"I wanted to break away from my last project, Yesterday's Future, and do something new – more of a low-key video, and nothing outrageous production-wise," explains Jarvis Nigelsky, a Vancouver-based skate video filmer/editor/producer. "City Of New Lights was the idea."

The first premiere held on the eve before Remembrance Day at Vancouver's Fortune Sound Club was indeed a memorable one, and set the momentous tone for the video project's cross-Canada premiere run.

"I was really nervous about how many people would show," Jarvis says about the kick-off premiere. "Luckily people came, and it was lined up down the street! For a 19+ event, I was really surprised that around 500 people showed."

The following Q&A with JN explores the details of CONL, and the multimedia vision he brings to the skate video table.

How did you select CONL's cast of characters?
Dustin Montie, Chad Dickson and myself have known each other for years – ever since we were a part of this movie I shouldn't even mention called Sk8 Life. I've always been stoked on Ryan Bonnell. He has a good push [laughs], which is why I took that photo of him pushing in front of the Vancouver skyline for the premiere posters. Bonnell lived with Spencer Hamilton in Vancouver, and Spencer was just down to go skate and get stuff done. Micky Papa was originally supposed to have a full part, but he had to spread his footage around to a couple other projects. Over time, I thought it would be good to have Micky and his best friend Arte Lew in a shared part. Josh Kline is Chad's roommate, and he's another guy that would always come out with us. We included him in a part with Lee Saunders.

The video also has Josh Clark's first feature part, but he seems to be removed from the way the other skaters are connected in this video. How did his part materialize?
When I was in Montreal in summer '08 for AM Getting Paid, I stayed there for an extra two weeks with Bonnell just to film. We stayed at Jai Ball's place, and Josh Clark lived in the area. Josh would come out with us, and by September '08 he came out to Vancouver for the Damn Am contest. He showed me some of his footage, but it ended up getting used in a Strange Brew montage. Josh was down to film for a full part and Trevn Sharp gave me the heads up when they just put him on the DC Canada team. It all worked out well since DC was one of the video's sponsors (LRG, Underworld, and Color magazine also sponsor the video).

How about the media partnership with Color?
I've known Sandro Grison since he opened up shop but we've never really collaborated on anything, so I approached him about it. It's great that the magazine is local, so it was a lot easier to coordinate things. Ideally I wanted to have an article about the video in the magazine (appears in Color #7.5, November 2009, which also features a sick cover photo of Chad Dickson from the video). It also worked out perfectly that the issue premiered at the same time as the video. Aside from the skateboard tricks as an obvious key thing in the video, I wanted to do something on a 3-dimensional media plane: look at it in the magazine, watch it online, and make DVDs available. Basically, give the project a big impact in a short amount of time. That was the plan.

You have a lot more technical knowledge aside from filming and editing. How do you attack your projects from a multimedia angle?
I try and look at a video project as a brand to start off with. For CONL I started with the riders, then the direction, and I set goals for the project – like what I'd like to see media-wise, getting t-shirts made, shooting photos for promotional material and stuff like that. I built a title, logo and a blog-based website around the project that gets regularly updated. I built a flash site as well that shows more photos and mini-bios about the guys in the video. I've been filming for countless years, so I always want to push my other skill-sets to a new level.

Micky Papa, bigspin frontside noseslide. Jarvis Nigelsky sequence.

The "Shine Your Light" contest was a pretty unique element to the video. Can you explain?
There are so many good skaters in Canada, and I wanted to give someone who isn't in my circle a chance to get involved. So I had this contest where anyone across Canada could enter a complete video part to appear as a bonus on the CONL DVD. We got about 10 good entries over summer '09.

And Adam Hopkins's part won it...
His footage is really good and edited well. He had a McTwist in there and a feeble down this big rail. Adam also won some shoes and clothing from our sponsors, and $500 cash that I put in myself. It's kind of ironic, because there was a photo of Adam at Leeside that was perfect for a promotional flyer I did for "Shine Your Light" early on. It just so happened he ended up winning the contest itself because his submission was good.

"You Can Cut It" was another contest (put on by DC Shoes and Color Magazine) that closed on January 1, 2010. The challenge was to download footage from CONL, and edit a part for prizes. Click here to watch the winning entry.

It seems like you trimmed the CONL's presentation down compared to your past work (The Substance/2002 and Yesterday's Future/2007)
With CONL, I knew it would go online so I didn't want it to be too long. It's 25 minutes. I didn't want to put hip-hop in there because Yesterday's Future was pretty much all hip-hop. This time, it was more what I wanted to do for music. The soundtrack kind of brings it back to the classic pre-2000 style of skate videos.

------------------------
Related:
Jarvis Nigelsky: Living For The Golden Hour
Beat The Heat Video
City Of New Lights: Toronto Premiere