Friendly LUX Review

Royce with a death defying doublewhip..

Nearly four years after dropping the first teaser to their full-length video “LUX,” the OG crew out of Australia has finally finished the project and released it to the public via a $4.95 (AUS) digital download.  As you could imagine during those four years, quite a lot of hype had been built, although it did taper off towards the end.  But they did it.  A full-length homie video with no company backing is quite an achievement.  Despite numerous setbacks, Friendly managed to do what many said wouldn’t be done.  After viewing it a couple times, here are my thoughts.

Riding:

The riding in a video is typically the benchmark most people use to measure how good (or bad) a video is.  As with pretty much any full-length, LUX has already received negative comments due to people who are: (A) desensitized to rad scootering because of the amount of amazing videos that come out on the web every day; (B) not aware what good riding is, because of the amount of bad scootering they see every day that is passed off as “good”, or (C) not aware that LUX was a homie video and never proclaimed itself to have next level riding.  Context is everything.

That being said, most of the sections were super sick.  Aaron Bransdon starts the video off with a bang, with some of the best straight hop style I’ve ever seen.  High speed lines, smith grinds, and a David Bowie soundtrack to top it off makes for a really enjoyable section.  I won’t go through the rest of everyone, but it definitely shows that these guys worked their asses off for this video.  Lots of creativity from guys like Mark Abbott, power from Alex Collins (don’t miss the switch either) and of course style from the few clips Jackson Manzie was able to contribute.  Jon Archer also kills it with a raw style unmatched by anyone in scootering, a great sequel to his Tilt part.  And I have to mention the last three guys- Luke Maffesoni, Royce King, and Kevin Austin.  Luke throws some of the wildest tricks you never see in a street video- cannonball to fakie, 180 briflip to fakie, bar bri on a hip, the list goes on.  We’re used to seeing Royce send it over huge gaps in the parks, and he shows no fear in sending it to flat on the streets- huge rails, wallrides, and he shows his transition skills in a few clips as well.  Finally, Kevin completely shuts it down.  The ease of which he does some of the most difficult tricks is seriously mindblowing.  Everything he does is so clean and nonchalant.  One of the top video parts of the year, easily.

Kevin front boarding before filming the real trick for his part.

Filming:  

So as this was a homie video filmed over five years, the filming isn’t always uniform.  Sean Furze handled most of the filming with Kevin and Jackson, and the rest of the crew contributing.  So we do see footage from a few different cameras, as well as some shakiness and dirty lens clips…but generally the filming was at, if not above the standard level of SD filming in scootering.   I’ve always thought that if you don’t notice it, the filming was good, and so I was only distracted during LUX by those couple outlier clips.  Another big part of filming is making sure you’re filming not only during the trick, but before and after.  These guys did a good job getting the shenanigans of street riding with your friends on video, which I’ll touch on again in the next section of this review.

Reece Alderton with a gap back lip shot by Zac Fraser.

Editing:  

Sean Furze also took care of the editing for LUX.  He kept it fairly simple for the most part, using a big bold block font for the titles, and without using any distracting b-roll.  The b-roll is mostly, as I touched on earlier, all the other action that happens apart from the tricks themselves, which is awesome to see.  The music choice is fairly conservative, with a mix of mainly classic and indie rock on top of some jazzy/psychedelic tunes...I do feel like they could have branched out a little more as far as the soundtrack goes (there's no way I haven't heard that Hendrix track in a video before).  So nothing too crazy as far as editing goes, just raw and simple, which fits the SD genre best in my eyes.

The crew runs deep.

Overall:

Friendly is selling LUX as a digital download for five bucks a pop.  At that price, there’s really no excuse not to buy it.  These dudes worked hard to make an awesome video for the scooter community.  Some of the best riders in the world are featured, and to see riders like that come together for a crew video is rare, especially when several do have sponsors.  The proceeds will be going toward further exploring Australia to film for more projects, so it is a good cause all around.

Bottom line:  If you haven’t watched it yet, you’re blowing it.  Get a digital copy at http://www.friendlybrand.net/lux.  A hard copy should be available soon for those diehard fans.