Geoff Campbell

Geoff has been a key part of the Melbourne and Australian skateboarding scene for years from filming iconic videos with all the homies to being the Nike SB Australia team manager. He has played a key role in bringing the next generation of big names in Australian skateboarding to the screen for you to feast your eyes on. We sat down with Geoff to chat about some of the projects he’s worked on and how he’s coping with the current lockdown from COVID19.

 

Vital Statistics - Age, Years Skating, Sponsors, Day Job, Residence 

 32 

Around 22 years skating

 I guess Pass~Port, FastTimes, and Modus…I haven’t received any official booting’s yet so I’m still in I guess.

I am the Nike SB Australia team manager.

I live in Melbourne.

What does a usual day for you entail being the Nike SB Australian team manager?

I always find it hard to explain this, every day could be different. Some of the tasks involved on any day could be ordering shoes for the team, forecasting shoes & apparel for future seasons for the team, filming for videos, working on a video edit, speaking to team riders about plans for footage or upcoming trips, a lot of planning really. Phone calls, speaking with shops, budget plans, reporting back to higher-ups.

 

You have made some very impressive skate videos over the years such as Secky Presh, Cunnies Box, $21.50 and Duncans. How did making Passports KITSCH and Nike SBs DISC differ from making the others? 

 Thank you. I think the main two differences are having certain limitations on the crew I’m filming and then what can be put in the final edit.

When I was making all of my own videos I would really just try to get footage with any friend’s around on the day and anyone and everyone could be involved no matter what brand they ride for. Obviously making a video for Nike or Pass~Port I am just filming with people on those teams, therefore I am hitting up just a certain crew at the time and really trying to make sure they are getting the footage they need for the video.

There are certain things I can chuck in one of my own videos that perhaps wouldn’t fly in a video for a brand. For the most part it’s much the same though, just get out there and try to get good/interesting tricks on good spots. Pretty simple.

 

What are some of the more memorable moments of filming for the KITSCH video?

 I think always with videos the best memories are just the trips involved or certain moments when after a lot of effort and work the tricks finally worked out.

We did a trip up the East Coast of the USA from North Carolina to New York, that was great! Western Australia trip for the Bidgyadanga park opening was a really special experience plus we managed to get some good footage in Perth and Broome before heading to Bidgy. Going to Wellington with Glenn and Bernie was cool, hearing their stories at different spots around the city was great and getting some clips in the areas they grew up skating was nice.

 

How about for the NIKE SB DISC video?

Same deal, just great memories of  the good days when things worked out. Ben getting the insane crooks around the curved metal seat in Docklands, that was probably one of the first tricks I filmed of him after Medley so it was good to get that. Once we had that it set a standard for all of Ben's footage and the project. 

From there the project was really just formed by Ben and I filming a lot in Melbourne and then Rowan being productive and having a lot of footage with Cozza and Brendan up in Newcastle. Towards the end I drove up to Sydney and Newcastle and we spent a week all together getting last minute stuff. On that trip, Rowan got 5 clips on the eve of his 18th birthday, we got back to his house around 1am (1 hour into his birthday) and had some beers and celebrated. That was a good and productive trip. Gotta love that.

 

 A lot of people reading this might not know the lengths you go to film a certain line or trick for a video of this caliber. Can you give us a little insight as to an example of what it can take to get even one usable clip?

 Yeah I mean where do I start with that…there are so many factors that can get in the way of getting any given clip. You have security kicking us out, rain, wind, a car parked in the way of the spot, pedestrians, camera/equipment failures, broken boards, injuries, spots capped, etc, etc. Any of those things can get in the way but then also you’ve got the issue of the skater even being able to pull the trick off. 

Obviously, if people are filming for a decent sized project they are trying to push their skating to some degree so of course, it is never a guarantee that the skater can even pull the move off on the day even if all the other factors are on his/her side. 

Plenty of tricks I have filmed over the years I have been back to the spot with the skater multiple times and depending on different factors day to day it may have taken 5 or 6 sessions spanning hours each day to finally roll away from 1 trick that will end up a 3-second clip in the final video.

