the predatory bird

Tag: Josh Friedberg

  • Following Up with Friedberg

    As requested here’s the rest of a conversation I had with 411VM founding father Josh Friedberg regarding the history of 411 video magazine. You can check out the first half here.

    Who composed the opening music, how did you guys find the band and did they get residuals?

    A salesmen at New Deal named Ken Wood was in the band Sol. He gave me a couple of DATs of their music and I picked The Boxcar as the opener song. We eventually bought all the rights to the song before we went through the acquisition so they got a decent check out of it.

    Who designed the little blue section icons and where did the inspiration for those designs come from?

    Andy Howell, Johnny Schillereff and Jose Gomez designed the first batch when they were working together in Atlanta. They were trying to create universal icons based on the article names. Later on our various art guys spruced them up when we decided they needed updating.

    Some sources claim that later in 411s tenure it became harder to get footage from the top pros because they felt like they were just getting lost in the mix. How true is this? (more…)

  • 411 Video Magazine – The YouTube of it’s Time and The 411 Conspiracy Theory.

    In talking about 411’s roll as an accelerator of skate-video content production is it safe to say that 411 was just the logical result of what the major electronics manufacturers were doing at the time? Would it have been impossible for 411 to have existed before that time because video camera equipment was strictly for the rich?

    In the late 80s/early 90s Sony and Panasonic were growing their businesses by, for the first time in history, designing decent video camera equipment that was affordable to the average consumer. 411 didn’t do that, they just naturally emerged as the de facto platform on which all this content, that was coming into existence anyway, was viewed. The 4 horsemen that started it up were Josh Friedberg, Steve Douglas, Paul Schmitt and Chris Ortiz and although the opening music might have felt hackneyed after issue 64 it still makes me nostalgic for a simpler, more innocent (read “innocent” as naive if you like) time.

    The 411 conspiracy theory began when (more…)