Char Leigh, mbatbmx.com: This video is a compilation of the best riding footage assembled by Chris Rye and Marco Massei during 1995. What you'll find in this video are highlights from contest coverage and scene reports from the '95 season of Props Video Magazine. Various riders such as Dave Mirra, Jay Miron, Trevor Meyer, Day Smith, Michael Steingraber, Kerry Gatt, Todd Lyons, Dennis McCoy, Ground Chuck, Robbie Morales, Joe Rich, Taj, Smoker Dave, Brian Vowell, Pat Murphy and others are showcased in this 'yearend special.' Although dated, the video is worth the viewing because it's a piece of history. 1995 is arguably the last 'dead year' of BMX, before the big BMX boom that we know of now came to existence. It's amazing to see how much BMX has progressed since then. This video did an excellent job of capturing the incredible vibe that existed in BMX during this time period. If you weren't riding during this period, you really missed out on a lot, and this video is a great way to catch up on history. Although it's out of print, if you can find this video (thru a shop or a friend), give it a shot, and I'm sure that you'll like it.
Kieran Chapman, www.ewirezine.com: If you've seen every Props to date, maybe this video isn't for you; but for me, who's seen only 2 or 3 Props in my life, this is great. A half hour of the best stuff from 1997's Props series - contest footage, interviews, riding scenes, and, being the freestyle version, no BMX (racing, that is). Most of the contest footage is from the ESPN and MTV comps; you might've seen it before (on TV or one of the many videos featuring such footage), but it's still some of the best riding you'll ever see. I won't even try to list some of the best stuff on this video... there's way too much.
All the "big names" (Mirra, McCoy, Hoffman, and Miron) are featured, plus Joe Rich, Luc-E, Chad DeGroot, Taj, Chase Gouin, Dave Freimuth, Colin Winkleman, and a lot more. The interview segments are pretty short and include the likes of Rick Moliterno, barspin master Ryan Nyquist, Andrew Faris (bizarre), Brian Tunney, and others. There's also rad stuff from the Props guys' visits to other scenes, including Boston, Pennsylvania, Austin, POSH, San Fransico, plus a bunch of stuff from Woodward. You also get one of the most brutal crash sections I've seen in ages. Flatland is a bit under-represented (as usual), but the tricks featured are amazing and will keep anyone confused for while. Plus, after the 30-minute video is over, there's another 30 minutes of the entertaining credits footage from all of '97's Props.
Don, www.bmx-test.com: This video has a bunch of pros: Mirra, Taj, Rich, Miron, Garcia, Nyquist, Lavin, Nastazio, and many more.
It doesn't have rider sections but sections like dirt, street, contests, jams, crashes, there are 2 contest sections and 2 dirt sections.
The box says profiles and bios but there is no talking in this video just music and riding; but otherwise it is good.
The dirt sections range from the DK Dirt Circuit to underground trails.
The comps range from the X-Games, B3, and skateparks.
Best riding from the 1999 Props Video Magazine Issues.
Featuring Josh Stricker, Dave Osato, Joe Rich, Chad Kagy, Mike Escamilla, Gonz, Dave Freimuth, Mike Ardelean, Ruben Alcantara, Ruel Erickson, Chris Hallman, Chris Duncan, Jay Miron, Zeb Williams, Jimmy Levan, Ian Morris, Cory Nastazio, Andrew Faris, Nate Wessel, Jamie Spritzer, Taj Mihelich, Brian Kachinsky, Ralph Sinisi, Afro Pat, Jim Rienstra, Chris Doyle, Ryan Corrigan, Tom Haugen, Marcus Wilke, Scott Wirsch, Ryan Nyquist, Punjab, Joey Garcia, Troy McMurray, Stuart King, Josh Heino, Jamie Bestwick, Bristol, Butcher, Kris Bennett, Garrett Byrnes, Pat Juliff, Dennis McCoy, Mike Tag, Mat Hoffman, John Parker, Shawn Dorton, Ron Kimler, Todd Walkowiak, Mike Griffen, Shaun Butler, Fuzzy, Dave Mirra, Clay Brown, Luke Norton, Jerry Galley, Matti Rose, Jason Enns, Mike Andrews and more.
