Slam got to chance to talk recently with director Shaun Roberts in Melbourne where he was promoting the Australian release of his 2006 DVD ‘The Run Up’(screening this Saturday at Fed Square). Clocking in at four hours, The Run Up, which Shaun made in conjunction with Upper Playground (he'd worked previously with UP producing ‘Dithers’), is a landmark release. It's an artistic who’s who of street culture today. We got taking about the film, the people and stories behind it, before moving on to the relationship between art and mass commercial media. It’s an interesting, wide ranging discussion, with a peek over the horizon at some of Shaun’s future solo works, including a new project with Upper Playground that’s planned for the coming year.

The Run Up goes for 4 hours. It’s a massive undertaking with a definitive scope. When did you know that you had enough- that it was finally complete?

About halfway through the process we finished shooting like all the cats that were either based in LA or the West Coast, or people who worked elsewhere who came to show at Upper Playground’s Fifty24SF Gallery. People like Mr Jago, Will Barras. They’re out of London but they came out to San Francisco to show, so we took the opportunity to interview them right there. About halfway through the production we thought, ‘Hmmm, we still don’t have enough'. We always had the standard of ‘Dithers’ there to kind of meet and surpass. We definitely had to surpass it at least in production quality but hopefully in volume too. So, Upper Playground reached out to a filmmaker in NY. His name is Joey Garfield, and he’s pretty accomplished. He was part of the Barnstormers Collective back in the day, and he had a lot of great connections to New York artists and cats. So we said, ‘Hey lets bring Joey on and make it a lot more people’. I mean we had Futura and that already, 'But Joey can get us like Doze Green and Jose Parla and Maya Hayuk'. And they’re all kind of his friends from Barnstormers. So it was perfect. 'Cool, cool, cool, we’ll bring him on as a co producer, co-director type'. I was all gun-ho and enthusiastic and like, 'Yeah, let’s do it'. Until I realised, ‘Oh wait a minute, he’s just going to send me raw tape so I’m going to have to build all this stuff by myself’. Caught up in the moment, but I think it was a really good thing in the long run. Like I said, I’m a masochist. I said, ‘Yes, I’ll do it’. And it was great. I’m really proud of the stuff.

When you look back at it, putting aside that a lot of these artists know each other and that’s how it all stuck, what do you pull out as being the things that unify all these different people? What is it about all of these very individual people that actually makes them fit and compliment each other within the same film?

That’s exactly it. They’re very individual people. But also I think they all had their start in some form on the street. Be it like Estevan who still shoots street photography and stuff like that. You know? Or Swoon works on the streets. So I think there’s that, but also there’s this overall spirit of being kind of rebellious or breaking the mould or being original or not following anybody that everyone exhibits in the film. And that’s what we really loved about it when we were looking for the people. And some are pure legends. Like Futura. Who wouldn’t want to interview Lenny, you know? Who wouldn’t want to interview Doze or hang out with him for a few days. So some were no brainers. Some were very compelling; their work was extremely compelling. It was a balance between the two. We tried to get legendary artists who were kind of the big-draw names. But also artists who are still coming up. The mix is good. It’s like any good group show. You have a good draw, big name for the marquee. Bit then you surprise people with all these other great artists that may not be as well known. But now they’re crazy known. Almost all the people on the disc now are pretty well known. I credit Upper Playground; Matt the Executive Producer. He’s got such a good sense of who’ll be the next best thing, or who’se got really interesting work. It’s been an education for me, ever since I started doing Dithers which was five years ago.

PAGE: