Monday, August 24, 2009 12:28pm PDT

How to Steal an Idea

By: Janos Palko






Once upon a time in a land called the internet, a viral video titled 'skater ollies car' jumped onto computer monitors across the land. The title could not have been more direct and to the point. A skater, on a skateboard, launches off a ramp, clearing the top of a small sedan as it smashes the ramp underneath him. Sketchy stunt to say the least. The video was seen on blogs and viral sites around the world, featured on the homepages of Myspace, MSN, Ebaums, Break, and grindtv. It saw over 600,000 views in one day. The video was made by 2 young Los Angeles filmmakers, Conor Colwell and Tim Ryan (check out DPOLA and TAR productions for more of their genius). The skater's name is Zach Miller, and pro surfer Ricky Whitlock was the stunt driver of the poor toyota that plows into the ramp.

Basement dwelling porn addicts werent the only ones to see the video, however. The execs of big corporations had begun to take notice. A shaky 40 second video, made for zero money, was seen by millions. For free. Cartoon light bulbs went on above the heads of marketing execs everywhere. Nike was the first to take a shot. I'd imagine there was big meeting, in a big office, in a big building, where some guy in a suit stood up and said: "Ok, now picture this: we take 'skater ollies car', but instead of a skater on a board, we have KOBE BRYANT jumping over the car. Wearing his new signature shoe. Boom. Viral Video." Flash forward 6 weeks. Kobe "releases" a "home made" "video" of him "jumping" "over an Aston Martin". Nike does a good job of obeying the laws of viral. Shaky home-made video quality (it was shot with a tripod, the shakey-ness was added). Relaxed, seemingly unscripted dialogue, with former teammate Ronnie Touriaf. They even made sure that the director, film crew, cops, paramedics, kobe's wife (arms crossed), stunt guys, etc, were out of the shot at all times. One can almost, for a second, believe that a multi-millionaire mvp athlete would risk his life to make a cool video, just for fun. The video sees 5,000,000 views on youtube.





An executive at Axe bodyspray sees this video while practicing his 'double pits to chesty' in the mirror, and a light bulb goes off above his head. A month later, axe releases this commercial. At about the 3 minute mark, the sheck seemingly does a direct parody of the skater ollies car video, except Greg lutszka and Jereme Rogers (i wonder if maybe when the cops stopped Jereme from doing this, he was just practicing his double pits to chesties??) are driving a golf cart. And there are hot chicks just standing there. Why wouldnt there be? The Sheck clears the cart with a seemingly effortless 12 foot ollie, and pulls a perfect double pits to chesty in mid-air, to the obvious relief of the hot chicks. Oh man, I hope the Sheck throws this trick down at the next dew tour or x-games comp.This video was actually shot at the same location as the original 'skater ollies car' video, and they even hired Zach Miller, the skater from the video, to be Sheckler's stand-in. The commercial is airing now, watch the extended version below..




The moral of the story kids? If you ever have a good idea, share it with the world, and watch people steal it and make millions of dollars selling sneakers and deoderant.














Channels: Skate

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3 Comments

 1-3 of 3

ck1

Posted by ck1 August 27, 2009 07:18am PDTReply | Report Abuse

is it stealing an idea because of the viral element? because people have been jumping over cars since at least the 70s. i'm not talking about knievel either. just random dudes in sneaks clearing oncoming traffic. nothing original here from any of the vids including the one of the kid on the skateboard.

iamgod

Reply by iamgod August 27, 2009 01:52pm PDTReport Abuse

I have to fully agree with ck1 here. What the hell did these skater guys do that was so original? The fact that it's viral isn't even that original. Fuck! Jackie Chan has jumps over a car before and it wasn't even fake. You can't discredit the rest of the world just because a couple of skaters had 1 clever idea. There are plenty of creative people out there.

Teddy Parker

Posted by Teddy Parker August 27, 2009 09:54am PDTReply | Report Abuse

At least AXE had a quality filmer and editor for that footage. If you ignore the dumb sh!t, it's actually really good.

Tom Morin

Posted by Tom Morin August 28, 2009 10:12am PDTReply | Report Abuse

I don't think it should be "double pits to chesty." It should be "double balls to grundle," because that's where you really stink after a skate session.

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