Music
Benzito | Props Theme
The Strike | Turning
Boxer | Georgia
The Juliana Theory | This Is Not A Love Song
The Wayouts | Better Days
Quest For Rescue | Pain
Korea Girl | Under the Sun
Sick Of It All | Pass the Buck
Toe To Toe | Giant Killer
OS101 | Six & Sevens
Released in 2000.
Running time: 22 min
Riders: Brian Tunney, Dylan Worsley, Chad DeGroot, Chase Gouin, Brian Ryback, Michael Steingraber, Aaron Behnke, James White, Nate Hanson, Akira Okamura, Leif Valin, Daniel Rigby.
www.webmx.net: Voilà de quoi botter quelques fesses de riders prétentieux. Le niveau est démentiel !!! On retrouve évidement les ténors comme Chase, Chad DeGroot, Daniel Rigby ou le japonais Akira Okamura. Les musiques sont variées et changent un peu du Hip-hop classique. Un peu d'originalité ne fait pas de mal !! Le défaut de cette K7 ? Si à la fin, vous regardez le compteur de votre magnétoscope, vous constaterez qu'elle ne dure que 22 minutes...
Patrick Schoolen, www.theflatlander.com: After concentrating so much effort on their Road Fools series, Props has finally turned their attention to flatland with their newest video "Groundwork: a comprehensive guide to modern flatland." All I can say is, thank you Props.
This has been a long time coming. Chris Rye is a flatlander as well as arguably the best videomaker in BMX. What he has brought together here is a flatland video like no other. No, it's not the best video ever made but it is indeed one that every flatlander needs to own. This video brings into perspective the passion a rider has to progress his riding while spending an eternity alone in a parking lot.
Highlights of the video:
The incredible difficulty of the tricks done by Dylan Worsley -- can you say cross footed hiker jugglers?
The smoothness of the German style cat Michael Steingraber will motivate many kids to immediately take off their brakes. Too bad they probably won't have the skills Michael possesses.
Dan Rigby's potent combination of mind blowing combos and incredible smoothness and originality. It's no wonder Dan is now finishing consistently high at comps.
A lot of people say Aaron Behnke's tricks are not that hard. Regardless if you believe that or not Aaron sees ways into and out of tricks that nobody else does and his originality is truly inspiring.
Other riders in the video are Brian Tunney, Chad Degroot, Chase, Brian Rybak, James White, Nate Hanson and Leif Valin. Every rider has a short but intense section on the video. The disappointments were few. What were they?
The video is just over 22 minutes long. I felt like I had just saw the commercial for the video and waited for the "real" one to start. Fortunately the video is so good I just watched it over and over so it seemed longer that way.
It would have been nice to see more than one minute of Chase. Is he that elusive?
Where was Kevin Jones? I know he was filmed for this video but then he is absent from the final product? This probably has something to do with a rumored new video in the works from Mark Eaton.
The bottom line is that although this video is short, it is indeed one of the best ever made. Every flatlander needs to own it.
Jon Dudzinski, www.zerosweep.netfirms.com: Props is known from their long line of awesome video magazines and the Road Fools Series. When the word that got out that Props was coming up with a flatland video, everyone got excited.
Brian Tunney hit some really good stuff that I didn't know he was capable of doing such as a big hang-5 walk around deal where he'd go from the hang-5, to a fork wheelie, and step back into the hang-5. Dylan Worsley hit some dope lines like a hang-5 jumped into a wheel chair glide and a few long cross footed hitch hiker jugglers. Chad DeGroot was doing some rad stuff such as his no footed manual where he throws in two barspins and keeps rolling. Chase was going off with rollaids inside and out of all his links. Nothing on the front wheel. Brian Rybak was doing some really fast stuff like a squeaker where he flips the bars four times holding the seat. Michael Steingraber's stuff was shot out in front of a museum in Germany. He had some great dump truck links among other things. Aaron Behnke hits his short and technical links. James White is in his 40's but is still ripping it up like he's 18. Really good stuff like a half-hiker kickflipped into a cross-footed, one handed, rolling circle-k. Nate Hanson did stuff like a 360 finger flip into a stick-b. Akira Okamura goes off with some really awesome upside-down megaspin links and really fast rolling front wheel stuff. Leif Valin was sporting his pull up socks and hitting some some cool stuff. Daniel Rigby does the same stuff he always does- really cool spastic steamroller links with spastic hikers thrown in here and there.
