Tom Eagar: Snowboard crossroads
A sense of adventure is all that’s needed to make a great snowboard film.
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It’s a brisk November night in central London, and two new snowboard films are being screened simultaneously in the capital. In the blue corner and taking centre stage at the BFI IMAX in Waterloo is Curt Morgan and Travis Rice’s latest snowboarding blockbuster, The Art Of Flight: in the red corner, in a secluded Shoreditch cinema, Nick Waggoner of Sweetgrass Productions is introducing his latest offering, Solitaire.
The two films represent the crossroads that snowboard films have come to of late. Turn left, and you’ll find companies like Sweetgrass Productions, a five-strong Colorado-based team that pride themselves on their organic, slow-to-mature films. Take a right and you’ll end up at Brain Farm Cinema, where big money meets big mountain riding. Established back in 2005, they were responsible for 2008’s hit That’s it, That’s All, which featured a similar all star cast of big mountain shredders, and their recognisable Planet Earth-style cinematography.
At a basic level, the two films do have some similarities; they both took two years to make and they’re both about exploring uncharted terrain. But the far-flung settings of the films are where the similarities stop. While The Art Of Flight crew rented 15 top-of-the-range helicopters and had a treasure trove of hi-tech camera equipment (valued somewhere in the “millions” according to Morgan) at their disposal, Solitaire was a human-powered production with not a helicopter or snowmobile in sight.
Filmed in six-month stints, the Sweetgrass team shot Solitaire exclusively in South America. The final product almost seems like a backcountry adventure that just happened to be caught on camera. None of the riders that feature in the film are given their own specific segments and they’re not even named until the credits. Also missing are any all-or-nothing, star-making set pieces that have become the bread and butter of snowboard flicks. There are no park or urban sections and the shots of riders churning through deep power are juxtaposed with riders skidding down icy couloirs and being battered by wind and sleet – just like real snowboarding. By sacrificing the short, adrenaline-fuelled lines that are common place in the genre, they’ve created a realistic, engaging film that feels much more at home in the mountains rather than just showing off for the cameras.
Sweetgrass’s adventurous, organic attitude towards snowboarding is shared by backcountry talisman Jeremy Jones. His 2010 film Deeper saw Jones and his cohort (including Travis Rice) dispense with helicopters and snowmobiles, and access their descents by a combination of hiking, camping and climbing. Both Solitaire and Deeper focus on exploring and experiencing the mountain ranges that they feature. Substituting the ‘fly in, tear up, fly out’ angle for a more narrative driven one, these films are as much about being out in the wilderness as they are is about riding it.
Incidentally, December 14, 2011 will mark a hundred years since Roald Amundsen and his crew first set foot at the South Pole. This date not only marks an incredible achievement, but also acts as a timely reminder of our sense of adventure. With our lives increasingly being lived virtually, perhaps it isn’t a coincidence then that these films are focusing on escaping the status updates and twitter feeds that clutter modern life for a more simplistic, natural experience? Indeed, Solitaire has even earned Nick Waggoner a place in National Geographic's Adventurers of The Year 2012.
In contrast to Solitaire, The Art Of Flight has managed to cement itself in the popular psyche with an estimated budget around $2 million – heavilu bankrolled by Red Bull. The trailer has racked up 6.4 million Youtube hits to date and was tweeted about by the likes of 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake when it was unveiled. The latter even attended the New York premiere with Owen Wilson making an appearance too. The Art Of Flight is snowboarding Hollywood style.
While it should be praised for bringing big mountain snowboarding to the masses, it should be remembered that this is a film that was only made possible because of its unique funding. So will the success of The Art Of Flight set a trend for a variety of big investment in other production houses, helping to fuel creativity in snowboarding or will it just lead to Brain Farm making another untouchably expensive feature in a league of their own?
So back at the crossroads, should we turn left and see what a small crew of intrepid filmmakers can produce with a minimal budget and hard graft? Or go right and see what a bigger crew with millions of dollars and a Cineflex camera can do? Regardless of which road you prefer, what’s important is that both Brain Farm and Waggonner are pushing the boundaries of snowboard filmmaking. As long as they inspire a next generation of riders, filmmakers and explorers, does it really matter which route we take?
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Snowboard crossroads (text) by Tom Eagar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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