Rewind: Dennis Busenitz in Real’s “Since Day One” (2011)

Busenitz footage is always gold but Dan Wolfe’s editing heightens the pressure on the high-speed miracle worker.

Adidas used to put out these great travel edits every few months and one thing that stood about them was Dennis Busenitz’s ability to get clips. It looked like you could just deposit him anywhere and if you pointed a camera in his direction you’d end up with a micro-part. I just watched a bunch of his videos from the past decade and they’re remarkably consistent. My initial thinking about his “Since Day One” part is that it captures the man in his prime but I was mistaken. His 2016 part in “Away Days” shows no evidence of him slowing down. So why does this video feel like it’s his best part? It’s the production — the filming, editing and music make this an explosive part.

Tre flip at SF Public Library. Photo by Gabe Morford via DLX

It opens with a minute and a half of footage is set to the drumless intro of Brian Eno’s “Here Come the Warm Jets” and the melodic wandering makes it feel like what I described above: this is Dennis Busenitz just cruising around, no big deal except his just cruising around equals effortlessly crushing shit. This section mixes the fact that he can make everything video-worthy (one clip is just a short backtail on a bank but the way he almost unnecessarily pops out of it makes it a highlight. [OK, he is going uphill but still…] The FS flip at :49 is one of the best ever. Period.) with the that fact that he can do anything. There’s this amazing line where he ollies from a steep loading dock bump-to-bar into a wallride then immediately turns around and 180’s the bar back into the bank. There are gnarly gap to manuals, tech ones like the bigspin to fakie manny, and mind-blowers like a switch heel switch manny at 3-up-3-down in SF. He can do anything but luckily has the taste not to do everything (if you haven’t seen his game of SKATE against Chris Cole watch it. He pulls out one miracle make after another on tricks he’s clearly never even considered doing. In one of his games against Eric Koston he says, “Who even does that trick?” about a fakie inward heel then nails it. Also worth watching as Dennis does every trick at Mach 5).

50-50 going up. Photo by Gabe Morford via DLX

The actual part is soundtracked by the Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner” and editor Dan Wolfe doesn’t waste any time with pushing, extended roll-aways or b-roll footage of high-fives so the space between tricks comes exclusively from Dennis pushing in the prodigious lines that run throughout the part. It’s constant movement. The other thing Wolfe does that contributes to the explosive energy is cuts clips at points where it seems obvious that Busenitz that kept pushing after the trick to do something else. Throughout the part the “just cruising” part of his style is compressed so that you have to focus on what he’s doing more than how he’s doing it. You can compare this to to “Away Days” where Busenitz is still doing wild shit at high speeds but the editing and music create room to breathe. As an example, the ledge he tailslides at 4:22 drops off into a visibly steep hill but the clip ends as soon as you have confirmation that it’s steep. The obvious move is to show him fly down that fucking hill a la a GX1000 edit but nope, next clip. It’s like, even though San Francisco hillbombs are anxiety inducing to watch they do provide some negative space between tricks and in this video that’s not allowed.

The coolest part of how its cut is that as soon as the song ends everything opens back up: Busenitz slides to a stop, Peter Ramondetta has got a big ole smile on his face and someone in the background says, “Aww, that was awesome.” There’s one more clip after that that I won’t spoil but it’s one of the best pieces of story-telling in a skate video that I’ve ever seen.

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