The quality of the footage is surperior. Very clear shots and good angles. Even some extra effects thrown in like the "shawdowed" shot of James White.
The soundtrack in the video is really good. I think it goes good with the riding. Many people don't like the soundtrack at all though, this is just my opinion.
Kieran Chapman, www.ewirezine.com: Props' first foray into the world of flatland-only videos is subtitled "A comprehensive guide to modern flatland." That's a pretty big claim, but whether Groundwork is such a guide or not, it's a damn good riding video with some of the best flatland riding you'll see today. The overall feel of the video seems to really push the stereotype (however true it may be) of the lone flatland rider practicing alone in a parking lot - a stark contrast to many street/dirt/ramp videos which usually has pretty good-sized groups of guys all riding together. The music for Groundwork is mostly mellow indie/emo rock, which provides an ample soundtrack - some might prefer louder and/or faster music to punch it up more, but this way the riding isn't overpowered by the music.
And the riding is the most important thing here. Riders include Brian Tunney (cool rolling around-the-front-of-the-bike tricks), Chad DeGroot (not riding any street this time around), Aaron Behnke, Brian Rybak (rad as shit front-wheel switch thing), Nate Hanson, Leif Valin (funny intro and big socks), Akira Okamura, Michael Steingräber (smooth flowing links with those Vector-style bars), and Chase Gouin (insane brakeless back wheel stuff).
Dylan Worsley, formally known for crazy on-the-pedal tricks, is now doing stuff that'll make you say "Holy shit - what was that?!" Multiple cross-footed hitchhiker whips, rolling/flip tricks, and a forward-rolling backpacker whip thing are just part of his section. A brakeless James White does a halfhiker to half-kickflip to 1-handed forward karl kruzer. Unfortunately, a little too much of his section was shot in the dark - a cool silhouette effect, but kinda hard to see what's going on. Dan Rigby's section, the last of the video, will have you saying "What the f*ck?! Where did that hitchhiker come from?" His dumptruck directly into cross-footed inverted backwards wheelie to deathtruck walkover to stick-b was pretty rad, too.
The filming and editing is top-notch, as you'd expect from Props. About the only bad thing is the length: at 20 minutes is seems a little on the short side (you definitely want more). On the other hand, Groundwork is all riding - no filler or useless crap, so it's a solid 20 minutes.
Dan Rigby, flatmattersonline.blogspot.com, december 2009: I never really liked the song props chose for it but i was really happy with how the section turned out. I was just happy to be a part of that project.
Aaron Behnke.
Michael Steingraber.
Chase Gouin.
He spent a few weeks in Europe shooting for this video, going to the major contest events and checking out some skateparks across Europe as well. The European riding scene is alive and well and an impressive list of unknown foreign riders appear in this video, along with some American riders like Joe Rich, Taj Mihelich, Dave Osato, Ron Kimler, Van Homan, and more. The quality of riding coming out of Europe is amazing and these foreign riders get overlooked all too often by Americans. This video will hopefully start to change all of that by showing some of Europe's finest riders, many of which you will undoubtedly hear of again. You will want to see this video - the riding is unbelievable.
Spots include Montellier skatepark in France, Romford skatpark in England, the Seventies warehouse in England, the Livingston skatepark in Scotland, and Radlands skatepark in Northampton.
Our annual year end video featuring the best footage we captured during the year, along with many new unseen clips. Running time is 51 minutes, including the 2001 Credits Compilation, which is the credits from each issue without the titles on screen. Edited by Stew Johnson.
Soul #22 octobre 2000: Après Euroscene en 2000 et Passport Europe 2001, voici la troisième édition de Props, "version internationale".
