Long lens lines are chill. Though with our multi-decade dependence on fisheyes, they come few and far between. It’s tough to think of one from a classic video short of Ricky Oyola’s ollie into traffic line from Eastern Exposure 2, which certainly would’ve had its impact dulled a bit if the filmer ran up on the ledge to follow him or something. Much like Vine, you probably had to have attended film school in order to be good at filming lines without a fisheye. Framing, zooming, it’s a whole process.
Strangely enough, keeping the fisheye off sometimes gives you a better glimpse of how gigantic certain skate spots are, probably because we’ve grown jaded of seeing the same crouched down at the bottom of the steps angle with so many of them. This long lens version of Flo Marfaing’s infallible “Skateboard Line Hall of Fame” entry from the They Don’t Give a Fuck About Us bonus footage falls into that category. In the part’s fisheye version, it’s more of a “Oh, he’s skating the two big hubbas in Paris, that’s crazy” reaction. The fisheye angle doesn’t really drive home the fact that he ran the risk of falling over a fifteen-foot drop on two occasions in the same line. From the top of the spot, you might get the best view of this exemplary feat of line choreography. Still can’t think of anything like it done in the decade since…
P.S. Is there a scan of that Skateboarder “Greatest Lines in Skate History” article from the mid-2000s online anywhere?