Organic Interviews: Ryan Ruegg

Ryan Ruegg (aka "badgerclit"), is a videographer and scooter rider, who has been a pinpoint in the growth of quality within scootering videography, and the presentation behind scootering cinema.

Ryan is well known for his music choice, and classic 90s skateboarding videography style, being one of few remaining videographers in our sport who still uses a 4:3 Aspect Ratio in his videos. The uniqueness of his videos is what makes him one of the greatest to ever capture scootering!

His resume on the scooter and behind the lens is jam packed... 

He currently rides for North Scooters, and has not one, but two signature decks from the company! He has also ridden for AO, Elite, Outset Select, and Sky High Scooters 

He has participated in two Dissidence Coalition Video Competitions on the lens. As well as doing film work for North, Evil Corporation, Crisp, Northern Limited, TSI, and Outset. 

Jacob Beach had the opportunity to pick Ryan's brain on scootering videography, and also get a little more background on Ryan as a person.  

J: What’s your name, age, and where you’re from?

R: I'm Ryan Ruegg, I'm 26 years old and I'm from Bristol CT

J: How long have you been scootering? 

R: I've been riding for about 15 years

J: How long have you been filming scootering?

R: I think i filmed my first video at T3i in 2015 with the "Boys Do Cry Crew" in New York. That was the first time I was mobbin around with the camera bag.

J: What inspired you to start filming?

R: The main inspiration came from me feeling like nobody was making what i thought to be cool scootering videos. 

J: When making a personal video (“Forest”, “It’s Legal”, “Block Is Hot”), what does the process look like from start to finish?

R: For personal stuff like Forest and its Legal, its me and the homies from CT going out when we have free time lining up and checking out spots around the state and getting clips without the pressure to prove some brand that you're worthy of free scooter parts.

I love hosting homies from out of state/country, so a lot of the times with my personal projects I have people come stay with me here in CT. Its really motivating to have a non-locals that are hungry to see what the state's spot's have to offer.

With personal projects I tend to take my time with the editing process and really dive deep for songs and editing techniques, so usually they take me way longer to edit.

Premiering a video to all your friends is the pinnacle of a personal video project. So if you're going to go all out and film/edit a video you gotta pair it with an equally hardbody premiere. After the premiere you upload it to youtube and see how it does over the years.

J: When making videos for commissions/competition (Coalition videos, Skippy’s deck promo, Jon Dev Welcome to Affinity) what does that process look like. Is it different from making personal videos?

R: Well it starts with a loose idea that it would be sick to travel somewhere with certain people or a certain rider and document the trip. Then we’ll try to dial in a location and hopefully tap in with a local that has whatever area were going super scouted out already.

When you pull up to a new place, having the local homie that knows where the good spots are is best case scenario. Then we exist there for whatever the decided time frame was and stack.

I personally like capturing whatever footage we got from the day as soon as we get back to where were staying. Not everyone does this but i feel like its the most efficient way to get footage sorted. Bend the rod while its hot.

I got that in a fortune cookie one time...

The same concept goes for when you start to edit the footage. The longer you wait the more stale it gets. Once I have all the footage from a trip video I try to get a timeline dialed in as soon as I get back home.

Now arguably one of the hardest parts about creating a good video is your music selection.

It could take days, weeks, even months to find a song that truly feels like its THE ONE for the video/part you're editing. Once the songs are dialed in its just one big messy freestyle puzzle you're trying to make look pretty. 

J: The representation of different styles of music is widely diverse in your videos, you've used everything from Electric Wizard to Bbsun, and even Gwen Stefani... What dictates your decision in music? Does it depend on the person you’re filming? Or the scenery of the spots in the video?

R: It depends on both for sure. I love music and I'd like to think my music taste is extremely broad so I like to touch on all different bases of good music. Its hard to say what really dictates the final choice of the song.

J: I wanted to ask you about “Forest” both the camp and the original video…

What is Camp Forest? How did it come about?

R: Camp Forest was a weekend long party I threw in Connecticut two years in a row at a Polish campground. The concept started from looking for a place to premiere the original Forest video. I found this campground on 'air bnb' and it was just over $2000 to rent it for the weekend.

After going to check it out and talking with the owners who were super down for the video premiere and everything I decided I was gonna go head and try to sell tickets for the weekend to cover the cost of the venue.

R: The first year we premiered the Aztek video along with Forest and they made Austin Coates pro at the event which was legendary. We had 3 hardcore bands the second year and a disc golf tournament with a 9 hole course we designed on the property. There was also a huge slip and slide into a pond lmao we really went for it.

_{All Images Provided By Ryan Ruegg}

_{Written by Jacob Beach} 

_{Presented by The Organic Collective}