Vous n'étiez pas aux worlds de Cologne en allemagne ou au contraire vous y étiez et avez hâte de vous replonger dans l'ambiance, alors le reportage sur ce contest mémorable devrait vous donner le sourire à moins qu'il ne vous fasse pousser des petits cris d'animaux à chaque trick rentré.
Même chose pour la Backyard Jam d'Hastings en Angleterre. Tout y est, entre autres l'alley-hoop wallride de Taj, le 3.6 to smith grind d'Edwin de la rose et le tailwhip to fufanu en haut du wall de Dave Osato.
Si vous êtes un peu fatigué de regarder des contests à la télé, une tournée au Japon et un reportage sur la scène street argentine sauront vous dépayser et confirmer, si besoin est, que ça roule bel-et-bien aux quatre coins de la planète. Drôlement bien foutue cette Props.
We've been wanting to do a how-to video for many years not and it's finally here. This one covers beginner to intermediate, with tricks taught by Chris Doyle (Dirt), Chad DeGroot (Flatland), Alistair Whitton and Ron Kimler (Ramp), Nate Wessel (Street), and a basic ramp building how-to by Nate Wessel. Each rider has a bonus riding section with some of their best tricks we've caught on tape over the recent years. Riders also show their particular bike setup. Directed and edited by Will Stroud. 74 minutes.
Tricks include:
Chris Doyle (Dirt): xup + variations, tabletop, no-footer + variations, no-hander, barspin + variations, 360, turndown, superman, no-footed can can, riding rhythm, and more.
Chad DeGroot (Flat): rollback, peg wheelie, manual, nose manual, backyard, lardyard, frontyard, whiplash, side donut, decade, rollaid, and more.
Alistair Whitton and Ron Kimler: tailtap, peg stall/grind, feeble stall/grind, smith stall/grind, airs, manual, fufanu, nosepick, icepick, toothpick, disaster, sprocket grind, and more.
Nate Wessel (Street): manualing ledges, grinding skatepark ledges and rails, wallrides, walltap, gaps w/ approaches, bike control, and more.
Jason a. Davis, www.notfreestylin.com: It is hard to talk about any How To video without referencing 101 Freestyle Tricks and its sequel 101 Freestyle Tricks Part 2. To the cats who haven't seen those before, they were videos put out by BMX PLUS. As is that wasn't enough for you to make you cringe, it came with a booklet with the worst ever explanations on tricks. No Footer- 1. Take off from jump 2. Remove feet from pedals. 3. Return feet to pedals before landing. The bar was set really low as far as quality of How To videos. Bobby Carter a few years ago dropped Hang 5. It was all flatland and it didn't cover riding as a whole. Now Props has dropped their How To video.
I bought the documentary Scratch dvd. It came with a bonus CD that had some interesting content. One thing was a DJ how-to by DJ Z-Trip. I have been DJ'ing for a long time but I picked a few new things. That reminds me of this How To video. Whether you are new to riding or have been riding for awhile there are things you can pick up in this video.
Not only do you get the how to's, they also include sections of all the guys who explain and demonstrate the how to's.
How to no footer with Chris Doyle.
vicx05, www.youtube.com, november 2007: This is the part after Chad's flatland how-to's. He's got some original ride-in and ride-outs that I've never seen anyone else do to this day.
The riding in this movie were insane, they showed many different riders doing all the craziest tricks from 2002, this is probably why it is called the best of 2002. It seemed to me that they showed a lot of certain riders, like Dave Osato, Rob Tibbs, Bob Scerbo, and Brian Vowell. This was alright with me because their riding was incredible and I like all those riders. They showed very few footage of big name pros such as Dave Mirra (who had like one clip) and Ryan Nyquist (who had maybe three). I thought this was a good idea because we have all seen what they could do on TV when the X-games are shown or what not. This gave me the chance to see all the not well known riders, I like their riding better anyways.
