When it comes to popular filming locations, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago all come to mind. However, the UCSD campus, New Orleans’ wreckage and foreign terrain in Indonesia would never come up. But John Muir College junior Kareem Shehab’s movie, “”Super Awesome!,”” uses all these locales as playgrounds for some solidly unique in-line skating tricks.
Kareem Shehab, the creator and director of “”Super Awesome!,”” uses the fountain in Revelle Plaza to execute a grind, a simple trick in comparison to those displayed in Shehab’s film.
The film, which is premiering for free at Price Center Theater on June 15 at 8 p.m., showcases Shehab as a filmmaker and a skater, as he performs both in front of and behind the camera throughout the 35-minute piece.
“”I don’t regret [filming over skating] though because I’m really happy with the way it turned out,”” Shehab said. “”And now that I’ve finished the video I have more time to skate and enjoy it.””
Instead of Shehab, the film mostly features talented amateur skaters from New Orleans -Shehab’s hometown – and San Diego.
Kareem Shehab does a 180-degree stale grab over a fence in New Orleans, one of the interesting locales featured in his movie.
“”When I moved to SD, I saw that I had an opportunity to film with some of the best amateur skaters in the country,”” Shehab said. “”San Diego is kind of a hub for the aggressive skating community. So when I moved here, I started taking the project more seriously and got in touch with a lot of contacts in the industry to get this thing rolling.””
Shehab said the project took a long time to create, with segments dating as far back as his high-school days.
“”A lot of the footage in the video is four-or five-years old,”” he said. “”In the beginning, I wasn’t sure whether this was a video for just me and my friends or a part of someone else’s video.””
Shehab eventually decided that he had enough footage to make his own movie, and “”Super Awesome!”” was born. Shehab hopes his movie will bring attention to a sport that’s losing popularity.
“”[In-line skating] is a lot less popular,”” Shehab said. “”But part of that is why I skate. I don’t do it because it’s a cool thing to do, because it isn’t. I know all of the guys that are into it do it because they love it and that makes it a really tight-knit community.””
But Shehab knows that the average person doesn’t have the same fascination with skating that his friends and he have, so he edited his movie accordingly.
“”The video is full of all kinds of little skits and ideas I’ve had to make the video more interesting and more appealing to people who don’t rollerblade,”” he said.
In addition to adding those humorous segments, Shehab made the film unique by filming in interesting locations like New Orleans and Indonesia.
“”The New Orleans section came about after the disaster,”” Shehab said. “”I lived there a good part of my life and I love the city and I wanted to take something that is a really negative event and turn it into something positive. There was so much destruction and my friends lost their houses but the silver lining – if you want to call it that – is that skating in the city completely changed after. A lot of businesses moved out of town and so they left their buildings at our mercy.””
New Orleans’ terrain after Hurricane Katrina is unlike anything else, creating opportunities for skaters like Shehab to come up with new ideas for tricks, which is a main selling point of his movie, according to Shehab.
“”Most videos out right now are of the top-name pros doing the same tricks that you’ve seen in every video,”” Shehab said. “”But most of the skating in my video is really creative. The guys that I skate with try to think outside the box when it comes to doing tricks. We try to skate spots that haven’t been skated before or find something else that is unique and can’t be recreated.””
The film’s Indonesian segment offers viewers a chance to see skating in a never-before-seen location. Shehab’s family moved to Jakarta after being displaced from New Orleans, and Shehab saw a visit as a chance to expand on his video.
“”In Indonesia they loved me,”” Shehab said. “”Those guys would stop traffic for me to skate a spot. People out there are really friendly so I had a great time.””
Unfortunately for Shehab, some people were not as sympathetic toward him and his friends utilizing private property for tricks. Security guards, policemen and random individuals try to get in his way during certain parts of the film. This usually ends up on film, so Shehab included it in his movie for more humorous interludes. Overall, though, the general public was pretty interested in his project.
“”When people stop to watch us they cheer us on,”” Shehab said. “”I think when people see us and the stuff that we are doing, they are pretty amazed because they haven’t seen rollerblading since the 1990s, but it has progressed a lot since then. The tricks we are doing are a lot bigger and the style is more finessed so it just looks a lot more presentable to the average person.””
