Just watched Absinthe Films "Neverland".

I was so stoked on the first 5 min of the movie. Nicolas Müller´s powder riding is insane, nothing short of insane. You´ll have to see for yourself.

Gigi has some amazing powder shots too. But why use Ingemar Backman´s Dead Kennedy´s song from his legendary Meltdown Project part?
I´ve totally stolen songs and stuff from old skate videos, but from a snowboard part of that magnitude.. hmm I don´t know.
Gigi ended his section with a buttery corked fs 10 like a true skate video ender. But I enjoyed the in town / roof riding more than the aerial acrobatics.

Wolle´s noboarding was sick. I remember Danny Way mentioning to the ex DC snow team manager that he thought it would be cool to ride a snowboard with no binding down cliffs etc. Well now Danny you can.

They also used Air´s "Alpha Beta Gaga" in the credits. A song I used for the credits in Afterlame. But the nice guy I am I contacted Justin to see if they are using that song since I know he likes Air and they had just released an album that summer. Sure enough he said they were using it so me and Jess re-edited the credits to "Float Away" by David Garza.
But when I saw the Absinthe film that year there was no Alpha Beta Gaga in there... Not completely psyched at that moment.
Lesson learned: Use what the fuck you want instead of caring what others might use and growing an ulcer re-editing a section of the movie.
Well here if was, 5 years later.

Tommen, a legendary snowboard troll from Norway made it in the movie for a hot second.


Plus:
-Great powder riding.
-JP Solberg - bs 1080.

Minus:
- Cropped top frame. A lot of heads were missing. I´m assuming this happens because the telecine colourist doesn´t pay attention to the framing when they zoom in on the squre-ish 16mm negative when they framed it for the more rectangular-ish hd transfer.
I highly doubt Justin or Brusti would let that slide if they were there supervising the transfers.
- Uneven image quality. Which I think can be sort of cool if used for a purpose.


Neverland trailer here:

JP Solberg in Transcendence!

In 2001 I went to Kauai with Justin Hostynek and Patrick Armbruster (of Absinthe Films) to edit Transcendence. A film the three of us had filmed for the 2000/2001 season.

Justin had this vision that went with this Beatles song and me and him shot JP in a bunny suit just weeks before the movie was done. I actually stayed in Mt Hood for one or two days and made JP ride up and down the chairlift and stuff. Super contrived, but he was a sport.

The powder footage in this clip was from JP´s first couple of days of riding powder, so I was mighty impressed with his skills even though I had filmed with him the summer prior in Norway with Daniel Franck (for Daniel´s movie Sensored) and seen how incredibly gifted this 17 year old kid from Bergen was.

I shot all the park stuff which is from Hemsedal in Norway. Some of those shots look kind of weird due to some weird interlacing / frame blending effect in FCP which happened when Justin needed to speed them up to fit the edit.

Justin did a great job editing this clip. Unfortunately the song had to be replaced after the first batch of vhs´s and dvd´s went out due to the ridiculously expensive price we got from The Beatles label / publisher.

Guest riders are, I think: Eero Niemela, Alex Auchu, Keir Dillon, Fredi Kalbermatten and Tommen.



To this day I must say that JP Solberg has the best style on a snowboard. He looks so good while he´s in the air. Hopefully I get to shoot with him in the future.

In case you didn´t read my post about JP doing the best trick out of all people last year, here it is:
http://pierrewikberg.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-favorite-trick-in-all-2008-snowboard.html