It’s torturous at times but there’s no greater reward than seeing the skater pull it off after all that work and the happiness getting it all on footage brings.  

 

 You are currently injured and I feel for you but can you give us a little rundown of your injury and if it's making you mad or getting you hyped to get back on board to show your team riders what's up?

Yeah, I have been injured now for a long time. There’s nothing really good to say about it at all, to be honest. I originally completely tore my ACL in December 2017. At the time I didn’t have private health insurance so I didn’t get surgery right away. After about 8 months of no skating, I started skating again with a knee brace which worked for a month or two but then I slipped out on a ledge and it buckled again. After that it started collapsing on me all the time, I couldn’t skate at all so I booked in and had surgery in April 2019. After going through 9 months of rehab and physio after the surgery I got back into skating very lightly… just skating a flat ledge… I was feeling good and then one day I slipped out on trick and my knee collapsed again. Off to hospital to get an MRI scan and sure enough I had done the exact same thing.

Right now I am waiting for the surgeon to be able to do elective surgeries again and then he is going to try a different graft and a couple of slightly different ideas from the last surgery. I will rehab it again and then hopefully in a year or so I will be skating again. It’s pretty crazy. At that stage it would have been about 3 and a half years since I first injured it. It’s depressing, to say the least. I never imagined this was where I would be at the age of 32 but let’s hope after the next surgery I can get back into it and keep skating at some sort of enjoyable level well into old age. 

Fingers crossed.

 

Aside from Melbourne, which we know you love, can you tell us where (and why) you would like to skate all day every day if you had the choice?

 Anywhere spacious with good ledges and a variety of sized obstacles to mess around on. If it could be anywhere it would be Love Park in its heyday…”Big ledges, little ledges, long ledges”….you know how it goes. Other than that, places like Stalin Square in Prague, Milan Central train station, just anywhere where you can hang out, have a crew of friends and spend the day skating and sinking some beers too. I would also like to check out Paris properly and see what all the rage is about. I have only been there for 4 days over a decade ago but over the last couple of years it seems to really thrive as the hot summer skate destination, it looks like a good place to be for the right months.

 

DISC gave us an insight as to what the Australian NIKE SB level of skateboarding is. Can you tell us who you think from that squad will absolutely blow minds on a worldwide level in the years to come?

 It’s pretty plain to see that Jack O’Grady is on fire right now, I think he is already blowing minds on a worldwide level and I’m sure he has no plans of slowing down. Rowan Davis of course too. The last time he was here I think he really showed us how insane he is with the gap to 5050 on the latest cover of Slam (and the wallride cover before it too). Ben Lawrie, I obviously spend a lot of time with him in Melbourne so I know everything he’s been up to lately but he is always killing it and constantly improving. He skates so much and the progression is constant…only 5 or so years ago he was just a skate rat grom at Lincoln Square and now he’s one of the sickest around. Noah Nayef, Sam Sutton and all the Sydney crew really kill it. I’m excited to see Hayley Wilson try to get busy filming some more stuff now the Olympics have been pushed back a year and she can have some more time to hit the streets.

 

So now we are in stage 3 restrictions due to Coronavirus. What's next from here for you and your upcoming projects as a result of this current set back on society?

 Yeah, it has definitely thrown a halt on everything for a bit. All projects have had to slow down and, depending on how long this goes on for, may affect the plans for release dates. It’s frustrating of course but when you remember everyone is in the same boat and there’s no quickfire solution you’ve just got to go with the flow, try and find the positives in the situation and use your time to prepare for things when life is back to normal. I get out and ride my bike for exercise and look for new spots. If I find anything good then I know down the road it’s going to help when we can go out and have some new stuff to hit and try and film on.

 

Any last words?

 Thanks to everyone who has helped me out in any way along the road. Also thanks to anyone who has supported the videos I’ve made or been a part of. It is always nice to hear people are stoked on a certain aspect of a video or a skater involved.

 

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