The music in this video seemed fit for it. It was mostly all rock-alternative, which I don't care for, but at least it wasn't rap. Aside from the music there was a pretty good bail section, which had some real nasty falls, this is my least favorite part of the movie, but that's because I'm not into that stuff. Also in the middle of the video there was about 15 minutes of advertisng, but you can fast-forward through it.
Overall I give this movie a 10/10, but I would probably give that to any movie. After seeing it I was so motivated, probably more than I have ever been, and it is the reason why I ride today. I would recommend this movie to anyone who watches them.
The video is divided into three parts: bails with music, bails without music and the bonus section, which is samples from several videos. Bails with music is 23.5 minutes of crash segments from Road Fools videos 5, 7, Euro, and Year End videos 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002. Bails without music is 16.5 minutes of crash segments from Road Fools videos 8, 9, 10 and Mega Tour. Samples is 29 minutes of tricks actually being pulled from Issue 47, 48, Mega Tour and Road Fools 9 and 10.
The video has a good mix of park, comp, trails and street crashes and I think maybe 4 or so flatland bails. I'd like to see a tad more rail crashes, but there's sure way, way more than any other single video has for sure. It's a bit strange watching it at first since I'm used to seeing a few crashes then back to tricks being pulled. But this is just
relentless crash after crash -awesome.
The music is mainly aggro hardcore and punk as you'd expect with bail segments, but there's also some electronica and pop to round it out.
The bails without music is amusing since it's just the recorded audio with the cameraman asking the riders if they're OK every time one goes down like a cheap hooker. I don't miss the music at all and I think I actually prefer it that way because it feels like you are there more. If you already have seen many of these videos, you probably have seen a lot of this but even so, it's good to see it all in one place.
The video seems a bit rushed to market and thrown together quickly. There is no title shot and no credits, but really who cares? The pure sadists might be left wanting more since there is little footage other than the instant the crash happens and no aftermath of the crash. Not much of broken bones shown, knocked out teeth, etc. Only one shot of some dude's finger broken and bent 90 degrees sideways which is sick enough, and a gash in Nyquist's arm.
This video gives you a lot more value than the 20 minutes many videos give you- 40 minutes of pure crashes and another 29 minutes of riding. I think it's definitely worth picking up.
Eh-D, www.notfreestylin.com: This is the only video footage you'll see from Metro. Props and Ten Pack had an exclusive deal where the only cameras on the course were owned by Props and Flatland Manifesto. It's kinda nice seeing a contest without a million cameras being jammed in the riders faces.
The dvd menu is set up with coverage of the am street, pro street and flat contest. Additional footage of the course construction and general mayhem of the contest is included.
Flat gets almost half of the running time of the video, and the level of riding is insane. I've been away from Props productions for some time, and from a purely technical standpoint they are top notch. The editing and arrangement of the content and the technical elements such as the graphics are totally unified across the board. The packaging ties in with the menus and the menus and graphics are identical in look and feel. I have not been let down by Props once in the last decade. Kudos. If you couldn't be at the Metro jam, you should buy this video.
Bart de Jong, www.fatbmx.com, may 2003: It's not uncommon that it takes over a year to collect enough footage to make a good video. Making a video off of one weekend of riding seems impossible. Enter the Metro jam. With almost all respected street and flatland rider present in Toronto, Canada, the Props cameras started rolling at the very beginning and stopped rolling at the very end. In between a whole lot happened, from the amateur flatland and street contests to the Square One video premiere to the Pro flatland and street finals.
The level of flatland riding is getting insane. It was good to see some different riders doing different combos. Riders from Japan, Canada, USA, Spain, Finland, Austria, Germany and the UK got together to show what they'd learnt over the winter. Terry Adams, Steve Mulder, Michael Gaidos, Dane Beardsley, Aaron Frost and Shintaro Misawa are a few names that come to mind.
The video has quite a few commercials in it but they're all well made and not disturbing. No video games commercials in this one, only clips from the rider owned sponsors of the Metro Jam.
