It’s no surprise that Los Angeles is regarded as one of the many hotspots keeping skate culture alive and thriving. As the sunny city continues to inspire those who dare to dream, Converse is honing in on this magic with the release of “As You Wish”, a short skating film curated by the sneaker giant with pro skaters Erik Herrera and Louie Lopez with creative director Ryan Lee.

To help celebrate the film’s premiere at Zebulon in Los Angeles, Converse CONS rider, musician, and producer Sage Elsesser aka Navy Blue closed out the night with an energetic performance for attendees. 

To get more insight into the film, VMAN’s Digital Editor Kevin Ponce sat down with Lopez, Herrera, and Lee to chat all things skate, Converse, and more.

Kevin Ponce: How are you doing, Louie?

Louie Lopez: Doing good, you know? A little nervous, you just work on something for so long and it’s finally here.

KP: Yeah, it feels like the Oscars right now, and you’re Leo DiCaprio waiting to see if he won or not. This is it. 

LL: Yeah, it’s like the skate Oscars right now or something like that.

KP: I will admit, I haven’t really immersed myself in the skate video world.

LL: You know, a skate video [is like a film] if you’re a skater. But, if you don’t really skate too much, it’s just seems like a lot of tricks. So you have to try to balance what you put into it to keep everyone engaged. 

KP: How often are you pushing these films out?

LL: I mean, you usually work on them one at a time. Lately it’s been like one a year [for one] and you just spend the whole year working on it, kind of thing. We just travel, go on trips, and the context of the trips are just to skate in interesting spots. I mean, thankfully that’s what I can do for work. It’s not bad. Go hop on a plane, go skate with your friends and have everything paid for–it’s the dream. 

KP: Truly. Can you imagine if you were eight, nine years old and someone told you this would be your life? You would’ve freaked out.

LL: I mean, in the back of your head, you’re thinking ‘maybe one day that can happen’. I started skating when I was five. I remember my cousin would mess around on a skateboard and it was my older cousin, so pretty much, I did whatever he did. And it’s a classic story of that and watching Tony Hawk on TV and I didn’t know anything about it, but we just did it. Then, later down the line, you learn that you can be sponsored and you could make something out of this. When you’re coming up, you’re just trying to let people know why you deserve this kind of thing. Then, once you get sponsored, now you got to try to stay here and you kind of just try to keep progressing and push yourself in other ways, even beyond skating. 

KP: When you were younger and doing all these competitions and training, what made you believe in yourself and think ‘I deserve to get to the next level’?

LL: I think it just came naturally. I remember just trying to learn tricks when I was younger and I’d be outside on the driveway for hours and hours and I think at that moment, my parents and pretty much everyone around me saw how involved I was. From there, it’s been the same, you know?

KP: Did your parents encourage it early on?

LL: Yeah, luckily my parents were always down for whatever I wanted to do. I’m thankful for that because parents aren’t always down, and especially with skateboarding. It’s such a thing that could be seen as not the normal route.

KP: What was your upbringing in California like? Was there a lot of skater kids around your community?

LL: Yeah,  just had a couple friends on the block and we would just mess around, have little ramps and just skate on the sidewalk. I think growing up in LA was definitely helpful because it’s kind of where the skateboarding scene is, at least back then it was before social media and everything. Now you can do anything wherever but back in the day, it was definitely like you had to be in LA to be with the right people. 

KP: I was just in London a few days ago and I was just walking along The London Eye and there was a skatepark alongside of it.

LL: Southbank!

KP: Yes! I had no idea but I found it cool that little sort of nuanced skate spaces find their way into bigger cities, bigger areas, maybe areas you wouldn’t expect it in. Do you still find that skating is trickling into the mainstream? Do you think it’ll ever fully go mainstream?

LL: Some people in skateboarding are always wanting to just keep it core and like this small type thing. But I think as a whole, skateboarding being globally recognized is kind of what you want, you know? You can get the respect of people you want and you can just be, you know? At the end of the day, it’s going to make more kids pick up a skateboard, the more that it’s out there. I think skateboarding going mainstream or being in the Olympics even, is a huge come up for skateboarding. You know, you can balance it out, you can still be in the core part of it. But you can also be at the Olympic level, which is crazy. 

