"I don't sleep much," says Magnus Walker at the beginning of his newest video, "Ascension," which debuted today on YouTube and Instagram, "And my mind doesn't turn off."
In a series of quick cuts, the 60-second clip produced with his frequent collaborators Cameron Thuman and Dilan Mistry of NativeFour follows Walker through the streets of Downtown Los Angeles, up onto winding roads of the Angeles National Forest, and into the workshop which houses his offices, car collection, and actual moneymaking businesses.
Contrary to the popular illusion that becoming an influencer requires little more than a few fun images and regular content drops to attract serious marketing money, "Ascension" portrays Walker as a hard worker, still on up-and-up at 53 years old, committed to the struggle as he brings his dreams to life.
The video serves as something of a follow-up to Walker's recent two-part Petersen tour documenting his impressive collection of automobiles and related ephemera. And yet, as he discusses his cars, his work ethic, and his goals, the mystery behind his public persona remains intact. How has Magnus Walker made this anomalous lifestyle possible over the years?
In advance of the new video's release, Walker invited me down to his Arts District headquarters for a look behind the scenes at the real-world work that goes into building what might seem, for all intents and purposes, like the dream life from the outside looking in.
Always Ascending
Opening a large gate set in a tall wall on a single-block street deep in the Arts District, Walker welcomed me into his world, which at first seems entirely focused on cars. His two-story home base occupies 27,000 square feet with a semi-loft, semi-warehouse aesthetic—all high ceilings, exposed concrete, and wooden beams. Most of the ground floor is taken up by cars and car-related memorabilia, his offices, and a substantial collection of textiles and fashion machinery.
"People know me as this car guy. But that’s just part of what I am—it’s not all I am," Walker explained as he gave me the two-cent tour. In recent months, he's revealed a seemingly new willingness to share more with the world and the Petersen videos combine with "Ascension" to display something of a reinvention process that might have been in the works for a while before being accelerated by the current Covid-19 pandemic.
"2020 proved to be the pandemic," Magnus admitted. "But what it did, for me, is it slowed me down. In the past five years, I’ve traveled all over the world, probably only been in LA in that period only 7 to 10 days a month, doing all these great things that I got invited to do. Driving all over the world, from Australia to Colombia to Mille Miglia. Hopping around the world to these events sounds fun and for the most part, it was. But you get to the point where you don’t really see too much. Because having these five hundred little 30-second conversations, you’re not really able to absorb the things you’re seeing. For me, the novelty’s wearing off a little bit."
Walker's Los Angeles story begins back in the 1980s, selling clothes out of a booth on the Venice Boardwalk before opening a shop on Melrose Avenue. In the early-90s, he moved into his current Arts District loft, which serves as his main source of income now that he's outfitted the entire upper floor for use as film sets. In a normal year, production teams might rent the space out for 100 days of filming. But 2020 hasn't been a normal year.
"Everything I’ve been talking about up to now is a hobby, it doesn’t pay any bills or salary," he explained. "My main job is renting out this building for production. So on one hand, everything this year has been super creative but financially it’s been, for me, the worst year in twenty years because no one’s filming, for obvious reasons. But I’ve never really done things for money. You need money to pay bills but everything that I’m talking about that’s creative is just me basically doing things that make me happy, and that I’m inspired by."
Walker refers to his status as an automotive influencer as his "hobby" and even if the thrill has been wearing off a bit, he's clearly still finding enough inspiration to wake up early and get to work. For the eight straight days leading up to my visit, he'd been filming 12 to 14 hours a day developing a new project—only teased a bit on his Instagram—that will feature a handful of cars (none of them Porsches) including a Jaguar XJS, a Dodge Viper, a Mercedes-Benz 123 station wagon, and two Toyota Cressida wagons. The morning of my visit, he'd already captured sunrise from the Sixth Street Bridge after waking at five in the morning without an alarm clock, his mind racing.
Walker Is Always Working
“For me, I’m evolving in the sense of, I’m not a journalist, I’m not a blogger," Walker told me. "But I have the opportunity to drive cars and I’ve done cool things, I’ve just most of the time never had the opportunity to document them. Like Mille Miglia—I didn’t turn a camera on, didn’t put a GoPro on the car [a Mercedes Gullwing]. Driving across Australia—never documented it—driving in Colombia, from Bogota to Medellin. So finally, I’m realizing I’ve got all this time, I should start documenting these adventures and these journeys that I’m on. But of course, I could slap a GoPro on there and I’ve done little handheld iPhone stuff, but the next step is actually getting proper shooters and editors and colorists, guys that have got fancy Sony RED cameras that make things look a little better."
