Sector Y v2.0

Back in the day of no money and no job, getting to Worlds on a yearly basis was an impossible feat for many of the Spin Doctors. This video was created/released the same week that Worlds 2001 was planned. Even though we couldn’t get to Worlds, we still wanted to show off some of our latest tricks and combos.

This is probably one of my favorite videos made, mainly because of how groundbreaking some of the tricks were at the time. This video featured a few sequels such as Orange Tulips (Red Clover II) and TimeTwister 2, which took the original tricks and expanded on their concepts. But the real showcase of the video were the phenominal Yellow Airplanes (Kamikaze II), White Buddha 2nd Generation, and Breath. These tricks almost single-handedly pushed yoyoing into an era of more complex slack and plane-breaking. Unfortunately, plane-breaking was difficult to film due to angles and never really caught on until much later in decade.

Title: Wish We Were At Worlds [ Stream | Download ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Date: August 12, 2001
Music: Rachel In Trance by Zymotx, Orinoco Flow by Enya, The Fields of Love (Instrumental Mix) by ATB
Time: 3:17
Resolution: 640×480 (SD)
File Type: Quicktime H.264

The year 2000 was one of yoyoing’s strongest years. 1998 and 1999 created the craze, and in 2000 the bar was raised. Everyone brought their A-game. Everyone who started with the boom now had over 2 years of practice, and string tricks continued to push forward. This video is a look back at the innovation that exploded around the turn of the century.

Title: 2000 Revolutions [ Download | Stream ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Date: Created 2004, footage from 2000.
Music: Days of our Livez by Bone thugs-n-harmony
File Type: Mpeg-4

Here are videos from the National Yo-Yo Contest 2009, which was held on October 3rd, 2009 in Chico, CA. These videos were filmed by gabe and encoded/delivered by Boxthor.

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It’s a yoyo video played in reverse. A simple concept, but it was a harder task than expected. A lot of yoyoing just doesn’t look as cool backwards. Dropped strings just look plain weird, and tricks that transition fluidly don’t look all that different.

Overall the video was solid. Some stuff looks cool, others not. I used this video to dump a lot of footage that was otherwise sub-par. A lot of footage just wasn’t up to my typical standards when played forward, but backwards was interesting enough to make this video.

This video contains explicit lyrics.

Title: Rewind [ Download | Stream ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Music: Rewind by Nas
Time: 2:13
Resolution: 640×480 (SD)
File Type: Quicktime H.264

I started yoyoing during the 1998 yoyo boom. Most of 1998 was spent learning tricks from Ken’s World on a String, and I even got to visit US Nationals that year. But even though my roots were based in 1998, 1999 was the year when things really started to take off.

I became a regular at the Spindox meetings in 1999. I spent most of my time learning new tricks from Paul Escolar, Gary Longoria, and David Capurro. In essence, this was the beginning of what would become a major advancement in string tricks. Posting videos on the web helped continue yoyoing popularity, and Sector Y was eventually born on October 15, 1999. This video is a look back at the scene that helped create the original Sector Y.

Title: 1999 [ Stream | Download ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Music: Change the World [Instrumental] by Bone thugs-n-harmony
Time: 3:16
Resolution: 640×480 (SD)
File Type: Quicktime H.264

Velocity was a fun video to make. I had a lot of footage that just didn’t fit into other videos for one reason or another. Most of it was either old stuff or simple stuff. I decided to see if I could cram it all into one video and this was the result.

Most of the Parental Advisory section of the String Theory DVD (where this video originally debuted) was full of old footage. And while this may be a “rehash video,” there’s still some unseen footage in here. I always fought with the idea of how to present footage that had already been seen, so the Parental Advisory section was just an experiment on what I could possibly do to make dated footage seem less boring. I wasn’t sure if these videos would ever see the light of day, but I released it because nobody would gain anything if I had just kept the footage to myself.

Ever since this video was made (I believe sometime in 2001), yoyoing has sped up quite a bit. As freestyles have become about racking up as many points as possible, speed has been the focus of many yoyoers over the past few years. As a result, most of this stuff doesn’t look as fast as it used to. Time has taken a toll on this video but I hope some of it can still be appreciated.