KP: Is the Olympics a goal for you at all, or no?

LL: I mean, it was funny because this was the first year that skateboarding was in the Olympics so I tried to give it a go. It comes down to a couple people and it’s like, I skate a lot of contests, but I really enjoy just making these projects where you’re just out in the streets and filming with your friends. I think it’s cool that you could kind of either do this or that. You don’t have to choose.

KP: Right, that’s never the consensus of success. 

LL: I just think it’s great for the kids at home watching it and just be like ‘oh, skateboarding looks fun.’

KP: How was it like filming with Erik and Ryan?

LL: It was just a cool dynamic, you know? Ryan and I were actually just talking and it’s like the 10th year that we’ve known each other. We just met at the skate park naturally–I was just skating and he was just a kid with a camera. He was asking like ‘Hey, can I film you?’ and he was just coming up too. We’ve kind of just grown together and I’ve skated with him ever since that. For us both to be able to be here right now is meaningful. And then Eric, he was just saying that remembers being a kid and watching me and Ryan make these videos and now he’s a part of it–it’s just a full circle thing. That to me it makes it worth it, there’s opportunities to see the kids just be hyped and not take the normal route if they don’t want to.

KP: Erik, how did you find the global skating scenes to be? Talk to me about Paris.

Erik Herrera: It’s really cool. The people that are locals there are just super nice and really cool. It’s an amazing place to skate in cause it looks very different. It’s all really old, but so beautiful, the food’s amazing too.

KP: How vocal were you on this curation process for the film?

EH: This one’s more like with Ryan just telling me ‘oh, what kind of song would you like? Or he would like send me rough cuts of the video, ‘what do you want to fix up? what do you not want in the video? So it was pretty hands on for my part.

KP: Do you like being in that position of being an editor in the way?

EH: I mean, I like it. He has his own way of doing things but It’s cool to have some input on it. 

KP: How did it feel doing this project with Louie? 

EH: I’m pretty new to the team, but skating with Louie is cool because just seeing him and how good he is, it makes me want to skate more, skate bigger stuff, whatever. It’s been cool getting to know him and like seeing how he skates. It’s all been fun. 

KP: How long have you been skating now? 

EH: Since I was a baby pretty much. Like, before I could walk, I would like push on the skateboard with my knees. [When I got older] my mom said we had neighbors who had a skateboard and I would just walk over, take it and just ride around. And the neighbors would be like ‘Hey, your son my skateboard again.’

KP: So Ryan, capturing these two kids that are at the top of their game must be a challenge, I feel.

Ryan Lee: Yeah, for sure. I have to be on point. So that’s where my stress comes from. The thing is that Louie has an insane amount of footage, and it’s never really like that–where you have more footage than you can fit into the songs for the video. So I guess that was another challenge of keeping what is important to put in, what’s the best stuff, so that’s my main goal–on how to showcase them the best when I personally think everything is great. 

KP: Now with Converse, how did you all kind of become these kindred spirits? How did this sort of connection come about?

LL: It came about naturally. We just were talking to each other, and Converse as a company is one that I’ve always admired. I thought it could be a natural fit and luckily it worked out. Converse is the best in supporting me and any idea or anything I pretty much want to do. It means the world because you put so much work behind the scenes into something and to have something at least one day where everyone could just celebrate it is so amazing. 

KP: How was the creative process for the film like for you?

LL: It took a year to make, and we kind of traveled all over. I mean, a lot of time home in LA but we’ve spent a lot of time in Paris, Mexico, and all over the US. My main thing overall is to just try and just top myself. My main objective is ‘how can I make this one stand out from the others’ and try to keep progressing. Everything else just falls into place, you know? I hope people can see the progression within skateboarding. Growing up, you go through growth spurts, and constantly just trying to get to that point where you’re in the prime of your skateboarding career. I feel like that’s kind of where I hoped to show it.