MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Fall / Winter 2017

FALL/WINTER 2017 MLCM 23 ABOVE Working on the night moves. JOHN ENTWISTLE. BELOW Stan Rey, the Magnetic MVP. PAUL MORRISON "We shot everything that night in one three-hour session. It was overcast so there was zero light up there, the athletes were basically skiing by feel. They had headlamps on and could see the lip of the jump, but that was about it." – Photographer, John Entwistle "In order for a film like this to happen, you need athletes to buy into it. If they didn't commit their time, we wouldn't get the footage we needed. One of the risks was over-promising who was going to be in the movie. We had a list of 55 Whistler Blackcomb athletes we wanted to engage, which by the end, we did. That's testament to the depth and commitment of our skiing and riding community in Whistler." – Co-director, Jeff Thomas "I built a lot of contingency plans on paper – and in my own head – that no one really knew about," says Thomas, who produced and co-directed the film. "With the high snowfall and low temperatures that we got, the season was so exceptional that those contingencies evolved into other segment ideas." Winter 2016/17 helpfully delivered consistent double-overhead powder conditions, but even that did not guarantee the movie would be a slam dunk. Thomas was relying on dozens of busy athletes to commit a significant chunk of their season to filming. Whistler Blackcomb had to be comfortable handing the creative reins over to a trio of external film directors (Thomas teamed up with snowsports film veterans Graeme Meiklejohn and Darren Rayner), knowing full well the goal was to push the envelope of what local athletes are capable of.