Kirk Dianda & Rob Dyrdek:
Takin’ It to the Streets
Kirk Dianda's desk in his hotel room in Kettering, Ohio, during the filming and editing of "Groundbreaking."
Hotel Editing
Dianda filmed Rob Dyrdek as he conceived, designed, drafted, politicked, and otherwise shepherded his dream plaza through city planners, architects, and builders. Dianda’s mobile editing suite allowed him to stick close to each phase. “You just can’t take a huge program like Media 100 on the road with you,” says Dianda. “With Final Cut Pro, you can work anywhere.”
Dianda and his crew set up edit bays in their Kettering hotel rooms, using external FireWire drives to collect footage and photos. They filmed interviews and construction in the morning, then returned to the hotel. “With Final Cut Pro I just dumped the footage into my computer and started doing rough cuts,” says Dianda. “It’s amazing.”
Taking a break from the summer sun to edit in his air-conditioned hotel room allowed Dianda to cool off — and spot what he’d missed. “That was really helpful,” he says. “I could immediately see what I needed, and that evening I’d go back to the site to grab it.”
A Collaborative Effort
Doing quick rough cuts also let Dyrdek stay involved at every step. “Rob looked at my edits every day and made suggestions about what he wanted to focus on,” says Dianda. “It was perfect because instead of just seeing the film when it was done, he worked with me to select shots — and that’s something he’d never been able to do before.”
Dianda also kept in close touch with his DC Film colleagues, whether they were at the San Diego home office or shooting extreme sports events from Barcelona to Brazil. “I was commuting back and forth to Ohio and my workflow was just seamless,” he recounts. “I used my .Mac account to transfer Final Cut Pro files across our public folders, and our editors exported EDLs [Edit Decision Lists] via email. And we used iChat for quick communication. So no matter where they were, they could see the work in progress. With Final Cut Pro it’s so easy to say, ‘Hey, what do you think of this cut?’”
Moreover, DC Films saved thousands of dollars by having staffer Curtis Doss use DVD Studio Pro to do all the authoring and menu design.
Dianda estimates they cut weeks off production by keeping the work in-house and going straight from Final Cut Pro to DVD Studio Pro, sidestepping the traditional process of mastering to tape. “For the first time, we were able to keep the entire thing digital,” he says.
A New Way to Work
Kirk Dianda is proud of “Groundbreaking,” the first major project he wrote, directed, and edited since joining DC Films a year and a half ago. Wearing so many hats, he feels, is a sign of recent advances in filmmaking. “It’s crazy how many steps we’ve been able to cut out in just the past year,” he notes.
“Groundbreaking” showcases that filmmaking economy. “I’ve never experienced being able to create something so professional from such a mobile platform,” says Dianda. “When you can work on the fly and have the product right there to watch while you’re editing — ultimately, that creates the best film. Working in all digital, with Final Cut Pro and not going to tape — those things were new to me, and new things are fun! It’s definitely going to change the way I work in the future.”
No More Cops
As for Dyrdek, he’s proud to have put his hometown on the map. “Go to the Kettering Skate Plaza on any given day and you’ll see kids from all over,” he says happily. “Right now it’s the only truly legal Mecca for street skating in our country.”
Rob Dyrdek standing in front of the sign at the entrance of the Skate Plaza.
The pro has come full circle since he began as an 11-year-old skateboarding outlaw. “Kettering is where I skated my first handrail and shot my first set of stairs,” he recalls. “It’s also where I started running from the police. But the tricks I did there were my inspiration for this plaza.”
He hopes his design will become a landmark where skateboarders keep raising the bar on the sport he loves, where hotshots can leap, fail, try again, and ultimately make a name for themselves — without being barricaded, chased out, or ticketed. “This plaza is payback for all those years when the cops were chasing me out,” laughs Dyrdek. “Now, when some kid does a new trick, the place where he did it will always be there.”