Enter Cameron Thuman and Dilan Mistry of NativeFour, with whom Walker had previously collaborated on a pair of Porsche-focused videos entitled "Night Rider" and "45 Years of Boost," snippets of which make appearances in "Ascension."
Director Cameron Thuman On "Ascension"
I spoke with "Ascension" director Cameron Thuman before driving down to visit Walker. He told me the concept for the clip had been percolating in his mind for a while.
'“I think when I first met Magnus I kind of was like 'Who is this guy?'" Thuman said. "In the sense of 40-something, Porsches, traveling the world, book, fashion company, clothing line, filming location business. All of these pursuits he has melded into one."
Thuman recently moved to Echo Park after growing up in Utah and related how, while exploring Downtown LA with his cinematographer at one or two in the morning, the concept for a new Magnus Walker video began to coalesce around the stairs scene.
"As a filmmaker, his way of life has been a huge inspiration to how I want to move forward," Thuman said. "This idea of 'The Ascent' I thought really captured Magnus’ progression through the years, taking two steps at a time, never looking back, always moving forward. And I wanted to find a way to take all my best car footage to date with Magnus and capture new visuals that would tie into one common thread."
“The idea for the first 30 seconds of Ascension is setting this tone and vibe of elusiveness and setting the stage of who he is. And then at 36 seconds, you see his face for the first time. And from there, it triggers to a bit of these motivational nuggets of putting in the hard work, seeing those dreams weren’t easy, always moving forward and ascending.”
Filming With Real Film
Capturing more of Walker's ethos without ruining the mystery that lends his public persona such gravitas proved one of the central focuses for "Ascension." To that end, Thuman decided to film using real film: Kodak Super 8 50D, to be precise. I expressed some surprise, having figured the video's grainy texture was simply added in later using digital editing software. Not so, said Thuman, "We shot on actual film. I bought three rolls of Super 8 because we wanted to show this humane and authentic drive. The same way that film is brilliant, we’re shooting on 4K cameras but this idea of shooting on film is still so fascinating and still so beautiful. I think that ties into the years of Magnus’s story, it’s got a timeless factor, it’s both new and timeless.”
Thuman speaks with much more clarity and purpose than might typically be expected of his 22 years. But as young kids hustling their way into burgeoning film careers, he and Mistry fit right into the spirit of "Ascension" themselves. That spirit helped endear themselves to Walker while working on the two previous projects.
"First of all, they’re talented," said Walker. "That’s the first thing. They’re great editors and they’re great shooters. These kids are the new generation, on their way up. They’re inspiring to be around. So for me, that’s part of the charm of collaborating with them.”
Finding that inspiration in others during Covid times may not seem all too easy, but Walker's also found new ways to re-motivate himself. Recent efforts have included a series of Instagram Live videos with car brands like Lamborghini and Lotus, plus personalities ranging from Gordon Murray and Jay Leno to Michael Strahan.
Technology clearly allows Walker to stay in the public eye, stay creative, and stay on the grind. He doesn't own a laptop, he told me, and his desktop PC struggles to even play videos, so his iPhone serves as a main conduit to the outside world. Filming "Ascension" partially in 8mm and then releasing it digitally on social media perfectly marries the gritty, classic aesthetic he maintains with the modern, techy era of over-glossed Instagram filters.
Creating Gritty Classic Porsche Content
Having proven himself capable of capturing that vibe, Thuman also recently filmed another clip in partnership with the Mercedes Classic Center that will feature Walker on the Angeles Crest Highway flogging a factory recreation "Silver Pig" based on the famous "Red Pig" racecar. That video drops early January 2021, as will Walker's new six-episode show. In the meantime, keep an eye out for a couple of videos that Walker was nice enough to let me film as he riffed off-the-cuff about his Porsche 914 SEMA art car and the impressive stable of (generally overlooked) water-cooled Porsches in his collection.
“I’m generally best off-the-cuff," Walker told me more than a few times to reinforce the nonstop lifestyle he's created for himself over the years. But he doesn't view that constant stream of content creation (not to mention booking film production crews, sewing masks, plus designing Hot Wheels and Nike sneakers) as a burden, just a challenge that requires a steady nose on the grindstone.
"To me, I always say freedom is being able to do the thing you want to do when you want to do it. I’ve never had a 9-5 day job but, despite the fact that I’ve just had my worst year financially, I’m still able to do things that I want to do."
Sources: youtube.com, nativefour.com, instagram.com, mbusa.com, and facebook.com.