The roster-heavy, Vancouver-based skateboard video, Strange Brew, was the result of a 2-year international adventure. Back in January 2007, it was a negative reaction to Canada's west coast wetness that initiated this whole ordeal.

"Some of us decided to quit our jobs or take a leave of absence from work to go skate and avoid the rain," says Kurt Filippone, the filmer/director of Strange Brew.

After spending February and March '07 in El Born and Barceloneta in Barcelona, Spain skating with a massive Canadian contingent, the crew headed back to Vancouver for the summer. In September '07, members of the Strange Brew posse were Montreal-bound, spending 3 weeks discovering proper poutine and staying in questionable "cold shower" accommodations. In November '07, the group headed out to Shenzhen, China, where, according to Kurt, "Strange Brew got culture shocked by Asia" and "frogs, water snakes, and pigeon were consumed by some of us for the first time." By January '08, the squad revisited Spain, where Kurt claims, "Spencer Hamilton became the first person in the world to watch a movie, take a shower and cook breakfast all at the same time."

Starting in the summer of '08, and throughout the remainder of the year, Strange Brew-related editorial popped up in SBC Skateboard (#10.2 and 10.4), Color (#6.5) and Concrete Skateboarding (#97) magazines.

After the DVD was released in mid-December '08, I had the chance to catch up with Kurt Filippone for a little "Follow Up" Q and A.

How has the video been received since the Vancouver premiere in November ‘08?
For the most part, we got a lot of positive feedback. A lot of the guys in the video were really happy with it because they were given the opportunity to pick the songs they wanted to skate to, and they had a say in the way they wanted their stuff to look. So it turned out really well from a family perspective. At the premiere, people were really excited to see it, and everybody seemed to like it for the most part. We had a couple screenings at the Empire 7 on Granville Street and we pretty much packed it both times, so it was good to see a lot of support out there for the local stuff.

You guys were literally editing right up until moments before the premiere.
We had a couple guys pick their songs a couple days before the premiere. We were kind of scrambling, and pulled off a couple all-nighters a few days before the premiere. We were pretty much working on it solid for an entire month before the unveiling date.

Sascha Daley, frontside half-cab kickflip, Shenzhen. Dan Zaslavsky sequence.

Did Jordan Mayfield do a lot of the clutch editing?
I had most of it edited, but during the last few days before we showed it to everyone, I brought my computer over to Jordan Mayfield's place—he combed over some of my edits, double-checked, and switched up a few things. Jordan edited [Wade] Fyfe's part entirely with Fyfe. We linked it all up together about a half-hour before the screening on November 27th, '08 [laughs].

Is it true that Brad Sheppard edited his part himself?
I gave all of Bradley's footage to him. I went to his place one day and we figured out where things were going to go, and he showed me the song he wanted to use. Bradley ended up going away about 2 weeks before the premiere, and decided he wanted to edit his whole part on his own while he was gone. He was skating down at Black Box Distribution in California, and his laptop was locked in the warehouse during the weekend when I needed to get his part. I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, but Bradley ended up putting his part up on an FTP server after that weekend, so I could download it and get it into the timeline.

In terms of viewer feedback on the Internet or otherwise, whose parts have been getting the most praise?
There were some people on SkateNewSpot that didn't like the video [laughs]. But I've heard a lot of good feedback about Spencer Hamilton's part. A lot of people were stoked because it's his first breakout part. He was involved with the editing process and his is one of the more solid sections in the movie.

Spencer Hamilton, Kickflip backtail to fakie, Barcelona. Brian Caissie sequence.

You guys did a lot of international traveling for Strange Brew, but it looked like Paul Trep's part was filmed entirely in Vancouver.
Trep couldn't get it together, man [laughs]. He didn't get out with us at all because he had some issues with his passport. He also didn't have a phone at the time, so I'd ride my bike over to his place since he lives 6 blocks away from me in Vancouver. That's how we made his part happen.

It seems pretty rare to see Ted DeGros footage these days. How did you get a full part out of him?
He doesn't live in Vancouver, and luckily he had some sponsors at the time that would send him off on trips. He met us in Spain once in ‘07, and on two separate occasions in '08 for 2 weeks-at-a-time. We were also fortunate enough that the people at Momentum were nice enough to give us a couple clips of Ted from their Japan Tour [summer ‘08]. We pieced everything together and built a pretty solid section for Ted, which is his first part in a while.

Since the DVD is now available in Canada, the US and Japan, what features can people expect?
It's pretty much the same cut as the premiere, with a few small changes. We took the Tokyo section and put that in as a bonus—a lot of people felt that it was sort of out of the blue in the video. There's an extra bonus montage of footage that was cut from the video, along with a Super-8 part from Spain. There's also a little bail section that's pretty gnarly, and shows the realistic side of skating when you're trying to get the tricks you see in Strange Brew.

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Related:
The Follow Up: Team Grizzlies' Downhill Massacre
The Follow Up: Leeside Halloween Jam/Independent's 30th in Vancouver