Dropping In- King of the Road: The Master Lensmen / Noah Quale

Leigh is writing this series of interviews that focus on the gentlemen behind the lenses of Thrasher Magazine’s King of the Road Season 2 on Viceland.

Videographers create the moving images of skateboarding.The videos they create become defining elements of skateboarding’s culture, as well as a major contribution to its collective consciousness and history. The filmers chronicle the beauty and agony, the triumph, technical skills, visual poetry, excitement, camaraderie, and joy in skating. They create a time capsule of what the culture is, the style, the locations--the zeitgeist of their place in time within the artform that is skateboarding.

I recently got to talk with master lensman, Noah Quale, who drove, managed and filmed for Team Creature in Thrasher’s King of the Road Season 2. Mr. Quale has filmed, edited and produced video content for all NHS brands (Creature Skateboards, Independent Trucks, and many others) and he is the Team Manager for Creature Skateboards. He also is an entrepreneur: he is the owner and operator of DAFMade, a lifestyle product company which produces clothing, accessories and primarily drink coozies. Coozie business is a booming industry: at the time of this interview, they are completely sold out of stock. Quale revealed things about his creative process, getting started in the industry, filming for Thrasher’s King of the Road, and one stolen skate video.

LR: Hi thanks for your time. First of all, please convey my good wishes & healing thoughts to Jake Phelps. Were you there at the Dolores Park Hill Bomb (July 11, 2017)? Phelps is crazy, but I mean that in the best way. (Phelps took a nasty spill at the bottom of the hill after bombing it)

NQ: No, no I missed that. I was in Santa Cruz. I heard it was gnarly, though. It’s the Phelper. I heard he’s healing up fine.

How about you, when did you start skating? I was 13 and in junior high. I think that’s a fairly typical age people start skating, that junior high, middle school age. I played music and my friends and I had a band. I just always stuck with music--and skating, of course.

When did you start to have an interest in film or knew you could pursue this, that it was a reality for you?

I saved up a bunch of money I got when I was younger and bought a VHS camera, the ones that were huge, you know the ones--you had to hold it on your shoulder! I filmed skits friends did, and of course friends skating, I’d always bring it to a session. I seemed to be one of the dudes or that one dude in the crew that got hurt or ate shit so I ended up filming. A lot. Then I just filmed more and more and my friends kept skating and getting better. We all were progressing in our own ways in skating.

I just always had that passion and love for skating and filming. I enjoy both equally. As we got older and my friends were getting even better and better, I started filming their ‘sponsor me’ videos. You have to be a skater to have an eye to film skating; it’s absolutely essential, they go hand in hand. So I was filming and friends were getting sponsors--gear, boards, all that stuff more and more. Actually my friend Emmanuel Guzman was the one who got full-fledged sponsored and I would shoot him then, also I was able to start selling some clips.

I started working at NHS and that really helped me get my foot in the door, skaters would come in all the time, we’d all talk and it brought me great opportunities. It was a blessing. I was getting to do what I always wanted to do as a kid. I moved to San Francisco and started going on more trips and filming more.

What was the first skate video you ever saw and what would you say was its effect on you? The first one I saw was Bones Brigade Video Show. Here in Pittsburgh at that time, we were fairly isolated, but once videos came out, we could see what was going on out there in the rest of the world. Sure- videos really brought skating to everybody. The first film I saw that I actually watched repeatedly was The Search for Animal Chin.

A classic! We watched it religiously! The band would practice, we’d watch it then go skate. This is what happened: my friends in the band had a video store down the street from their house. We saw they had a skate video--we had to get it! It was Animal Chin, the only skate video they had, and we had to get a hold of it. Actually we stole it and never took it back. Wow, I feel pretty bad about that now. But that video had a huge influence on me as far as the travel aspect of skating with friends. It got us hyped up to skate, we wanted to do the tricks, all that stuff. As far as modern skate videos, the one that probably had the biggest impact for me was Thrasher’s Skate and Destroy. I liked the whole adventure thing--play, travel and skate. The grittiness and style: that’s Thrasher completely exemplified.

