Announcing its fourth annual video contest, theberrics.com, a popular skateboarding website, released YOUnited Nations 4 to the public, at the start of the summer. The Berrics is a private skate park located in Los Angeles and is also a well known website amongst skaters that features videos filmed in the park along with other skate-related media. YOUnited Nations is an international video contest hosted by The Berrics, that any crew anywhere in the world can submit to for a hype worthy prize.
The criteria for the videos was pretty lenient: It had to be around 4 minutes long; the crew could have about 8 people; only new footage was to be used; and, most importantly, have fun. The videos would be judged by the Vans Skate team, The Berrics panel of judges, and online voters to decide the winning team.
With competing crews from California to Madagascar entering their own respectable footage, it’s by some great feat that San Antonio’s own LBJ locals came out on top. The local group goes by the name of Tetra, and is comprised of eight promising skaters and filmmakers that grew up skating together at the Lady Bird Johnson skate park down the street. Closer to home, Tetra members and MacArthur students Rye Beres (11) of Boneless Zine and Cody Smith (12) will receive an all expense-paid, week long trip to LA to film a United Nations at The Berrics alongside pros, street skate the city of LA, and each member of the team gets a year supply of Vans shoes.
When did you start filming your individual parts for the video?
Cody: I started last summer, but we weren’t working on the YOUnited Nations, we were just filming. We just collected our footage together starting from last summer.
Rye: I only took two days to film it.
Where were your favorite spots that you got to skate in the video?
Rye: Well for me, one of my tricks was [a bench] in [Los Angeles] California, and that was fun because I wasn’t really trying to film I just ended up filming the trick and so it was just fun.
Cody: Kinked rails.
How did you hear about the contest?
Cody: Well we follow The Berrics [on Instagram] and they post a lot of stuff that we can do. They posted the deadlines and everything so we got our clips together and came as a group to try to finish it.
Rye: We “YOUnited” with each other as a crew.
Why did you want to enter?
Cody: Well the guy that edited the video (Isaiah Rendon) is really good at editing and the footage was really good so we had a really good shot of getting into the finals. And we wanted to get in the finals so we could show more people our skating instead of just releasing a local video which not that many people would see.
Rye: With the skating and editing and everything put together, all the ingredients went together and it made a really good “whatever” basically.
So I know you guys used some old footage for the video. Did you also have to go out and get new footage for it?
Cody: Yeah, just a little bit, but I didn’t have any new footage.
Rye: Once we found out we were going to do the contest, we needed a few more things to finish it off because, like the last trick, we hadn’t filmed that and we were like “lets go do that for the video because that’ll be a good way of ending it.” And for me, I didn’t have any footage yet so right as we found out we were going to do it, I was like “Oh, I’d better go do some stuff for it.”
How did you decide on Tetra as your team name?
Rye: Well, that’s kind of a big controversy
Cody: It is, because Isaiah was the original starter of that, so we don’t really know what he meant by that. He just made it his crew name.
Rye: At first, like 5 or 6 years ago, the crew members Will Flores and Isaiah started it as just a Youtube channel, and then it just became a group of San Antonio people who’d skate together. And then that was just the name that everyone thought would be good because everyone already knows the name. Tetra’s been around for a long time.
Cody: It was kind of falling off so we wanted to bring it back
What was the best trick on the video, and who did it?
Rye: Everybody has awesome tricks. You can’t say that person was better than the other person because everyone skates differently. But, Brett Heinis and Leo Ramirez had some of the best stuff because they did bigger stuff than most of us. Brett’s trick would be the very last trick.
Cody: The feeble to 50/50 grind.
Rye: And then Leo’s would probably be…
Cody: I would say the nollie inward heelflip at Cons Gap.
What was your biggest obstacle making this video?
Cody: Honestly, getting everybody as a group was really hard to do because Isaiah and Drake Flores live in Austin.
Rye: Yeah, between working and some people being out of town and not having cars. And then police officers. That’s a big one.
Cody: Getting kicked out, lighting up spots.
Rye: Having to make some spots.
Cody: Getting the art shots and cutting out the clips that Isaiah didn’t like.
Rye: Yeah, we probably have like 20 minutes of stuff that wasn’t used. For the video we had to put the best of the best so people think “those guys are gnarly.”
Rye and Cody’s video can be found on theberrics.com where Tetra will remain in the archives as the winner of YOUnited Nations 4. Click the link below to check it out! http://theberrics.com/gen-ops/yn4-vote-tetra.html?autoplay
