One of the best ways to unite the skate community in your town is to organize a video project and celebrate the outcome with a party-premiere at a local theatre. And that's exactly what Ottawa's Aaron Cayer and Guillaume "Gui" Lebel sparked with While You Were On Facebook.

"The community is the whole point of this video, it's not like: ‘You can only get in this video if you're the best skater,'" Aaron explains as the lead project manager and contributing filmer. "I wanted to showcase that there's more to skating than doing the best tricks. If you want to be serious and make the most epic video, then that's great. But we're doing something else. And that's what makes skating so great - you can do whatever the hell you want."

"Everyone knows each other, regardless of how old they are," WYWOFB filmer and primary editor Gui says of the tight-knit Ottawa skate scene. "Some people are really serious about their skating here, but most people have regular jobs and go skate for fun."

After a few discussions over beers and during their stint working together at the seasonal McNabb Skatepark, Aaron and Gui got the ball rolling at the beginning of Summer 2011. The project rapidly gained momentum in the community until it reached a crescendo when the finished product premiered on the silver screen at Ottawa's Mayfair Theatre on November 27th.

Whether you're from our nation's capital or not, you can't go wrong watching the likes of Mitch Barrette, Richard Sarrazin, Matt Canadien, Seb Labbe Matt Patafie, Austin Fyfe, Sam Lind, Jon Piekarski and many, many more. Learn all about WYWOFB via this Skype interview with Aaron Cayer and Guillaume Lebel:

How did this project get rolling initially?
Aaron: I've been filming for a long time and was sitting on a bunch of footage. I just decided to make a video, so I sent out 40 messages to the Ottawa community asking: "Which 5 people would you want to see in it?" I tallied up the people who should be included and brought it to Gui.

Gui: I was down with it. At the beginning it was supposed to be one big 20-minute montage. Just pure fun. But people started actually filming for it, and other filmers got involved like Jordan Wiens, Quinn Goodwin and Ian Docherty. So we made parts but still created the montage vibe.

There are guys like Richard Sarrazin in the vid, and that's as good as gold...
Aaron: Some people got injured, like Jay Hyland. Then all of a sudden Ricky Sarrazin steps up and says: "I wanna be a part of this. Let's film!"

Gui: Matt Canadien and Mitch Barrette got super stoked and wanted to be a part of it as well. It's Ottawa, you know?

When I first heard about this project and saw the trailer, I thought the title was interesting. What's the story behind it?
Aaron: Our homie Neil Magadzia was making these iPhone videos of our weekend antics, and one of them was called While You Were On Facebook. We were like: "Let's just call our video that, who cares?" Neil's idea behind the title was: "While you were on Facebook, we were out skating and renegading beers."

While the video was coming together, whose footy ended up surprising you guys the most?
Gui: I was impressed by Seb Labbe's footage. He had maybe 20 seconds going into it, and in a month he filmed 2 minutes worth [laughs].

Aaron: Ben Duncan in my opinion, just because he couldn't land anything last year, but managed to throw some gnarly tricks out there for the video. Andrew Szeto has a shared part with Matt Patafie at the beginning of the video, and it's sick.

(keep reading for more on the making of WYWOFB, more photos, and stories of broken bones)