It’s a Rough Life Episode 2: Roughside of Utah Pt.2
In Part 2 of Johnny’s adventure to Salt Lake City, the “Rough side of the Traxx” contest gets started. But not without some drama with one of Johnny’s Sales Reps who shows up riding the competition’s product. All the riders head out and we get to see chaos on train and the first spot, Dead Goat Ledge.
It’s a Rough Life: Roughside of the Trax Complete
It’s a Rough Life, a reality series about Johnny Roughneck.
Johnny flies to Salt Lake City to host “Rough Side of the Trax 2″ — his event where kids barge the trains to skate spots across the city. This is the complete story arc, a combination of three webisodes.
On day one, check out the behind the scenes leading up to the event and see Johnny’s Utah digs. Then Johnny heads to SLUG Magazine (Salt Lake Underground) to meet the crew. On day 2, the “Rough side of the Trax” contest gets started. But not without some drama with one of Johnny’s Sales Reps who shows up riding the competition’s product. After that is sorted out, the Roughnecks head to registration and then all the riders head out to the train and the first spot, Dead Goat Ledge. Then it’s on to the Wave, but the Roughneck crew has a little trouble on the way. Eventually the skating goes off at the second spot, and the contest rolls to the U where the Salt Lake City skaters take turns throwing tricks down a big set of stairs. After the last spot it’s off to the afterparty behind the Fice Boutique for the winners ceremony.
It’s a Rough Life Episode 6: MIA
It’s a Rough Life, a reality series about Johnny Roughneck.
In this episode of It’s a Rough Life, Cowtown Phoenix Am gets started. Josh Bozzuto, one of Johnny’s riders has a 10am slot and Johnny is missing in action.
This is a fun and quick episode that set’s up Johnny’s rider Josh as a character. It illustrates the impact of Johnny’s relationship with his riders, and shows how it effects their performance. …Or to put it another way, how getting wasted all night and missing your rider’s run after driving them across the country to put them in a contest will really bum them out.
This was a fun episode to produce. We like that it feels a little more verite at the beginning than some of the others. We think the moments with Josh, while he set’s up his board in the morning were pretty insightful into what it’s like for an up and comer at a big contest. The conversation with the team on the way to the contest, when they illustrate both a concern/ and also complete lack there of for Johnny’s predicament is pretty entertaining as well.
We’re starting our TV pitching strategy for It’s a Rough Life. What are your thoughts on how the web series is going so far? What would you like to see?
Become a Facebook fan to get updated every Thursday with a new episode.
New It’s a Rough Life, headed to Phoenix @aroughlife
In this episode of It’s a Rough Life, the Roughneck crew hits the road for Phoenix, Arizona for Cowtown Phoenix Am. It’s an all night drive with a pit stop at the local “hater nation” coffee shop to skate some rocks, and then a session at one of Arizona’s gorgeous rest stops. All they have to do after that is make it the contest and set-up the tent…
We’ve got lot’s more in store. Enjoy
Become a Facebook fan to get updated every Thursday with a new episode.
@aroughlife Let the Phoenix Saga begin!
Today we start the Cowtown Phoenix Am story arc on It’s a Rough Life. It’s a six episode arc that will take Johnny and his crew through some pretty entertaining situations (we hope). And there might even be some skateboarding.
In 2010, Roughneck Hardware was a junior sponsor at the infamous Cowtown Phoenix Amateur skateboard contest. Phoenix Am, as it is known, is a proving ground for up and coming rippers. It’s also just the type of place a struggling company like Roughneck could claim real legitimacy. So after a little bit of scheming Johnny got a van, a photographer, and two of his riders in the contest. He also brought his wife and a personal hype man.
If you watch the episode you’ll notice that Johnny is headed to Phoenix Am 2010. The Phoenix material is actually the original pilot material for It’s a Rough Life. It came about, because after years of documenting Johnny’s company we realized that it was worth trying to take it a step further and make it show. Jeremey and Roughneck were both headed to Phoenix Am that year. Jeremey was going to shoot the contest for ESPN.com, and Roughneck was going for the reasons stated in the video (riders in the contest, build hype for the company). It presented a great opportunity to get in a van with the squad and get some great footage. (If we had been able to neglect the contest a little more, we could have gotten even more!) This episode sets up events for the next few. We hope you enjoy it.
In other Rough Life news, we also posted a “complete arc” version of the Roughside of the Trax 2. Its all three webisodes combined into one short film (for all those wanting more than four minutes of new Rough Life per week). It was posted today as well.
Become a Facebook fan to get updated every Thursday with a new episode.
