Under Exposed with Thomas Carter

In this Under Exposed interview we chat with Tom Carter, a NW raised and LA based videographer and post production specialist, and the man behind the camera and computer for many classic NW skate videos.

Photo by Tony Huffnagel

I gotta start by saying I am a big fan of you and the videos you've helped create over the years. I grew up watching many of them, and I still enjoy all your work with current skate stuff like the WKND videos. Your full length ‘Video Games’ was on steady rotation for our crew as young teenagers, and as an amateur filmer/editor myself I'm still trying to hold it down like you did. So with that said, I really appreciate you taking the time to answer some questions with AB. Why don’t we start with a bit about yourself, where you grew up, and how you got into skating?

Man thank you for reaching out, stoked to be chatting with you! I grew up in Olympia, actually the outskirts of Thurston County, between Lacey and Yelm. I got into skateboarding at like age 10, so in 1994, I really didn't want to get my MMR booster shot cause I hate needles and my mom bribed me and said she would get me a skateboard if I didn't complain and throw a fit, so after that she took me to the now extinct Shopko in Lacey and I got some piece of crud double tail skateboard with plastic wheels, but it was so sick having a “skateboard”. Also around the same time got a pair of Airwalk 1s and some corduroy baggy pants and then a chain wallet, I had achieved full skater mode at this point in my head. I spent a lot of my earlier years skating Yelm park and the ramps in my garage with my friends Tony Mode and Rio Dondero and yeah, I guess the obsession started then.

Whenever I think of Yelm park, I think of Steve Olson footy from back then. When did you start filming and making videos? 

I think it started with the first video I made with my friends Paul Brunner and Bobby Ledesma in like 1995-96 ish. We just shot stuff on this shitty VHS cam and edited VCR to VCR at first. Then it progressed to having a digital 8 cam. Having that kinda opened up more doors because there were a few skaters but no real filmers.

So you were the dude! Who were you filming with at first?

My first crew to really film with and stack tricks was Two Hawks Young, Aaron Miles, Casey Heath, Shane Jenks, Brian Claybrook, Matt Roder and a few others that my brain is forgetting. I met most of them at either Yelm park or Yauger. We were just always cruising and hanging there, then would go adventure around.

Casey Heath, Two Hawks Young, Tom Carter. Photo by Brian Claybrook.

Sick. I just saw Roder yesterday at this trade show thing I went to in Tacoma. Do you remember the actual camera you start filming with?

Originally it was this Digital 8mm Sony, that I sold my dirt bike to get. The guy buying my dirt bike was really trying to low ball me and I stood my ground and he asked why I wouldn’t budge and I said I need to buy this camera and he said “well ok, I’ll look at it as investment in your future” and whoever that guy was I wish I could tell him how much that was true. Also was pretty rad, I actually had the very first round of the “Baby” death lenses. I was bugging them for so long on the wait list, I had to have been one of the first to get one cause I was talking to them for like a year before it came out. I remember seeing Kurt Hayashi (RIP) at Tyee Park in Sea Tac and he was like "damn can I see that", and then hands me his VX1000 with real death lens on it. That was the first time I ever held that cam, and it was such a rad feeling. A few years later I got the TRV 900, modded my baby death to that and had a bunch of foggy looking clips for a few years until Tom Peha sold me his VX1000 at rain city skate park.

Photo by Brian Claybrook.

S/O to the dirt bike guy! And damn I miss that old Rain City park man, we would all take the bus up there from Tacoma at like 14 years old. Did you start editing right when you started filming, or did that come separately?

I used to always try to edit my stuff with the VCR tape to tape method, but then one day I was at Circuit City with my mom and I saw some computer editing software and she was down to buy it for me. I didn't really fuck with it for a bit, but then I broke my arm snowboarding and had nothing but time and really dug in to editing during that time period. Eventually I graduated to using Adobe Premiere and had some boss Matrox RT2000 device that let me do real time transitions, haha. So funny to remember how high tech all that stuff was. If anyone reading wants to see some rad lo-fi video effects, just google Matrox RT2000 on Youtube, it's sick.