You did King of the Road in 2012. How was it different for you this time around? Well definitely the whole Vice thing, the TV show aspect was different. There’s a crew documenting us documenting King of the Road. I think of it as a reality show documentary. But between that and the challenges, skating, the jackass stuff, it is way gnarlier, more extreme than five years ago. Of course it still has that King of the Road style and vibe, the heaviest two weeks of a skate trip. On my end, as a filmer, 2012 was way gnarlier. I’d be driving all day or night, film all day or night, have to log all the footage. I pretty much never slept in 2012.

Now we all work with the road people for Vice, we give footage or clips. It’s still an insanely intense trip. I love that the show on Vice has opened up skating to so many more people. We (Creature team) were recently on an eight-week demo tour. Random people saw the van and recognized it and know about skating. They actually come up to us now and are aware that King of the Road is a thing, people who otherwise would know absolutely nothing about skating. It’s actually pretty rad.

What is the best thing about working with the Creature team? Being together for King of the Road was rad. We’ve been travelling, filming, and skating for so long, we’re all friends. I see that group of people a lot and we enjoy that camaraderie. On a trip, or working on a project, we are focused but we do have fun. We’re more family--we might bicker or have rivalries but it’s all good. We’re all doing what we hoped to do—or wanted to do when we first started skating- working in skateboarding.

The process of shooting a video is a very collaborative thing. Describe how that happens a little. Creature just made a new full-length, it took two years of filming. Different videographers have different approaches. Myself, with the Creature team, I have my ideas and I’m open to ideas from the team. Skaters have their ideas of where they want to go to get the gnarliest shot. We travel all over the world to find spots. Budapest? Sounds good! Copenhagen? Sure! We’ll go there! But skaters will suggest a trick at a spot and yeah, I say, go for it--I’ll shoot it. They have ideas what works or what looks good at a spot.

The architecture, other elements and features in the environment in the cities, that’s all something to skate. We look for spots a lot of people haven’t gone to, that are unknown. We might go and get 40 photos of new spots no one else has skated. Some videographers might press skaters for a specific spot or shot. I think it works better when there’s input from the skaters, try to keep it more open and see what happens. It’s a more organic approach, or process, yes. It comes down to the filmer and the skater working together. And when there’s a photographer, the filmer and photographer work together to not be in each other’s shots. It’ s a dance.

Would you say there’s a difference between shooting [skateboarding] here in the US and in other countries? First off, different countries for the most part, have a lot more people that are way more understanding, more accepting of skating in the street and filming. As opposed to in the US there’s a lot of suspicion, fear of lawsuits. That’s the biggest advantage I notice and I like. One negative thing about travel to other countries: you have to really watch your gear. Coming there, to another country as American citizens, we have all this gear and it looks like we have lots of money. You have to be more on your toes about your surroundings and your gear.

If you were skating for a video part where would you be? Who films the filmer? I’d travel many different places, just skate and show how different places look, feel. Roll with friends, get fired up skating with friends, not just one spot. The filmer? Whoever can hold the camera and zoom in the fastest.

What’s a favorite spot of yours to shoot- it can still be in existence or not. There’s this old skool park in Santa Cruz, Derby Park. We’d all go there all the time. It’s one of the oldest skateparks in North America, probably the world. You can hang out there, barbecue there, it was always rad. Plus all the main places we’d skate where I grew up. I loved filming at those spots, the old spots here in Santa Cruz where I really learned follow filming: those spots were essential.

What other filmers do you really like; whose work resonates with you? Always John Miner, eMerica ( author’s note: as of July 2017, Element) especially Stay Gold (2010), This is Skateboarding (2003), and so many others. I’ve looked up to his approach, the way he films. He’s one of my faves. Just a visionary.

Would you support Jake Phelps/Andy Roy ticket 2020 Make America Skate Again? Oh hell yeah, I’ll back the Phelper, for sure!

One last thing: give me an example of a challenge in your life that you know skating helped you navigate. How has being a skateboarder affected your day-to-day life? Being a skater, it’s like living in the world with a completely different outlook. Everywhere you go, you look at a building, the street, a set of stairs, a handrail, whatever, something to skate. The architecture, cities--the environment we move through-we see it differently.

Another thing is, skating sometimes puts us in a ghetto, alley or even...sewage ditches. It brings us to lots of different types of people: we encounter homeless, addicts,and they are mostly cool and we sit there and end up talking with them. Skating helps you have a different outlook and I think be more accepting of people from any walk of life.

I concurred.