Right now we're in Alabama Hills and I'm working on a music video with my brother Richard
Houghton and it's awesome because I've always used his music in the past on a lot of my
skate videos but we've never really worked directly together to make like a music video
like just a specific project with him and I collaborating to make something together
that wasn't just kind of like an afterthought.
The concept of the video came up because we were out camping and got really drunk.
I guess when I'm camping it gives me like so much time to like think crazy ideas and
be like alright this one sucks, that sucks, that sucks, alright that one might be alright
and then eventually I come up with something that's halfway decent and I'll try to execute
it.
That's how it came about so I mean we're doing it for fun but I mean the idea is
traction for Richard's new album.
From skateboarding that's how I ended up getting into filming because I hurt myself
at a young age and I still wanted to hang out with the guys and be a part of my group
of friends that's skated so I started filming when I was out for a year with a broken ankle.
I kind of love skateboarding but I wanted to be on the filming side more than the actual
active skating.
Just finished high school and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I was going
to junior college.
My first like real filming job was I got contacted by audio footwear, it was to go to Barcelona.
Like they were like hey like we're going to Barcelona in a couple weeks, do you want
to go?
I'm like yeah, I've never really been out of the country before so like when they told
me that I was like a no brainer and I stopped going to junior college and just pursued filmmaking
full time and doing it ever since.
I owe like everything to skateboarding, that's like how I became a filmmaker and that's how
I found filming as a career you know and yeah getting injured is what kind of led me to
like take it more seriously.
Barracks got in contact with Red or Red got in contact with the Barracks, they basically
formulated this filmmaker contest, the redirect project.
They gathered 12 skate filmmakers, gave them a camera for a month and they're like just
go do whatever you want so each guy just got a camera and went and filmed and at the end
of it we turned in our little short skate film.
I had seen stuff before where like people had taken like the cars off freeway and it's
been done a lot in movies and stuff and I just, being a skateboarder it's kind of like
that's kind of like a fantasy you know like you always see skate spots on freeways but
you can't skate them because they're super busy and sketchy.
We still went and skated them while it was super busy and sketchy but made it seem like
it was empty like a ghost world or something like that, like a ghost town of Los Angeles.
They had like a screening at the Arclight in Hollywood in 4K and that was awesome and
then presented the winners and what not.
We won and that was amazing.
I came up with a red epic that was the prize.
It's engraved.
It has like the barracks and like grand prize winner engraved inside the camera which is
pretty amazing.
Over the past like 10 years I've traveled so much it's all kind of blending together
but I think for me it's not really the destination it's who you're with that makes a trip you
know like if you have a group of good guys and you're all getting along it's like that's
what makes a trip special.
Crazy that I've been able to travel so much all over the world like every continent and
it's all through skateboarding and I never thought that'd be possible which is insane.
I got like the full length Vulcan project coming up in about a year and a half and that's
going to be really cool because I haven't worked on a full length skate video in over
about 7 years.
Over the next year and a half we're just basically collecting footage on our trips and kind of
making these conceptual little short films and kind of compiling them into like a full
length like whatever 30-45 minute skate film.
It's all going to be shot on the red cameras and trying to make it a lot different than
the standard skate video so I'm excited about that.
My name is Russell Houghton and I am a skateboard filmmaker.
Thank you.
