Hangup Zine 13 Preview: Jake Hearney Filmer Profile
We’d seen bits from Jake before, and knew he was documenting one of the lesser-seen areas of the UK being a Norfolk local, so when he got in contact about his latest full-length, Gnarfolk, we asked him to write a piece on his filming career so far, leading up to it!
Here’s a preview, if you’d like to read the full article, you can buy a copy of Hangup Zine 13 through our store here, or subscribe to the newsletter with the below button!
I dabbled with the classic chunky video camera that most families have in their households as a child in the 90s. This led me to filming myself and friends on my street, waxing curbs, skating flatground and simply having a laugh then watching it back. I remember playing music through a speaker that I had plugged into my garage which was essentially backing music for the footage. I didn’t even know about post production editing or how videos worked at this stage. I was purely having fun.
Skipping forward a couple of years to the end of the 90s, the first THPS game came out which changed everything for me regarding both my skateboarding and love of video production. In the games introduction it showed real footage of pro skaters and segments from older videos plus 411 parts.
In the early 2000s, the skate scene in my home town had risen so I always had skaters around me. A few small, shitty skate parks started popping up in my surrounding towns and villages too. I no longer had the childhood camera but started using various digital cameras to film little clips of the locals when on day trips. After a couple of years of using these I grew tired of the poor picture quality, difficulty with capturing footage and having to endlessly swap batteries. During this era I somehow knocked together two videos of my friends that were edited on my family computer with the most basic software imaginable - ‘BW1’ (2005) and ‘BW2’ (2007.)
I then progressed to Sony handycams which was a game changer for me. I had two during this era. I began to travel around the country filming more around this time, trips to Milton Keynes, Ipswich and other new places. I became interested in equipment and ways of improving my filming as it was at this point that I was hooked on watching skateboard videos and wanting to better my own. I purchased a handle and was passed down a scratched clip-on fisheye lens.