Stamp out (Ski) Pr0n

Eric Wagnon (@SkiingExaminer) posts a piece on his website decrying the state of ski films aka ski pron:

Yes, I am impressed by the skilled athletes and eye-popping scenery of ski films… for about ten minutes at a sitting. At this point, I’ve seen professional skiers nail incredible lines heli-skiing in Alaska. I get it. They’re really good. Ski porn works fine as video wallpaper in the apres-ski bar, but focusing on it for 90 minutes gets a bit tiresome.

Having spent about 1,000 days field producing and directing in an almost 20-year career as a television producer, I can also appreciate the logistics involved in capturing the stunning images in ski films. Taking the terrain and vagaries of natural light and weather into consideration, the DP of a ski film could have one of the toughest jobs in movie making.

This is a topic I have tracked over before here.
Here I discuss how the pinnacle of ski films is Hot Dog note:

I am intrigued by this [The Midwest Ski Film Festival]. However, I do have one reservation. I fear the show is only going to be showing people ripping it up down nearly impossible powdered steeps and spectacular wipeouts. I understand, the films are being made by those wanting to break into the larger film industry and are showing their talents at the technical aspects of film making. However, I do not need to see one more video of some dude ripping up a mountain to heavy metalish music nor am I particularly keen on seeing montages of ski wipeouts. Ahem, those have been done before.

Brian Landrigan assured me (and introduced the term ski-pr0n to myself) the films his festival featured would be different. I’ve seen some of what he may be talking about on YouTube and I am not convinced.

In the end, getting skiing & boarding scenes into movies may not be hard, but I think that is going to be about it. Too many people are completely unfamiliar with skiing and boarding to want to got to see a movie set to a plot heavily involving the sports.

The latest film to come out containing a significant ski component was of course, Hot Tub Time Machine, which I thought was suited to the 21 year old just discovering the party it up lifestyle at college. In fact, there was next to no skiing in the movie except a bit in the opening. I panned the film as I’ve seen a large number of such films.

Eric does point out one film though and that is The Edge of Never. I never heard of it, have you?

Good Stuff!

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