It’s a Rough Life Episode 3 is up! Utah Finale @aroughlife
In Part 3 of Johnny’s adventure to Salt Lake City, the “Rough side of the Traxx” heads to the Wave, but the Roughneck crew has a little trouble on the way. Eventually the skating goes off at the Wave, and then the contest rolls to the U where the Salt Lake City skaters take turns throwing tricks down a big set of stairs. After the last spot it’s off to the afterparty behind the Fice Boutique for the winners ceremony.
This episode wraps up Roughneck in Utah. We worked really hard to get these out so quickly after Roughside of the Trax, and we hope you all enjoyed them. Once again we have to thank all of the people who have been supportive of this project. Our friend Ben Youngermen, Benny Gold, Lowcard Mag, Slap Magazine, Typical Culture, Shrewgy over at Ace Trucks, Stunner of the Month, Paying in Pain, California Street/ Hidehiko Fujiwara, Dalan McNabola (for all the social media support), Jimmy Nelson and the Roughneck Hardware squadron (and Panda for being a good sport), and so many more.
There’s more coming. Next week we’re doing a little trip back in time to Phoenix Am 2010 for the Phoenix Saga! Stay tuned.
Become a Facebook fan to get updated every Thursday with a new episode.
@aroughlife Episode 2 is up! Roughside of the Trax Part II
In Part 2 of Johnny’s adventure to Salt Lake City, the “Rough side of the Traxx” contest gets started. But not without some drama with one of Johnny’s Sales Reps who shows up riding the competition’s product. All the riders head out and we get to see chaos on train and the first spot, Dead Goat Ledge.
We’ve been working hard on these, and we appreciate all the support we’ve gotten, especially from the likes of Benny Gold, Lowcard, Typical Culture, and the posts on Slap and other big action sports websites.
Today, we’re audio finishing Episode 3 (the Utah closer, premiering October 20th). Then we’ll get into logging the epic BART Tour 2011 Episodes and putting together questions for Johnny’s spinal interview. The Phoenix (Am) Saga starts on October 27.
If you missed the first Episode you can watch it here now.
And do us a favor and give us some hits on the site, we’re trying to blow this thing up. Click here.
Become a Facebook fan to get updated every Thursday with a new episode.
It’s a Rough Life dot com is up!
Today we officially launched It’s a Rough Life dot com with a new promo about Johnny Roughneck and why he does all the things he does.
The inaugural season of It’s a Rough Life will be a look into Johnny’s hectic reality through a collection of stories captured over the last two years. Each episode will range from 3-6 minutes.
For more about Johnny Roughneck, and a deeper look into the idea behind It’s a Rough Life, take a look at our Treatment. We want to get people excited about this first season so that we can raise funds to make another one with a full production crew and post pipeline. Our ultimate goal is to turn It’s a Rough Life into a television series.
So check out the site. Like us on Facebook, follow Johnny on Twitter, and stay tuned for lots more antics from the Roughneck squad every Thursday.
Roughside of the Updates
The last couple of weeks have been a bit hectic. We had family in town, a wedding in Colorado, and a family trip to D.C. for a newborn niece. Somehow, during all of that we cut a series of videos for a Pandora and Mercedes campaign called Moms and Dads Who Rock. The first was five videos was with Javier Colon, the second set (still in post) is with Reba McEntire, the third (actually starting tomorrow) with Tori Amos.
But that’s not all.
We’re also launching It’s a Rough Life next Thursday with a soft launch and promo video on the site tomorrow! We’ve been working like crazy to get episodes ready for the launch. There is some old and some new. As such, Jeremey traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah over the weekend with the Roughneck Hardware folks to document Roughside of the Traxx, a BART Tour-esque, public transit, guerilla skate contest put on my SLUG Magazine and Roughneck.
The contest went off, with tons of Utah kids going crazy on the trains, barging skate spots all over downtown SLC, and generally ripping. Footage from SLUG, and also from us will be available shortly.
Thanks to everyone in SLC for their kindness and hospitaliy. It was a fun town with good people and SLUG is a great mag.
And also thanks to Fice in downtown SLC for the discount on jeans after Jeremey blew his out skating and filming all day. All in all the trip was a lot of fun, but definitely challenging being a one man band trying to shoot a documentary under roving street contest conditions.
Yep, it’s been busy, busy, busy with no signs of slowing down. Stay tuned. Check out the promo at It’s a Rough Life tomorrow, and wait for lots more hi jinx with Johnny and his crew coming every Thursday for the next couple of months.
Neckface on Vans TV
Vans and Six Stair are running a pretty cool series on Neckface at the moment. We love all the weird animation.