It's safe to say that the Metro jam is one of the best, if not THE best street contest of the year. Listing trick by trick here is useless. Just wanted to mention that the Props guys pretty much filmed it all and put all the good tricks together. Kevin Porter definitely ripped it up in Toronto and so did Aitken. It sure is a good souvenir if you attended the event. In case you didn't have the hundreds of dollars left to make the trip yourself, buy the DVD and you'll get a good impression on what went on in Toronto.
XmacneilX, www.bmx-test.com, october 2003: You've probably heard about the Metro Jam before. I didn't get the chance to go to Toronto to see all the great riders doing insane stuff on an awesome street course. Hopefully, Props was there to film and put out this video 1 month later. So if you're like me, you should pick up this video because the riding is absolutely insane.
The video begins by showing you the Empyre Ramps crew building the street course, which I think is pretty great to see how good and fast these guys can build a street course. After, the intro comes out, pretty good in my opinion, it shows you a mix of street & flatland footage.
The video got a lot of good footage. But in my opinion, they show a bit too much flatland that I thought. It's not that I hate flatland, but beside street, it's boring. It's 50% street and 50% of flatland. The riding includes Pro & Am street & flatland.
Amateur street section is pretty awesome, it gives you the chance to know new riders, it's great to see new people who can shred it even if they are am's and they all kick ass(trust me). A girl did the am's class (Stacey Mulligan), I think she just did 1 or 2 tricks but it's cool to see that. A local of my area (Simon Trepanier) finished in 2nd place, I was pretty stoked on that.
The Pro's qualifs are absolutely insane, some serious shit goes down. Matt Beringer backflip's the driveway with 2 or 3 feet of air, his head almost it the ground (wicked!). Corey Martinez did a hurricane 540 on a 6 foot sub box. Biz ended it out the qualifs with an opposite fufanu to dowside whip(What?). It's pretty much like that in all of the qualifying.
The Pro's finals are just as crazy as the qualifs, if not more. Van Homan did a barspin to icepick over, Kevin Porter did a manual 720 to cranflip, Osato did a tailwhip drop in, Dustin Guenther did a tailwhip gap to feeble. There's too many things to say, so go buy it NOW!
The rest is flatland, it's good but it's just not my thing, sorry. In the credits section, they show you 'nightlife' footage, which is pretty cool. The DVD didn't have extra stuff or bonus footage, it sucks! The music is pretty great, emo stuff like all the Props videos. Props did this video, so the quality is amazing. It's a great video but if you have a tight budget and you want a great video, you should pick up Square One 'Wide Awake Nightmare'. But if you have money for it, go for it.
LINK. Props best of 2007 trailer video.
Olivier Poinsignon, agoride: En attendant la sortie de la Props Euro Megatour, Props sort son "best of" annuel. Cette année là on a droit aux bios de Justin Simpson, Chris Doyle, Tobias Wicke, JJ Palmere, Gary Young, Mark Mulvil.
9 clips en musique, et il y en a pour tous les goûts (en restant rock bien sur). Des images de la Rebel Jam et de la Metro (mais pas de masters !), des trips United (le fameux trip) et Tree, ils ressortent même des images du grand chevelu Albie Bennet (en gros gap bien sur), et en plus il y a bien sur du Nathan Williams !
Pour la partie du DVD qui marque le plus ... une slam section qui fait très très très mal (chapitre 13, est ce à cause de ce nombre que ça fait mal ?) et le chapitre de fin qui reprend le plus gras du gras : des tricks dans des gaps où même en rêve ça te ferait mal si tu tombes, triple whip, 1080°, double-flip et les 30 dernières secondes à voir de toute urgence pour ceux qui n'ont pas regardé une Props cette année !
C'est un bon bilan on va dire, et ça fait pas de mal à regarder (même si c'est du " reregardé "). Pas déçus et même surpris, ç'est toujours bien de revoir ces images car on y remarque toujours de nouveaux passages ou alors des détailles (oppo,switch...) qui rendent les tricks encore plus fat . Et pour finir la part de fin est une vrai réussite : une vrai " part " d'homme que je vais reregarder un bon nombre de fois.
Bonus
-Best of Props 1997
-Une compilation des crédits Props de cette année (toute propre sans le générique).
