Jan/090
Ski/Work Balance
I came into this winter with a firm plan in mind. I was going to clear all my work out of the way apart from a very small portion and concentrate as closely on skiing as I can. It might be the only winter in my life that I get the chance to do this, and I want to take the opportunity. That's exactly what's been happening over the past few weeks, and I can't remember ever being happier.
Plenty of snow has meant plenty of powder days with friends on the Grande Montets, some pretty hectic crampons-wearing ascents of big mountains to access some amazing ski terrain and everything in between. I've been making ski movies with Mark Gear and met his intermediate skier group on the mountain to take a set of course pictures for All Mountain Performance.
Here's a few photos from touring in the Baron valley the other day. On a perfect sunny day we climbed straight up the face of the mountain above the top of the Damain De Balme ski area in Le Tour, over the top and into the Baron valley. It's North-Facing and so keeps the powder better. It's also so difficult to get into that we had the entire valley to ourselves, with only 8 other skiers having been down before us. Fresh powder tracks for literally miles. Bit of a James Bond 5km bush-whack out at the end to Trient in Switzerland to catch the bus back to France. Ski touring at it's best, it was a very good day.
Having friends staying for the past week has meant my office is in use as a bedroom which has further distanced me from my work. The four of us have literally been skiing all day, and playing Family Ski on the Wii in the evenings. It's all about skiing right now and I've got the tan to prove it.
Jan/090
Sick Day
Yesterday was sick. Even epic won't suffice. On a blue-sky day, the top lift opened at 10am allowing access to the un-tracked powder which had been falling on the Grande Montets for 2 days. Mark and I had 4 top lift runs through the day, plus a Lavancher for good measure. It's difficult to describe how much skiing that is, but it's 4.7 vertical miles of powder. I'm shaking with adrenaline just writing this.
Even better, we make a film. Here's the middle segment - the skiing. There are titles and plenty of advertising to come because I'm really trying to bring the quality of these films up to somewhere I can get paid to make them. I like the sound of that job. Filming from helicopters & that.
Powder Day on Grande Muir, Chamonix with All Mountain Performance Ski Courses from Chris D on Vimeo.
Dec/080
Skiing Video Feedback
As part of the All Mountain Performance courses we're doing, AMP offers Video Feedback of client's skiing as a teaching tool. Basically, the instructor shoots some film of the group over the course of the day and in the evenings everyone meets up in the bar to watch it. Mark goes through and analyses the groups' skiing with a view to giving everyone something to think about for next time.
It works really well. It's very useful as a teaching tool, and watching yourself ski on video in the bar at the end of the day over a beer brings everyone together and rounds off the day nicely. I've used the resulting footage in a quite a few of my films from last year, but now I'm trying to do something different.
I want to make a film which sums up what video feedback is and how good it is by filming a client during the process. They are sitting watching themselves skiing while my camera is focused on their reaction and Mark's analysis of their skiing. I think that to put all this together into a short film of around 2 minutes should give a prospective client a comprehensive idea of what the video feedback is, developing the feature from something cool that clients are fairly surprised about to a Unique Selling Point that will drive more clients to come on the courses in the first place.
Anyhoo - that's the idea, and this short film is the proof of concept. I'm just trying out the idea to see if it's going to work. This stars Monique, one of the business owners who came on our taster weekend last Sunday. I think the concept is proven but what do you think? Does it give an idea of the feedback session? Does it look useful to you?
Mon's Video Feedback for All Mountain Performance from Chris D on Vimeo.
Dec/080
Just epic
Of course.... I wouldn't be freediving right now. I'd rather be skiing. As a start to the season, there's really only one word to sum it up.
I helped Mark and Simon out on their course over the weekend. Things were a bit snowy, but we managed to get a decent photo of the new instructors jackets.
But Sunday was the day. The sun shone, and we skied beautifully deep powder all day. OK, so there were still quite a lot of rocks, but here's a bit of the video feedback All Mountain performance are doing thise season.
Chris Dorward, Simon Halliwell Video Feedback 7th Dec 2008 from Chris D on Vimeo.
What I'd like to do next is cut some of this footage with the footage from the actual feedback session in the bar later that day.
It was an epic start. But there were casualties. A friend of mine snowboarded into a rock with his knee and broke his patella in 5 places.