remember his eyes bulging out and going ‘YOU ARE?!’. You have no idea how it feels to have one of your heroes be excited to meet YOU. Chris D, you’re the man. Anyhow, I watched the gathering unfold, and filmed so much stuff, you wouldn’t even believe. We ended up getting an uncomfortable 45 minutes of rest Saturday night before driving straight back home all day Sunday. I don’t know how we did it. Epic Summer Gathering 2010, up until that point in my life, had been one of the best experiences of my life. Are you beginning to see a pattern yet?
At this point, I was flat broke. And the following weekend, was a NASKA tournament called AKA Grand Nationals (formerly the Bluegrass Nationals). NASKA was what I was familiar with, and I had two awesome friends invite me to tag along - Tyler Shaub and Mike Welch. I pretty much got a free ride/room and I am still extremely grateful for that. This tournament had a spring board tricking division, which was the reason I was so eager to go, plus I heard rumor that THE Mike Chat would be there. Turns out Michael Guthrie and Dan Pitlock were there as well. I really wanted to meet Mike Chat, but I no idea how. On that Friday of that weekend, I was standing waiting for the elevator, and I look to my right, and there he was, checking his Blackberry. I remember trying to figure out how to transform myself from ‘guy waiting for elevator’ into ‘guy wanting to interview you for the first ever feature length documentary about tricking/one of your biggest fans’. At first he was very polite and casually said he would sit down for an interview. Turns out, that term OldSkoolKarate was more powerful than I thought. Michael Guthrie apparently had told Mike Chat that I was “him”. From there Mike Chat approached me, and was genuinely excited to work with me. So eventually I sat down, and interviewed THE Mike Chat. I asked him pretty much every question I ever wanted to ask him, and I tried to be as real as I could. After hearing how much negativity there was towards the founder of XMA through some of my interviews the weekend prior at EPIC, I wanted to see if I could turn Mike Chat into the opposing argument to the ‘backyard tricker’ side of the story. I ended up asking Mr. Chat pretty much every question I ever wanted to ask him and was extremely impressed with everything he had to say. At some point I think I will upload the entire Mike Chat interview because he’s just so captivating and insightful. Towards the end of the interview, Mike Chat looked at me square in the eyes and said, “Go to Loopkicks”. He didn’t say it like it was a suggestion - he said it like I was Frotto of the Shire and I had been given a quest to destroy the ring that rules them all. Completely utterly broke, and still with no camera, I decided I was going to my first ever Loopkicks. I felt Loopkicks was going to be the grand hurrah. It had to be. It’s the greatest annual gathering in the history of tricking.
Typically, the library only lets you check out video equipment for 3 days, which is how I filmed for AKA Grand Nationals. However the following week was MG010- the legendary gathering many of you have heard about, but have never seen footage of. I explained my situation to the library and they granted me permission to rent out equipment for longer periods of time. SCORE. Granted, these are still consumer level hand held cameras. No special audio. No lighting equipment. Just a mediocre camera and a tripod.
With BTL7, Epic, and AKA Grand Nationals in the bag, I was on a roll. I had MIKE CHAT footage. I had SESSHOUMARU footage. I had footage of LOOPKICKS battling the DMV at EPIC. This project, was going to be monumental. Absolutely epic. I HAD to get to MG010. I asked my friend Tony, who came with me to EPIC and had supplied the camera equipment for that journey, if he’d come with. We grabbed the cameras from Shlee (thanks Shlee), and drove our asses to the middle of nowheresville Indiana where the legendary MG010 was going down. I had heard rumors, and during I conversation I had Dan Pitlock at AKA Grand Nationals, I had been warned I was in for a trip. MG010 was undoubtedly the most wild, out of control, chaotic hysterical gathering of people I had ever went to. It was a week long house party that Ben “organized”, but in reality it was just a group of carefree reckless kids. It was like a grand social experiment to push the limits of the idea of ‘no rules’. It was wildy fun, perhaps just a little too fun, if you know what I mean. By Friday night, 23 people were in jail, and I had a ton of rated R footage that would be extremely difficult to include in the project. But MG010 was completely amazing, and that’s where I met Geran Simpson, who a year later, would become one of my three roommates in Hollywood, California where i reside now.
Finally, Loopkicks. Tyler Shaub (aka KikTrix) who helped me get to AKA Grands, flew with me to be my ‘assistant’ cameraman at Loopkicks. I can’t thank Chris DeVera enough for all the help making this possible. By this time, this had been my third/fourthish gathering (BTL7 didn’t really count as I gathering because I hosted it and I had no idea at the time what a gathering even was about). I also need to thank my father, because it was with all his racked up airline miles on his credit card that I was able to afford the flight out there.
