Let’s get one thing clear: The new Animal DVD, “Cuts” is one of the most anticipated videos of all time. It’s been almost 6 years since “All Day” and while the Skavenger video and the Skapegoat web series helped tide street riding fans over in between, everyone has been waiting to see what the final product would be like, and not just because the Animal team has some of the best street riders alive on their roster.
Quite a bit has changed since their first 3 videos. Firstly, Animal as a company has grown. They aren’t a small peg & sprocket company operating out of Ralph’s parent’s garage anymore, they are one of the largest sellers of BMX parts and while they have mostly managed to remain the aura of authenticity that has surrounded the company since it’s inception, it’s not easy to manage being the cool company, while also being the huge company. Secondly, Animal hired Ryan Navazio to handle the bulk of the filming for this release. Navaz is widely considered to be one of the best BMX filmers alive and is a master at his simple, but almost always perfectly executed style of filming and that fact alone had many of us excited to see what an Animal video looked like with higher production values. Finally, Animal’s pro team has increased in size dramatically, almost doubling in size since the release of Can I Eat (and more than doubling if you include their overseas distro riders, some of whom are featured prominently in Cuts plus guys like Ratkid and Garrett Hoogerhyde who have full sections), which provides an interesting challenge for Bob Scerbo who handled the editing of the new video.
But perhaps more importantly, BMX itself has changed in the years since Animal’s last release. The first Animal video was an iconoclast, shattering the mold of BMX videos at the time, clocking in at just over 20 minutes and focusing entirely on street riding, the first video to ever do so (excluding some of the Ells Bells videos), using a mostly hip hop soundtrack and utilizing many clips filmed entirely on curbs and low flat ledges, to the chagrin of anyone still holding on to the “go big or go home” mentality of yesteryear. Since then, many of the things that made Animal’s early releases the stuff of legend have become commonplace. So going into this project, seeing how Bob would handle these challenges was almost as interesting to watchful critics as exactly what new grind combos would get invented this time around.
And with that, I’m happy to say that Cuts is everything it is supposed to be. In the early days of Animal a 20ish minute video made sense, since they were a tight knit crew of friends, but since the team has expanded, that simply doesn’t work anymore. Instead of trying to stuff everyone’s clips into a half hour package, Scerbo let the video’s run time go for over an hour, with more mix sections than anyone would have expected. This is slightly unnerving; it makes the video impossible to absorb in 2 or 3 viewings (I’ve watched it 4 times already and I’m still noticing things I missed with every additional watch) but it’s still indicative of the same mentality that made the early Animal videos unique. When crafting the first Animal video they made the decision to let the video much shorter than the average video, since that was what they wanted. Now, they’ve allowed their newest video to run much longer than the average video, simply because that’s what they wanted to do even realizing that it would make the video more difficult to digest for the average viewer. That willingness to do things their own way is the same mentality that has made Animal so beloved by so many riders and respected within the industry as well.
As expected, the riders don’t disappoint. The bulk of the team turned in sections that almost nobody would take issue with, and some of the team cranked out the best sections of their careers. I’ll spare you an analysis of whose sections are best, since there are too many parts that I loved to even really bother naming them off, but one of the best moments in the DVD comes when Ralph’s part comes on. Ralph hasn’t had a full section in almost 10 years, and the Rakim song he rides to starts off with a sample that repeats “it’s been a long time” over and over. Seeing Ralph still killing it after all he’s been through is inspirational to say the least.
There’s certainly some criticism to be thrown around; I appreciate that the video ran so long, but some of the mix sections just drag on unnecessarily. The music is good, but falls short of being as iconic as past Animal soundtracks (Scerbo’s song in particular is about the worst song I could imagine editing a video part to). Some riders are hardly featured; Wormz has 4 clips, George D is entirely absent, Wiz has a very short part and Steven Hamilton’s part doesn’t really deliver in the way I thought it might. The titles start off with a bunch of cool-looking family crest style graphics which are then abandoned 10 minutes into the video for titles that don’t seem to have any sort of rhyme or reason behind them. And finally, while the filming is better than previous Animal videos, there’s still some bro-cam and poorly lit night shots (you can pretty much identify everything Navaz shot if you pay attention). But all that can be mostly ignored since the riding itself is so strong.
In the end, all you really need to know is that the video turned out just as good as it should have and that your video collection will have a big black hole in it if you don’t man up and get this video today. Click here to buy.