(upbeat music)
- [Matt] Hey.
How's it goin'?
My name is Matt.
Matt Dennison.
I'm a 26 year old Canadian film maker and mountain biker.
But hey, you could call me a lot of things.
I grew up on the mountainous
west coast of British Columbia, Canada.
Specifically,
on a completely flat, below sea level city
called Richmond.
Lowest elevation, 0 meters.
Highest elevation, 11 meters.
Richmond is an island.
Yup.
That's right.
I live on an island.
Okay, but not like a tropical island.
More like a pile of silt that built up
at the end of a river's, butthole island.
But wait a second.
How does a kid on a flat submarine crud island
learn how to ride a mountain bike?
Okay, guys!
Where is the inspiring music? (inspiring music)
Thank you!
And the projector noise!
(projector rolling)
How many times did we go over this?
I grew up in the 90s with my Mom,
my Dad and my older Brother.
My Dad became an avid mountain biker
during the explosion of freeride mountain biking
on the North Shore.
He ditched his former life as a triathlete
and made the full switch to two wheeled dirt bag.
And like any good father,
my Dad shared his addiction for gnar with his sons.
We had all sorts of stunts in the backyard.
Ramps, drops, skinnies, teeter-totters.
My Dad worked two jobs and graveyard shifts
to try and spoil us with new bikes,
and I rode the heck out of those bikes.
Dirt jumps, skate parks, road trips,
Whistler trip, after Whistler trip,
after Whistler trip.
I was obsessed with bikes.
I took photos, made drawings and constructed ramps
out of Popsicle sticks.
In high school, I met a group of friends
at the local dirt jump park.
One of them was this guy.
Jason had a camera, so we'd set it up on a tripod
and make videos of ourselves riding.
We made video, after video, after video, after video.
Richmond was still flat,
so my friends and I made our own hills in my backyard.
It started off as a muddy mess,
and over the next five years,
it became our playground for creativity.
We made edit, after edit, after edit, after edit.
In the winter our dirt jumps would be too wet to ride,
so we got bored.
Jason and I decided to film a dumb Facebook video series
about stuff we hated.
We called it
I F(Beep)king Hate That
We made sketch, after sketch, after sketch.
All of them, terrible.
But, nothing could stop us.
We kept making videos and eventually
one of them went viral.
Then a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth.
We were featured in newspapers,
and even made it on the news a few times.
We covered a lot of ground and had a lot of fun.
On the side, I was working as a freelance videographer
for a mountain bike media company.
So naturally, bikes found their way into our comedy.
We kept experimenting with sketches, music videos,
rap battles and more.
Then, at the end of 2015 I had all of my mountain bikes
stolen from my house.
I guess the saying is true.
You don't know what you have until it's gone.
Because, all I could dream about, was riding my bike.
- Have you ever had a dream
that
that you, um, you had,
you
you would, you could
you could, you
you want him to do you so much, you could do anything?
("Elephant Man" by Loki)
Nowadays, I'm still doing what makes me happy.
Riding bikes, playing with cameras
and making stuff with my friends.
What we've created is no longer just one or two people.
It's a community.
A community, that we want you to be a part of.
So come a long for the ride
and subscribe to Mahalo my dude.
♪ Music is the groove ♪
♪ It makes you wanna move ♪
♪ And do your thing ♪