On New Year’s Day, Ty Evans announced that Pretty Sweet will be his final video with the Girl family. It is unclear whether he is moving on from skate videos entirely, but it makes sense for a dude who directed a Super Bowl commercial to seek creative opportunities that do not involve chasing 20-year-olds down stair sets.
Despite all the bitching and moaning on behalf of nitpicky skate nerds everywhere, be it about excessive slow motion in the past two projects or just too many high fives, there is no denying that Ty Evans influenced skate videos more than anyone else in the past decade-and-a-half. His work propelled skate videos beyond bro-cam status and gave meaning to the concept of professional skateboard videography. With Evans “venturing out,” we are looking back at Rhythm Skateboards’ Genesis video, one of his earliest projects.
Released in 1997, Genesis was Rhythm’s first and only video. It was a follow-up to an eight-minute Rhythm montage at the end of Silver, the Planet Earth video that Evans made a year earlier. (Does anyone know if Silver was his first video?) Many hallmarks of future Ty Evans projects were already there: synth-heavy music supervision, female vocals, art direction based on staticky nineties technology (which would re-emerge in Transmission 7), and yes, occasionally a good bit of “lifestyle” filler between each trick.