Jesse talks Ransack Rebellion part

"Here is my video part from "Ransack Rebellion" in full on YouTube.  Ransack was an interesting year, a good year, in a lot of ways our best year ever, although the movie didn't get the hype as some of the others it felt like the right message for that time for Think Thank.  The whole rebellion part was cool too because it happened to coincide with the 99% Occupy movement, I think it was a little bit of a collective unconscious thing going on their.  We always liked jibbing junk and doing more with less and the idea that it would be a rebellion against waste, like a rebellion against waisted opportunities, was really fun for me.  Sean and Pika and I had a conversation pretty early on as well about the fact that Brain Farm was going to be coming out with Art of Flight at the same time and we knew they pretty much had a monopoly on epic jaw dropping scenery, cinematography, and next level backcountry riding.  Basically they had a lock on "beautiful".  So we wanted to have a lock on "ugly".  We open the movie with smoke stacks and a rainy garbage dump in blown out black and white with some extra grain.  That sort of set the pace.  It was fun as well making a movie that wasn't supposed to bright and happy and orange and cones and "fun".  It was like no, we're rebelling, against garbage and against what we have become comfortable being.  Now, what comes to life at the end is never all you hoped in the beginning, but I was happy to say that Ransack from tip to tail achieved the aesthetic mood we were hoping for.

As for my part it was a good year, in retrospect maybe will be marked as "the last year of the one footers" for me because I got very hurt that summer doing one and still as of this moment haven't tried another almost a year and a half later.  There were a couple of things in Ransack that I had been working on for a few years that only got done right for this part.  Like the cab 5 fastplant indy.  People liked that a lot, but I had actually done that trick in the previous three video parts, just not with a grab and not as solid.  It goes to show how much doing a thing right makes a difference in communicating the radness to people.  Also the hippy hop to stairs, I was stoked on that because I had wanted it for years and because I was wearing an Austen Granger Has a Posse tee shirt when I did it.  Anyways check it out:




Another thing I'm remembering about this was it was when the movie Black Swan came out and I watched it on the plane on my way up to Alaska for our spring session.  In the movie Natalie Portman's character actually (SPOILER ALERT!!!) has to kill herself to achieve where she want's to be artistically as a dancer.  Not physically as a dancer but where her head needed to be, the emotions that her dancing could communicate only after she took it to a very dark place.  She was all in.  This idea resonates with any snowboarder filming a video part.  So on the plane I came up with the idea of going "Black Swan" on the trip.  It worked for a bit, I got myself out of my comfort zone.  I filmed the picnic table half cab wheelie bs 3 over the dirt gap, the double one footers on the oil tanks and the opening shot on the red curb, the weird triple line one footer beres nose press thing.  Then the ugly side of "Black Swan" reared it's head when I tried to bs 3 one foot over the foundation gap (it's been in some movies, you'd know it if you saw it).  I had it so good but the snow there is super shitty and crystalized, like little miniature ice cubes, and it's extra slippy stuff on your board.  My foot slipped off and I did the splits and my knee (patela) dislocated and I ripped my snow pants in half.  My knee went right back in but it was a rude awakening, Swan style has consequences. It came back quick but not all the way I think.  The next trick I filmed was only like three days later it was a line up in the junk yard by my house and Mertz shot what would later be a Freerun Magazine cover and due to my Cobra Dogs hoody earn me "don't let this guy pay!" status.  I filmed the rest of the season and got close to that Swan feeling but never quite locked it again.  Oh well maybe this year I'll be able to bring that Swan back!

I want to write more stories about Think Thank parts, this is pretty fun.  The internet!  It's good for stuff!"  

Jesse Burtner