Damn, I don’t know anything about that, crazy. Who were your early inspirations for videos and your style of editing?

Anything in 411 or Transworld really, Menikmati, Baker2g and all the Girl videos. I watched every single video that came out. Northwest Snowboards had a video wall and I would go in there and rent a video and record it to a larger tape blank tape at home, or put on my digital 8 camera so I could watch on roadtrips. Pretty funny - I just found a couple of those old tapes not long ago. 

I might need to get you to let me digitize some of that old NW shit for some projects I’m working on haha. What was the first video you made?

My first real video was called “Make it Stop.” I think it was like 1998-99, it featured Two Hawks Young, Aaron Miles, Shane Jenks, Casey Heath (RIP) and then just all the other friends that were in the area at the time. Mike Cummins (the owner of Olympia northwest snowboards) saw it and said I could sell it in the shop and it was so sick cause it just sparked everyone for the next year of filming for another video. By the third video “Video Games” Mike asked if I wanted to be a part of their annual video premiere at the Capital Theater where in the past it was always just snowboard videos usually, and that was really exciting and I think prob one of the most memorable/influential moments of my life.  

Legendary. Tell me about some more stories or memories from premiering videos at the Capital Theatre in Olympia. 

They were so fun. The first premiere was crazy, I was like 16 years old at the time and I remember walking up and seeing a line around the block and my dad was like “Wait, they are all here to see your video?” Haha he thought I was just out fucking around with my friends smoking weed, but later he told me how proud he was that day. The memories are kinda faded but just having everyone there excited, yelling at a screen and seeing real time reactions to something, you can’t replace that feeling or experience. I really miss that, but also I have so much anxiety after a premiere… Maybe I'm full of shit haha, I do and don't miss it.

I feel that man. It’s kinda both, excitement and terror. I always internally freak out at a premiere. What's your favorite videos from your time making stuff in the NW?

All of them are special in their own ways to me. I mean Video Games in 2001 was the one I really felt like set me off on the path to wanna make them bigger and better, but then Skateballs in 2009 was also similar in the sense of taking ownership and making something I wanted to share with everyone. Skateballs was also at a time when Matt Gottwig was starting to get super good and I was so stoked to make that part of his.

Crazy to think Gottwig has been ripping for so long. While talking with folks about this interview, a lot of heads wanted to talk about 'Haulin ass to Hall and Oates'. Care to share a bit about that one? 

Haha yeah I would love to. That video was so funny, Two Hawks, Mike DeLeon, Ian Shulman, Ryan Stangland, Owen Jones, we were all hangin' out in Seattle for a summer, I think it was 2006, drinking a lot, listening to a lot of yacht rock, and someone - either Mike, Hawks, Ian, Ryan or Owen - (they can debate over this out for eternity) came up with that perfect name. Ian had already shot a full videos worth of footage of all those guys and I just went into a room with it and started cooking.  We would all be partying and having a good time and I would just be hanging on the laptop, making dumb graphics and those mashup karaoke style edits.  I had really gotten in to playing with after effects around that time and was watching a lot of early Tim and Eric awesome show. It was so stupid and fun, and it was perfect timing for us all to have come together, wish we could have had more time to get out our follow up idea “Bustin Tricks to Stevie Nicks”  

Haha we need that follow up, it’s never too late dog. So you also made a rad compilation for Northwest Snowboards, tell me about that one?

Oh that was for the 30th anniversary of Northwest Snowboards. Same deal as Video Games and the other premieres. Mike was doing his annual video premier and asked if I wanted to make something, and at the time I wasn't really shooting anything new, I had been pretty busy with work so I just started mashing up the old videos as a little anthology of stuff I made over the years. That was a really fun video to make, a lot of great memories.

Then at some point, I’m not sure on dates, you move to California. How'd that come about? How was making the move and getting started down there?

