Film (Snowboarding)

Red Bull have always sponsored events and athletes in extreme sports and snowboarding is no exception. The latest involvement of Red Bull in snowboarding is sponsorship of a new 60 minute snowboarding documentary called “The Art of Flight”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kh29_SERH0Y#!

     The film follows top snowboarders Travis Rice, John Jackson, Scotty Lago, Jake Blauvelt, Nicolas Muller, Gigi Ruf, DCP and Pat Moore. They travel to some of the best locations in the world for off-piste snowboarding in Alaska, Chile, Aspen, Patagonia and British Columbia. The producers Brain Farm Digital Cinema used state of the art cinema and film equipment to give “The Art of Flight” a completely unique ultra high definition look.

     The star of the film Travis Rice said that he was no longer interested in making what he called “ski porn” films-the downhill documentaries knowing for showing trick after breathtaking trick over a soundtrack of thrashing guitars. To do this it meant they had to take bigger risks going to mountains that hadn’t been touched and trying tricks that no one had ever tried. Three of the snowboarders were even hospitalised during filming Scotty Lago broke his jaw after slamming it against his knee landing in Wyoming back country, Mark Landvik required knee surgery after a bad landing and Sebastian Toutant broke his ankle.

     The estimated budget for “The Art of Flight” is rumoured to be over 2 million euro which for a snow boarding documentary is a massive amount of money. Most of this reported to have been spent on helicopters to get to the remote locations of filming, on occasion there is a helicopter dropping the snow boarders while this is filmed from another helicopter making for some stunning camera angles. Red Bull were the main sponsor of the film which is an attempt to make snowboarding culture more mainstream.