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by Derek Rinaldi

We caught up with filmmaker Sean McGinnis to discuss his latest film The Watched With a cast that includes Sean Smith, Justin Crean, Dan Tutalo, Matt Jones and Kyle Knoblauch, McGinnis packs a ton of coverage from some unique locations up and down the East Coast into a 40-minute cinematographic presentation.

When did you first get into filming? Were you a photographer first or did you dive straight to into video, like most Nicolas Cage movies?
I bought my first camera when I was in high school, around 1999. It was a Hitachi Hi-8 handy cam with a cheap fisheye duct taped to the front of it. My friends and I used it to make “sponsor me” tapes and short montages. A few years later I met Josh Bartsch, a film major at the Art Institute of Philly. He skated and had a VX2000, so he became “the filmer”. Within a few months he made a short skate video entitled Hi-8. We called it Hi-8 because it consisted mostly of footage that I had shot coupled with his own footage and various formatted clips that my friends submitted. It was a true “homie video”, complete with Josh’s neighbor rhyming about skating in the intro. Looking back it’s kind of funny, but at the time we were psyched.

After Hi-8 we kept filming with Josh, but his availability became increasingly scarce. During that time we accumulated a lot of really good footage and when he eventually quit filming I took it upon myself to pick up where he left off.

Who were some photographers/filmers that you looked up to when you started?
In my opinion, Bill Strobeck has one of the best filming styles on the East Coast. I was skating center city a lot during the filming of Photosynthesis and Mosaic. I saw a lot of tricks go down, and he was always the guy steering the ship. I’ll never forget the night Pappalardo tried to switch flip into the Love fountain. Those two showed up around 10pm just eyeing it up. Pappalardo was sipping a forty, so I didn’t expect anything to go down, but they were definitely contemplating. About an hour later, they came back with a generator and lights. Everyone in the park stopped skating and took their seats. This shit was epic and I could not believe what I was witnessing. In addition to the gnarliness of the trick, I was equally blown away by all of the equipment they were setting up at the most illegal spot in the city. If the cops showed up we could all run, but Bill most definitely would have been caught, and he probably would have been in deeper shit than the rest of us. That was dedication, and that’s when it became apparent to me that filming took much more than just waving a camera. Other guys that I inspired me included Mark Brandstetter, Vern Laird and Josh Stewart.

Where are your favorite places to shoot and why?
Boston. The city is amazing and the people could care less about where you skate. Last June we took a trip up there for three days and came back with more than five minutes of useable footage. New York is equally amazing, but the congestion can be trying at times. My favorite spots to film are the ones that we stumble upon accidentally. There’s something really exciting about getting a trick somewhere that nobody else knows about. It’s sort of like charting new territory and it almost guarantees that you’re not overlapping someone else.

Tell us about your earlier film Feed The Fix. Who was in it and here was it shot?
Feed the Fix is a video that I made with Phil Gushue between 2005 and 2007. It features Jesse Clayton, Phil Gushue, Shawn Fanning, Bill Orsi, Tony Antonnechia, Dan Sawosko and myself. The filming took place primarily on the East Coast along with a one-week excursion to Barcelona.

After Feed The Fix, you were quoted as saying that you’d never make another video, citing work, getting married, etc. You started filming The Watched in 2008. Were the distractions the same?
The distractions were worse. A few months after Feed the Fix came out, I took a job at CBS TV in New York, designing graphics for the news. The job was per diem, so I didn’t want to move in case the bottom fell out, but it wound up being 40 plus hours per week. In the beginning it was cool because I was sort of over filming skating, but as they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. I was also learning a ton of cool shit at CBS and was eager to apply it to a new skate project. The first few months of filming were slow, but I eventually found a job in Philly and things really took off from there.

What’s the hardest thing about compiling footage for a project like this?
The hardest part is aligning schedules and getting out with each person enough to keep them interested. Jones and Tutalo live over an hour away, so it was rare that I ever got out with all five guys together. The key to piling up footage with a limited amount of time is making sure that each mission is productive. Planning routes, scouting spots and coming prepared with plenty of water, wax and bondo are just a few things that can help your cause. Another challenging, but essential part is just staying positive and convincing the people that you are 100% confident in them. A little encouragement goes a long way.

There’s been a lot of video footage coming out of Philly in the past couple years. With Mulhern’s This Time Tomorrow and Gushue’s Spot On and now your flick, what’s the biggest challenge about giving your film a different aesthetic than others? What do you hope sets The Watched apart from them?
The overall mood and tone of the video is what I hope most notably sets “The Watched” apart from others. I went for a slightly more dramatic approach and made a real conscious effort to choose music that was atypical of the Philly scene. The biggest challenge about differentiating The Watched was trying to deny the unavoidable inspiration that I got from those other two amazing videos. I sweated both of them really hard until I actually got to work and realized that I had a slightly different vision in mind.

The Watched is available on DVD at local skateshops. Head over to www.thewatchedvideo.com for more information about the film and its riders or to order a personal copy.