Oh and by the way - let me also point out, while all this was going down, I was creating Flippin the Script on the side. I wanted to grow Flippin the Script into the largest social networking source for tricking on the planet. It’s grown substantially in the past year, and I intend to keep working hard to bring it up to the next level.
At Loopkicks, I met THE Vellu. I had another one of those geek-fanboy moments meeting Vellu. I didn’t even recognized him because of his short hair. But I asked if he would like to be interviewed, and he kindly obliged. Later on that night he would go to battle Mike Guthrie, and the two of them would participate in the USA vs. EUROPE battle - the best battle of 2010 and the climax of It’s Called Tricking.
I took a bus trip from Loopkicks to LA as well where Tyler and I were graciously taken in by Tyler Bonura of XMA, Marc Canonizado, Caitlin Dechelle, and Jake Strickland. LA turned out to be a bust as I was trying to get interviews with Anis Cheurfa and Jeremy Marinas, but my ride situation just never worked out. I flew back home feeling as if I was finally set to finish the film.
The summer was coming to an end, and it was time to edit. Having no idea what I was doing was difficult. I used to come into the library, hook up my then three external harddrives (3TB in total), and edit away, until one day, I accidentally busted one of the drives. That moment, was my darkest hour in the entire course of the project. My summer’s worth of rendering and editing (I had been going to the library religiously in-between gatherings) was all gone. I was smart enough to have a backup plan, and was able to purchase a new hard-drive and re-capture all the footage that I had saved on tapes or another hard-drive, but I lost two solid months of editing work. But this project was just too important to give up on. I decided to forge on.
By this point, I figured I had enough footage, but I was so addicted to gatherings, I just couldn’t stop. I wanted to hit up Vince Johnson’s Trickadelphia but after being extremely broke to these other gatherings, I finally ran out of juice and never was able to attend. Next on the list was Drendt in NYC. It was a few months away, so I was able to save up the funds to fly out there. It was a pretty cheap flight, so that was cool. Drednt was awesome because at this point, I had so many friends there. ACB, Jefferson, Nate Fairbanks, the Macias’, and my man Tom Boyden (aka TBoyd) (tricker from Wisconsin who flew with me) were all there, plus many others. Drednt was great, but I knew the footage wasn’t going to be able to fit in It’s Called Tricking. I ended up going to Panda the following weekend in Toronto, again with my Wisconsin homies. Panda was crazy. Good old Ben, John, Dan, and Vellu were all there. I was certainly feeling at home by this point in the year.
It was approaching December, and I was going crazy. I had all this footage, over 70 hours, and nobody, except for the people at the gatherings who I had met, had any idea this was in the works. I had to let people know i was still working on this thing day and night, so I decided to make a teaser trailer. I worked on it for about a week, and for the first time ever in my editing career, I had that ‘feeling’ when I watched it. It was just too perfect, and I was super proud of it. I uploaded the video at 2-3am, and I remember people immediately losing their minds over it. I woke up the next day to a blizzard of comments, not to mention a literal blizzard outside. I was elated! Until I found a typo in the video. It was my masterpiece, and I couldn’t let a typo just slide by, so still in my pajamas, I ran to the car and drove through a snowstorm back to the library to make the correction as fast as I could, and re uploaded the video. I was disappointed that my most viewed video of all time, with over 200 views, had to be taken down, but I felt it was a smart move in the long run. Now with over 30,000 views, I see that was quite a good decision. You have no idea… the feeling… the amazing feeling you get, seeing your video being shared by thousands of people on the internet, and going from being a completely unknown person into becoming “Jacob Wolfman - the It’s Called Tricking guy” overnight. But I digress, the story has not ended yet.
Through a crazy coincidence, my professor needed someone to film her dance martial arts hybrid performance at the Smithsonian, and it just happened to be the same weekend as Epic Winter. So I got to go to Epic Winter as well, however Jefferson poured his heart out to me on camera, and I captured a great shot of Matt Milhoan’s first cart double full s/t double cork (I’m SO sorry I mis-spelled your name in the video man! so so sorry!). I had a lot of great footage from Epic Winter and I just couldn’t let it go to waste, so I sort of cheated a bit and glued the Epic Winter and Epic Summer footage together into one scene. Because of my film job I had the following day in the Smithsonian, I had a nice camera (with no audio), plus I used my handheld Sony cheapo Bloggie which I purchased for around $200 because I was going crazy being the only documentarian on the planet who didn’t own a camera or editing equipment. We also showcased the teaser trailer for It’s Called Tricking at Epic Winter. I had just uploaded the video the weekend before, and by Epic Winter, word had spread. I was so excited to see how many people were pumped about my project. Little did they know, at that point, I was only about 50% complete with my editing. In the video, I had set a public deadline for it to be complete by April 23, 2010, and I assumed I’d be able to get the video polished up well before then because it was my last semester of college, and I only needed 9 credits to graduate… or so I thought.
