11 Mar “Off The Grid”
BMX riders/Call of Duty experts Liam Regan and Dylan Leggett have been piecing together this mixtape for the last little while, and it came out awesome! Featuring Ben Kavanagh, Matt Comeau, Dylan Leggett, Dan Donaghy, Andrew Low, Jacob Carlos, Liam Regan and Cyrus C.
I caught up with Liam to ask him a few questions about the project. Read on below…
Hey dude, thanks for letting us premiere this project on the site. I always get stoked seeing new footage coming out of the Toronto area. Looks like you guys have a pretty solid crew right now! I wanted to reach out and get a bit of background about the project. As a start, what motivated you to start piecing this together?
My pleasure, well to start I got a new cam at the start of covid which kind of pushed me to film a vid. Honestly, some skate videos from some NY crews made me want to get the cam and some BMX vids of course. I wanted to make a non-IG project with whatever I filmed until it got cold as I haven’t even had IG for over a year at this point. The video was filmed sporadically over the year out of random sessions with the normal people I’ve been riding with for the most part. The video honestly happened naturally. I would just pull out the camera here and there, knowing I would edit something when it got cold of whatever footage I had.
Who’s all been involved in the filming/editing side of things?
Dylan Leggett – @wizardwaldo and myself, but a large portion was Dylan’s natural eye/skill for what looks good while editing. I had a portion of it edited and lobbed it to him for some help/motivation to actually finish the project and he killed it. We just were vibing editing this and wanted to create something visually appealing as a lot of the clips could have just been Iphone filmed IG clips. We just edited it cool and put it in a full vid instead.
Quick question for any camera nerds (me), what cam/lens setups did you use for this?
Panasonic ag-hmc150. The Luxury guys use one I believe, also Brandon Sawchin always had one when I would see him. It’s a fun camera to film with. I think I can make simple tricks look cool on it. Also, the Ben Kavanagh clips were filmed on a t3i which I don’t use anymore. Those clips were over 2 years old and I never used them for anything, but I’m happy I could put them to use.
How long have you guys been working on this video? I feel like I remember you mentioning a while ago that you wanted to do a longer format project. I don’t think you had bought a camera at that point.
Ya I remember that random January session at Ashbridges. I think I pulled the trigger and bought it off eBay a day after talking to you about it. But ya last summer until the winter this was filmed over random sessions. We honestly didn’t get out as much as we would have liked, but I think we did well considering how little most of us rode over the summer.
In what areas did you guys film mostly? I definitely recognized a few downtown Toronto spots. Any favourites that you went back to?
Mainly the outskirts of Toronto and stuff in the city, not much in mind to go back specifically, but I have a pretty big spot folder on my phone at this point. We just choose a general area we want to ride, drop a pin for parking and go with the flow for the most part.
What have you found are the biggest differences between filming a longer format video like this, versus throwing an Instagram mix together? Do you find that your workflow or approach is different? You’ve been known to make some pretty sick little insta-joints with the sus crew, I feel like this is the logical progression of those.
I used to make a lot of IG mixes back when I had Instagram, they were fun but only 1 min so it was cool to actually put some effort into editing a bigger vid. It’s a similar process for me, at least the way I film, just on a bigger scale and a bigger cam ahah.
Do you have any plans to work on another video like this in the summer?
For sure, I will prob put a bit more vision into the next project and go in a lil more on the riding side. I think this vid just showed a bit of what I can do behind the cam so it’s only up from here.
Well thanks for taking the time to answer my questions dude, anything you want to add?
Shoutout to anyone involved. Shoutout to the Embassy and anyone pushing Canadian BMX. Shoutout to the Sus Crew and also Mike D, I definitely took some inspiration from filming with him over the years. He’s got a vid coming out eventually of clips from what feels like ages ago that we will have to bug him to finish! But ya hope you enjoyed the watch.