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FAIRBANKS — Skateboarding is not a crime, and a group of local amateur filmmakers aim to prove it with the showing of “High Five!” tonight at Eagles Hall.

“It will really show more of the lifestyle of skateboarding and snowboarding and not just the act of it,” said filmmaker and rider Brandon Smith. “This is how we live. There are kids up here who live for skateboarding and snowboarding. We just want to shed a light on that with this project.”

Shot in and around Fairbanks during the past year, “High Five!” features over a half-hour of skateboarding and street-style snowboarding.The riders, all Fairbanks residents, take advantage of rails, ledges, drops and lips around the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus and downtown. Filming was a group effort and everyone involved in the project shared in the prep work, riding and filming.

Smith said the film was edited down from 200 hours of footage, but added that way more than 200 hours went into the project.

“It’s very time-consuming, the whole process,” Smith said. “Two hundred hours of footage means we probably had four or five times that just shoveling spots or getting to locations.”

Of course, there were some challenges, too. The Canon GL-1 camera froze up at 20 degrees below zero. At another shoot, the tape heads were so dirty that a trick requiring an hour to get right never actually was recorded. Smith noted that the snow in the Interior is not very good for packing jumps either.

“We had so many challenges we had to face before we could even turn the camera on, especially with the snowboarding aspect,” he said.

Skater Josh Poe added that skaters were sometimes run off from popular spots, or skating locations were made more difficult. One popular spot called The Block is an old building foundation in the center of a trash-filled field south of town. Poe said the skate crew cleaned debris from the area to make it safer as well as usable. They returned to find the foundation covered in dirt. They swept it off, but later found it covered with large boulders.

“It’s in the middle of nowhere,” Poe said with some exasperation in his voice. “We’ve cleaned up the area. It’s nicer than before we found it. It’s just an old foundation in a field. All we’re doing is skating. It makes no sense.”

Something that could alleviate such interactions would be an indoor skate park, other than the small park at Joel’s Place, Smith said. Smith said he’s planning to lobby the city to build one, but is in an information gathering stage right now. He said the movie might breakdown some of the negative stereotypes about skaters and boarders, but if nothing else will show the devotion to the sport of Fairbanks youth.

“Our goal for the next year will be to have an indoor skate park if the city can build it,” he said. “Hopefully this will shed some light that there are people doing this and it’s a positive thing. Skateboarding has always kept some of us motivated for something else and it can be a positive thing when it’s cold and dark outside.”

In these days of YouTube, Daily Motion and other video hosting sites, the desire to film one’s exploits and put them online drives many a would-be filmmaker. No so for this crew. Poe and Smith concur this film came about for the love of these sports.

“It’s a film for skaters, by skaters,” Poe said.

“We didn’t go out there to make a name for ourselves,” Smith added. “We’re just doing what we always do, only we put a camera up to it this time.”

Contact features editor Glenn BurnSilver at 459-7510.