Still United

Still United is a full-length BMX video from United, a British bike brand, released in March 2016. Filmed and edited by Peter Adam, it is a street video built from long individual sections by the United team, with Nathan Williams, Corey Martinez and Christian Rigal among the headline riders. Released at a time when most BMX footage went straight to the internet as short clips, Still United was a deliberate return to the full-length format.

Background

United is a British bike brand, run by Ian Morris, that built an international team weighted toward American street riders. By 2016 that team included Nathan Williams, from Nashville, Tennessee, who was widely regarded as one of the best street riders in the world, and Corey Martinez, also from Nashville, whose section in Animal's Can I Eat? (2004) had made his name. Christian Rigal, Jeff Kocsis, Geoff Slattery and Alex Valentino also feature in the video.

The web edit era was by then fully established. Brands released short online videos regularly, and the expectation was that riders' best footage would appear within weeks of being filmed. United chose a different route. Peter Adam filmed the team over 24 months in ten countries, the footage was held back, and the result was released as a complete video. James Cox handled the motion graphics and DVD authoring.

The world premiere was held at the Source Park in Hastings, England, on 5 March 2016, and DVD sales began two days later. Further premieres followed in Nashville, New York and other cities.

Contents and sections

Still United follows the traditional full-length structure: a sequence of rider sections cut to music, each built from clips gathered over a long period.

The video is almost entirely street. Rails, ledges, banks, gaps and the kind of improvised transitions found in cities make up the terrain. The riding is modern in the sense that the trick vocabulary is large, but the sections are built the older way, with clips accumulated over two years and arranged to build toward an ender.

Nathan Williams, Corey Martinez and Christian Rigal have the most talked about sections, and Rigal's six minute part of big handrails is often singled out. Corey Martinez's section shows his riding more than a decade after his Can I Eat? part. Jeff Kocsis, Geoff Slattery and Alex Valentino fill out the rest of the video.

Standout parts

Christian Rigal's part is the one most often discussed. At more than six minutes, it is long by any standard, and it is built around big handrails.

Nathan Williams' section is the other main draw. Williams is known for riding big, technical street spots with control, combining grind variations with gaps and rails, and his Still United section collected two years of that riding into one part.

Corey Martinez's section shows a rider who had made one of the key street parts of the previous decade still riding at a high level, with the scale and variety that defined his earlier work.

The video as a whole is a standout for its consistency. Every section was filmed with a full-length release in mind, and the difference from footage shot for quick online release is clear.

Impact and legacy

Still United is one of the relatively few full-length brand videos of the 2010s. It showed that the long-form video still had an audience, and that holding footage back could produce sections that short-form releases rarely matched. It was reported to have won video of the year at the NORA Cup for 2016.

For Nathan Williams, the video added to his standing as one of the most respected street riders of his generation. Still United was sold on DVD and as a digital download. For the context of the format debate it was part of, see web edit and the web edit era.

Related

• Nathan Williams and Corey Martinez
• Can I Eat?: Corey Martinez's earlier landmark section
• Street
• Web edit era and web edit
• Ender
• NORA Cup: the annual awards that recognise videos and video parts of the year