In March of 2003, after Video Games came out, Shane Jenks and Aaron Artis had made the move south and I had to follow, they were my stars I couldn’t not film them. I first tried to stay in Long Beach with Aaron but then my gf broke up with me and started sleeping with some of the skaters down there so I lost my mind and moved up to LA with Shane. I was bound and determined to show her how big of mistake it was leaving me for some whatever ams and I was gonna go to LA and film with the big dawgs. Haha! Seriously - that was my brain at that time, insane. But I got to LA and was mostly just filming with my friends still and making no money, and luckily my buddy Dustin got me a job at MTV working on Pimp My Ride. That opened the doors to a lot more work in post production and that is where I have stayed most successful over the years. Although I still love to shoot and direct when the project is right, post has been the most consistent for me.

Aaron Artis, Shane Jenks, Tom Carter in LA.

Sometimes that pain is the best motivator. And I had no idea you worked on Pimp my Ride, that’s wild. I'm a big WKND fan, I love just about everything they do from spots to tricks and skaters and skits. I know you're involved in that, how did that happen? And what do you do with them?

In like 2010/11 Johan Stuckey started living with me right when he moved to LA and he kept talking about his homies from back home who made Weekendtage, and it was like all these goofy ass kids so when they moved out we were immediately skating with them all the time and Grant and I just became good buddies. His edits were always needing some extra love and cleaning up edits is what I do best, so he would rough shit out and bring it to me and its always so funny cause his joke is always there, but doesn’t make much sense until it's smoothed out for a bit. Although he is getting a lot better and it makes my life a lot easier, this old dog has the carpel tunnel and cricked neck from screen time. I need to be on the computer a lot less.

Hunched over a computer working on this interview, I absolutely feel that dude haha. And that’s sick, you’ve basically been down since day 1 with Grant in LA, that’s dope. What are you doing down there now? What does life look like?

I am still editing and doing all things post production, I live in the Frogtown neighborhood of LA, I am a dad, I have a 5 year old daughter, a GF who also has a daughter, so a lot of hangin' doing domesticated stuff. I work a lot, skate occasionally, ride my bike, go golfing and bowling, stare at my phone a lot. We have this lil joke called Dark Corner where we make videos on the phone, some times with cameras, it was Dan Plunkett’s idea a few years ago, its supposed to be nothing, cause everything is always a thing, like a brand or something dumb, we just wanted to make a lil dark corner of the internet that we can post shit to. Not long ago we did a live event where Heath Kirchart and SVEN BARTH (not sure why my computer just auto typed that all caps but im letting it ride cause is if you know him its fitting) battled a noseblunt on a 6 foot box. It was pretty fun to just pull up and live stream something so silly. But yeah thats been some of the more recent things that are not just work madness.

Funny I definitely watched that when it came out, I was like wtf is this but watched the whole thing lol. I know you have your own post production company as well, tell me a bit about that?

Yeah, in 2016 I started a post production company “Press Digital Media” with my partner Mark Spencer. He’s a boss hog editor as well and made a lot of rad skate videos for the Denver scene around the same time as I was making videos so it made a lot of sense for us to combine forces. We have a Post-Production facility in Frogtown now with edit bays, podcast room, production bullpen, and hundreds of terabytes of server storage on a 10GBE network. We do a ton of remote editing with our systems, and we have built our studio to be able to be a hybrid space where we can screen in person but scale up remote offline editors as needed. So if any producers are reading this and are interested in our remote solutions for any of their productions feel free to reach out via www.pressdigitalmedia.com or if in the future a bit more www.pressdigitalio.com (launching updated site soon) and we can get you sorted.

Man, so sick. I gotta make a trip down to LA again soon to film some shit and pull up and check it out. Are you still doing some filming too? Or mainly post production stuff?

I am primarily editing and doing post solutions for productions. We do some podcasting, right now running “The Pontius Show” with Chris Pontius from Jackass and his wife Mae. That has been super fun to learn and manage. YouTube monetization is very interesting to try and navigate and the podcast format seems to be a rad way to learn how to play with the algorithm. As far as filming goes, I recently shot stuff for Red Bull, Nike, Oakley and some other brands that we produced and directed for, but the bread and butter of my work is in post. I have been pretty wrapped up in the action sports world the past year cause the strikes were making other larger productions weird, but before that, was working on NBA finals stuff with my good friend Stevie Lawrence who was co-directing along side Spike Lee. Stevie also brought me on to work on the Emmy nominated documentary “Monochrome” co-directed by Atiba. Also, outside of live action editing, did a bunch of animation editing and post producing with my friends Jayme Lemperle and Kamau Momar that was directed by Virgil Abloh before he passed away (RIP) on these Louis Vuitton fashion show campaigns. Jayme and I had been making Beats by Dre animated ads for a bit and that led us to this pretty fun world with Louis Vuitton. Have another project like that happening now but can’t say too much about it cause I signed an NDA but excited to share that when it comes out. And for the skate heads out there that are like “Why am I reading about any of this main stream crap on here?", sorry I know you came for the skate stuff but like my good buddy Adam Crew used to always say “Sell out to eat out!” and I love sushi. Shout out Toebock btw.

Get that sushi player! That’s awesome to hear all the things you’re plugged into, excited to hear what else comes down the pipe. Throughout the course of all of your projects, what skaters / parts do you like the best looking back on them?

Matt Gottwig, Aaron Artis, Shane Jenks, Two Hawks, Casey Heath. Man I love them all, every part is special cause when I look back, I don’t know, I don’t have the right words, I'm nostalgic about it all. Everyone in all my videos we just wanted to make some rad shit happen, impress some people, be like the pros - same shit all the kids are doing now. 

Well dude, you’ve done it, and continue to do it, congrats. And how about general NW skaters / videos, what are some of your favorites? Ones that got you stoked?

Shane Jenks and his first video “finally finished” got me sooooo stoked. Seeing spots I knew around the area was the ultimate fire up. Then like Adam Crew was around and obviously Aaron Artis was an absolute legend god. Manik and Marshall’s videos were hype. Super funny story about that, Marshall and I were like at odds with each other years ago, I didn't know why he was bummed on me but in my first video I put in a title card that said “Sound and Fury” then a subtitle “sucked” came up a few seconds later and then had a montage of Sound and Fury footage. He saw that video and was pissed cause that was his shit and I'm just making this video that is shitting on it. But I explained to him, what I was thinking when I wrote that, and it wasn’t that the contest sucked, we sucked! None of my homies made it to the finals haha, and I also needed to tell him that was the absolute coolest contest ever. I remember coming home just buzzing how sick it was seeing all those people in one place. Marshall if you are reading this, I know I already told you all this, but Sound and Fury was the shit and I would love to see another one happen. Car jump fuckin goes.

Ok I know I missed some stuff, so tell me about a video project that I didn't ask about that you're fond of, was funny or that sucked?

Gosh there's so many, Skate talk live was so fun, we were doing skate podcasting before the technology was really allowing haha, Bob and Boosh became my close friends during this time too. Then Toebock's ‘Don’t Act Famous’ was sick - special time again with just a bunch of folks coming together to make some shit. I flew to Denver and sat in a room for a week rendering optical flow slow motions that looked hella funny, and editing 20 hours a day to get it ready for the premiere. Didn't even go into the premiere cause I was so fried and anxious from lack of taking care of myself. Kids don’t do this to yourself, you will end up like me, 40, in therapy, and doing interviews about the glory days of some videos that maybe 150 people remember.

I could ask you questions all day, but to be respectful of your time I’ll wrap it up there. Any final thoughts? Shoutouts? Anything or anyone to keep an eye out for? A place to direct people to your work? Words of wisdom?

Brush your teeth. remember to breathe. In general I think people care about each other. Shout out to you Alex and Adjacency Bias, I am stoked on what you are doing, I love seeing the recaps of skate edits coming from the NW and excited to see where things go for you with this. I guess just keep an eye out for anything new coming from myself and Press Digital, new website in the works and a bunch of rad projects, some skate but not a ton cause like I said, I love sushi.

Get that sushi player. Thanks a ton for being down Tom!

Keep up with Tom and Press Digital on Instagram @tommywantwingy @pressdigitalio and go subscribe on Youtube @pressdigitalio @DRKCRNRTV @thepontiusshow.