Salomon TV Films CHARGE at Chatter Creek
Posted: Oct 9, 2019 | Blog | Tags: salomon tv , charge
Chatter Creek has often played the stage to incredible ski films – Matchstick Productions, Dendrite Studios, and TGR have all visited Chatter of the past decade to take advantage of our legendary terrain and snowfall.
Deep snow comes with the job @ Chatter. It didn’t seem to phase Jet Temkin in the least.
In January of 2019, we were honoured to host something a bit different in the world of ski films. Salomon TV came to us with a totally new concept. After creating their short film “Skier vs. Drone,” Salomon TV realized that working with drones could offer something totally new to the world of ski flicks. In Skier vs. Drone, Championship drone flyer Jordan “JET” Temkin captures footage of skiers like we’ve never seen before.
Salomon TV’s goal was to take Skier vs. Drone to a whole new level. Enter four top-level free-skiers – Stan Rey, Cody Townsend, Chris Rubens and Alexi Godbout. You’ll know these guys from being Salomon riders, but also for being fast skiers, like fast fast.
Thus was born the concept of Charge, possibly the most aptly named ski segment you’ll ever watch. Says producer and visionary on the movie, “Charge was an opportunity to take 4 top-level free-skiers…to a world-class cat-skiing area, and let them ski what they want to ski.” Really, like whatever they wanted to ski.
Instead of traditional filming, the Salomon TV crew took Temkin’s drone flying masterminding and attached a 360° camera to it. From there, limitations were essentially lifted. Wherever the Salomon skiers wanted to go, Temkin was there – trees, chutes, steeps, over here, over there – if the drone wasn’t already 2 steps ahead it was right with them for the entire film.
The feel of the film is something entirely new. Instead of feeling like you’re standing back and watching skiers, watchers feel like they’re on a pretty intimate (and breathtaking ride). It’s as though you’re skiing along with the greatest skiers in the world and NBD – you can keep up.
Yup, pretty much wherever they wanted to go. The Salomon TV crew worked with the people who know Chatter best and we were pumped to provide them with our favourite terrain for Charge.
The making of the film was unique for Salomon TV, too. Says Gamble of the shoot, “for athletes, filming a project can involve a lot of waiting around and only skiing short lines for the camera. We wanted to step out of that bubble and let them ski their lines as fast and how ever they wanted…it just meant that Jordan would need to read their line and try to follow them down it.”
We asked Gamble why he thought Chatter made for a good location. He flattered us by saying that “It’s been a long time since the Salomon crew have been able to make it out to the lodge, so when this idea was laid out, it only made sense that we should head to Chatter. To have a wide variety of terrain available and to have it easily accessible was our main criteria for this project, and Chatter checked all the boxes…Steep/Pillows/Cliffs/Trees/Bowls/Deep Powder. We wanted the skiers to be able to pick the type of skiing they wanted to do.”
Having the Salomon TV crew was pretty special for Chatter Creek and we were honoured they chose to execute on such a unique project in our backyard. As first time and long-time skiers and boarders to Chatter will know, the terrain lends itself pretty damn well to filming the greatest ski movies on earth – from homegrown GoPro footage to professionally produced films, the stage is set.
We’d like to thank Mike Gamble, Stan Rey, Cody Townsend, Chris Rubens, Alexi Godbout and the rest of the Salomon TV crew for making Chatter a part of this awesome project. We hope you all dig it!
Watch the film here on Salomon TV.
