Over a span of five years I have created a series of video for the Big Mountain skiing and snowboarding competitions, these events are visually stunning but also have a number complications to film. Being in the remote mountains of the South Island of New Zealand means a lack of access, power and internet all of which means creating quick turn arounds for the events far more of a challenge.
From Temple Basin where the car park is most of an hour walk from the car park to the base lodge of the field, each of the fields only have rope tows, which in themselves can be challenging in firm early morning conditions before adding large packs and lens trunks, which are very necessary to get a view of the event area you only have a few options all of which are a long way back we we’re shooting on 500mm lenses, sometimes with extenders and crop sensors producing 1,000mm focal lengths. Shooting was only half the battle, we would then finish with the runs before heading to the lodges, which if your at Craigieburn is even more of a hustle as within a few hours all power is turned off, no more editing, no more charging, possibly drive to get dial up speed internet to get the first shots out for the night and get at least a little sleep before being back up at sunrise an on the same plan for the next day.
Over the span of the years we built out the series of videos to have intros for the series released a month in advance for the competitors to get registered and ready with details and plan their schedules, highlights as events were back to back and we wanted to get the word out of the events without time to create a full video, the fails videos we’re first made as an entry for a film competition with the outtakes, when they received a large amount of attention we started adding the film to the line up. Snowboarding was split off into its own video as skiing is the major draw card for these events and we wanted to bring the snowboarding to those that don’t big mountain competitions showcased in the best way they can be.We made profiles to showcase more of the riders personalities more than just the skiing. As well as the event’s themselves which we showed not only the athletes but also bring a little info to the viewer.
The title cards also developed over the years, these were designed around a chalkboard style at first to reflect the grassroots nature of the events and the mountains they are run in. As the years progressed we moved more towards a flipboard, this was to help the transitions in and out, often name cards only needed to be up for a few seconds here and there.