Then the second biggest hurdle of the project happened - it turned out, I was in fact 15 credits short of graduation, which put my workload far more than I anticipated, but I had to do it. I practically gave up what little social life I had, and went to town editing as frequently as I could between my 15 credits of utter nonsense. School became a second priority for this now biblical project of mine. My Opus. Well, ok, it’s not that great, I’m just being dramatic.
At this point, word had spread about the documentary, and Flippin the Script was beginning to gain a reputation. All very good things. The next step was to take everything I had learned about hosting a gathering from watching Ben Atkins, Jefferson Lewis, Chris DeVera, Jason Mello, and Yusuf Ahmed host their masterpieces, and decided to create my own — the “It’s Called Tricking” gathering. I was so proud to have members of the DMV crew, Ryan Rempfer, NTBS, EH, Nate/Micah, GDong and others from out of state (even guys from Kansas drove up) to support the project. The It’s Called Tricking gathering was off the chain, and people are dying for me to organize another gathering… so stay tuned for that.
Needless to say, the premiere weekend of the project, was the accumulation of exactly one year’s of insane intense work, fueled entirely by will power, and cost me only a few thousand dollars (I’m still paying for this project). Thank you everyone who came out for It’s Called Tricking and all the memories. It was an absolutely amazing experience.
And that about wraps it up. That’s the quick run-down on It’s Called Tricking. I ended up editing the project until the weekend before the premiere. A few weeks later I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The project was then screened at a number of gatherings including Epic Summer 2011, Drednt, OMG11, Kanga, a gathering in Hungary and it would have been shown at Loopkicks 2011 if it hadn’t been for technical difficulties. A few weeks after I graduated, I packed up my bags and headed west for Hollywood. I’m now living with three amazing trickers in the best city in the world for trickers. I’m continuing to grow Flippin the Script, and I’m also getting increasingly more serious about becoming a great tricker myself. Thank you for reading my story, for watching my story, and for supporting my efforts along the way. This project, certainly not the most professional piece of work ever created, is a milestone in my life, and I believe will someday be looked back as an important contribution to the tricking movement. If there is one thing I have learned through tricking it is the power of will. You CAN do ANYTHING you if you put your mind to it — to matter how great the odds. Do exactly what you love, and do not compromise on your goals in life.
Keep tricking. Keep dreaming. I appreciate every single one of you.
Trick on my friends.
Jacob Wolfman
To my Critics:
I wanted to be real with this project. As real as I could. To those of you who are mad that I highlighted the outrageous antics of Ben and John, or did not include enough ‘martial arts history’, didn’t show enough kicks, didn’t show enough dubs, didn’t do this or that, that’s just too bad. This was a project about the footage that came from my camera. It was not intended to be the Bible of Tricking. I’ve been told to my face “I’m not qualified” or that “someone more experienced should have done this”. I’m not stopping anybody from creating something better than what I have. In fact, I encourage it. I will help you. Others are upset with me because of the overall lack of tidy clean professionalism you might expect when trying to represent something related to martial arts. I wanted this project to be real, not phony. I wanted to show what these people are really like, and not what they wish they were like. I wanted to shake things up. I wanted to start a conversation. And I have. I have wildly succeeded. If I had the funds and resources to do this project over from scratch, I would do it all over again, but make it even better. You certainly have not seen the last of my contribution to the tricking community. Trick on my friends.
How you can contribute to bettering the world by re-naming your old samplers!
This idea will only work under the following conditions:
Your sampler contains the audio of a song in its entirety.
There is no other audio in your sampler (such as cheering, sfx, talking, etc).
If you have an old out-dated sampler, and you feel it doesn’t represent your best stuff, rather that delete it, or let it fade into the endless void of out-dated Youtube videos, why not give it a little more traffic by retitling it? If your sampler is simply a favorite song of yours, rename your video to the name of the song. When non-trickers are searching on Youtube to hear the song, eventually, hopefully, they’ll start to click on YOUR video instead of clicking on that lame video with the one graphic. So rather than having to look at a boring slideshow like this:
Instead, people will enjoy the same music, but it will be far more interesting to watch! Like this!
And in the future, so that other trickers may enjoy your submission to the world in years to come, add the words “Martial Arts Tricking Music Video” to the title. That way, everyone who contributes to this idea, will have their videos show up on the suggested video list. Let’s get tricking known!
EVERYTHING in life happens for a reason. My life has and had many uphills and downfalls and at the end of the day I’m grateful for every moment and every person that has stepped foot in my life, good or bad. I cannot emphasize enough how blessed I am to have the people I have around me.
Last night The DMV trickers had a HUUUGE session with the Kings of Connexion. That session was sooo hype!! It was like being at a gathering!! More pics and video will be posted soon!