This video has explicit lyrics.

Title: Velocity [ Stream | Download ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Music: Velocity by Extended F@mm (featuring Tonedeff)
Time: 3:52
Resolution: 640×480 (SD)
File Type: Quicktime H.264

Test Subject 3 was a very ambitious project. The goal was to see how far I could push the modern conceptions of yoyo videos. Up until this point, yoyo videos were clip after clip with simple titles and not much else in terms of animation or computer graphics. I wanted to change that.

Ambitious? Or over-ambitious? That’s the question that plagued TS03 for the longest time. The intro took a long time to make. I believe it was made in 3D Studio Max, in combination with Adobe After Effects. Because I wasn’t too well versed with either program, I had to learn everything from scratch which made it a very slow process. Then, by the time I had finished the intro I had no footage to accompany with it. I figured I’d just save the intro until I filmed more, but by this time I was already on my way out of the yoyo scene. I released the intro just by itself, but the application of TS03 made its way to Sensory Overload, which is [surprisingly] still one of the most complicated clip videos to date.

Title: TS03 Intro (Test Subject 003) [ Stream |  Download ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Music: Scars left by Time from the Chrono Cross OST
Time: :57
Resolution: 720×480 (SD)
File Type: DivX

2001 was a huge year for yoyoing. Trick innovation continued to push forward, and new styles such as slack, and chopsticks, started emerging.

I had filmed most of the year so I didn’t have much unseen footage around to make a new video. But I knew the year was important enough that something needed to be shown.

Exit 2001 was a bigger hit than I expected it to be. I didn’t expect many people to like it simply because there wasn’t much new footage. With most of my videos, I wanted my audience to be impressed and blown away by new footage. With this one, I wanted them to sit back and reflect on the last year of yoyoing. The reduced speed and color-fade helped accomplish that.

With this video, 2001 came to a close and 2002 was ushered in.

Title: Exit 2001 [ Download | Stream ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Music: Only Time by Enya
Time: 3:33
Resolution: 640×480 (SD)
File Type: MP4

I remember watching SuperYo’s Kickin’ Tricks VHS and thinking, “Wow, this is the coolest video ever.” A VHS tape full of tricks that showcased the hottest tricks was something that was rarely seen. So, of course, I wanted to make one.

I believe I announced Project Sector Y (PSY) in late 2000, and had figured that a project like this could not possibly take over a year, right? ;) Well years and years went by. Some people who originally were interested even moved on to other hobbies. I guess I didn’t expect college to get in the way.

PSY released at Nationals 2004 as the String Theory DVD. Afterwards, I sold them myself via mail order. GReg from Infinite Illusions produced the second run of them. These were in smaller DVD cases, and they probably featured different disc art. Then after that… they were gone. Right now there are no copies available anywhere, but you can download the videos from this site. While PSY was a long arduous project, it was a fun collaboration with yoyoers around the world.

This teaser was the start of it all.

Title: PSY Trailer [ Stream | Download ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Music: Sound of Nature by Mario Lopez
Time: :40
Resolution: 640×480 (SD)
File Type: Quicktime

Test Subject 001 was basically me and Spencer screwing around in Davis, CA. Neither of us had any new material but we wanted to shoot a video. So we decided to experiment with angles, shots, etc. A lot of videos up to this point were just shot head on. Tricks were designed to be viewed from the front, and little thought was really given to any other viewpoint except for the player’s view. So we decided to play around.

Some of the stuff is goofy. We also decided to play around with filters which helped us realized that filters and yoyo tricks don’t really belong together. The whole thing was shot in about 2 hours of just wandering around parks and Jack-in-the-Boxes. In the end, while it wasn’t a groundbreaking video, it was a fun evening of filming.

Title: [ Stream | Download ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Music: Thug Mentality [Instrumental] by Krayzie Bone (Produced by Michael Seifert)
Time: 1:41
Resolution: 640×480 (SD)
File Type: Quicktime H.264