Circus Media Founder: Matthew Hledin Featured in Speed On The Water: "Skater At 50" Article
October 9, 2024 - Matt Trulio (From Speed On The Water Article)
To help warm up the crowd during last Saturday night’s Skaterfest dinner celebration at the West Bay Resort in Kingston, Okla., the organizers brought a Hledin even the most hardcore Skater Powerboats fans had never heard of to the front of the room. The great nephew of Skater Powerboats founder Peter Hledin, 23-year-old Matthew Hledin introduced a video he produced celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary.
As soon as the video started, the room went Sunday-church silent. The production included everything from vintage powerboat racing footage courtesy of Skater-men Chris LaMorte and Ryan Beckley, as well as interviews with Peter Hledin’s brother, Alex (Matthew Hledin’s grandfather), and devout Skater customers Vern Gilbert, Dale Rayzor, Erik Breckenfelder and others.
The applause that followed was louder than the average Skater.
Matthew Hledin started shooting video when he was 10 years old growing up in the Oakville, Ontario, Canada, area. By the time he was 15, he was getting paid for it—not enough to abandon his favorite pastimes of hockey, lacrosse and downhill mountain biking, much less quit school, but enough to make him wonder if video production could someday be his career.
Invited by his great uncle, Hledin attended his first powerboat race—the Great Lakes Grand Prix in Michigan City, Ind.—in 2022. Later that year, he captured video during the 2022 Race World Offshore Key West World Championship.
Hledin was hooked, and he started his own video production company called Circus Media House that year. In addition to freelance projects, he has captured video for the M CON Racing teams for the past two seasons.
Earlier this year, Skaterfest-producer RP Elite Motors & Marine owners Ross and Mackenzie Ramsey of Springtown, Texas, asked Hledin to produce a sizzle-reel of sorts to the October event. He jumped at the chance.
Scrapyard Media principal Brad DiMaggio, who employed Hledin as a videographer during the 2024 Sunsation Powerboats Sun Run, and his team supplied him with poker-run footage. Hledin captured the interviews during the Skater 50th Anniversary dinner in late August at the Camden on the Lake Resort during Super Cat Fest and the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout. And then he went to work editing what turned out to be an exhilarating—and heartfelt—video for Skaterfest.
“Boating had always been an important part of our lives, but I didn’t understand the magnitude of what my great uncle had done until I went to the Michigan City races,” Hledin explained. “So it meant the world to me when Ross and Mackenzie asked me to do the video for Skaterfest—it was a really big deal. Interviewing people like Dale and Ryan and Erik and Vern and hearing about the impact Skater Powerboats had on their lives was really touching.”
Hledin, who currently is shooting the International Jet Sports Boating Association World Finals of personal watercraft racing this week in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., has been building Circus Media House into a full-fledged, full-service video-production company. Based on the reaction of the 100-plus Skater fans in the West Bay Resort and Casino ballroom last Saturday night, he’s well on his way.
And for creative inspiration, he need look no further than his great uncle.