Riding High

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

By Sam Petri

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-The vibe inside the offices of Teton Gravity Research is in constant après. And it should be. The boys filmed all last winter, edited and produced their latest ski film throughout the summer and now are ready to present it to us, the skiers and snowboarders, this weekend.

Along with Jack Daniels and Pabst Blue Ribbon, stoke emits from the pores of every employee who works for the action sports film production company. With the blinds closed, you’d swear it was a powder day, judging by the level of energy.

Their ragtag offices – located at the base of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, a stone’s throw from the tram dock and just above the Village Café – might as well be made out of duct tape and p-tex. But their jerry-rigged headquarters is a far cry from what it was 12 years ago, when Todd Jones, Steve Jones, Dirk Collins and Corey Gavitt founded the company and worked at a company desk made of a plastic milk crate with a piece of plywood on top.

If you’re into snow riding, watching their films – especially with an audience of like-minded alpinists jonesing for some snow after a long, busy summer – brings you closer to the sport, the lifestyle, the culture and the attuned dream.

On Saturday, TGR will host the world premiere of their new ski and snowboard film, “Lost and Found.” The film will screen at 5 and 7:30 p.m. at Walk Festival Hall in Teton Village (tickets are $12) followed by the usual raging after-party ($23) at the Mangy Moose. This year’s blast features the 20-member rock band Bang Camaro.

It’s the climax (as apt a word as there is) of another annual cycle for the TGR Crew, perhaps made all the more thrilling given rumors of their imminent demise this past spring.

Making of a Ski Flick
In a room illuminated only by the glow of the computer screens, Editor Tate MacDowell has been going through four hours of Jeremy Jones footage to produce a 14-minute “FUEL” TV show that highlights the big mountain snowboarder’s life, fears, aspirations, etc. It’s a painstaking process, staring at the screen for 13 or so hours at a time until the job is done. Especially since MacDowell just finished editing “Lost and Found,” where he had to sort through 40 hours of 16mm footage on top of almost 80 hours of HD and helmet cam footage for a film that’s just over an hour long.

“You go through what was actually shot, you get rid of all the shit, and the story just kind of seeps up,” MacDowell said, explaining the basics of editing. “We call it top-lining – the cream of the crop rises. After a while the other shots just get less and less relevant.”

TGR produces TV shows as an alternative and essential source of income. Because so much footage is shot over the course of a year, it would be a waste to edit it all down for one film and throw the rest away. But the snow riding community looks forward to TGR’s film each year, and that’s what the company is known for, that’s the genre they were born out of, and besides, they capture some of the best footage in the industry.
“As an editor, you have to hold certain rules for yourself,” said MacDowell.

“When you’re watching the movie, I hope that this year, more so this year than any year, that you’re seeing the ski shot for what it is, because that’s what you’re going to the movie for.”

If you saw last year’s TGR film, “Anomaly,” you may remember that it featured lots of tricky graphics, like skiers jumping over their own names during the opening credits and a map sequence that, in between segments, transported the viewer around the globe in rapid fashion.

This year, “Lost and Found” features a much cleaner, tighter approach.
“I think last year was just too much,” chimed in Graphics guru Scott Fischer, who designed and produced all the graphics for “Anomaly” and for “Lost and Found,” too. “I mean, the graphics were cool, but they kind of took away from some of the action. This year, we just wanted the movie to be itself – forget all the flashy gimmicks and hype, just let it work.”

When TGR first started, its founders spent as much time behind the camera as in front of it. “The Continuum,” their first film, in 1996, was a very grassroots ski and snowboard film. Now, 12 years later, a company has grown out of something a few good friends were doing together – namely ripping harder than most. Now the TGR brand name is known across the country and each fall American theaters are packed with skiers chomping at the bit for winter. 

Despite the success, it hasn’t always been the smoothest ride. This past spring a chunk of TGR staffers were laid off when the company couldn’t pay their salaries. Rumors spread like wildfire and by the time the company made it to the bar for a drink, half the valley thought they were going out of business.

“It’s just kind of standard business. We just did some restructuring, and everything’s moving forward, business as usual,” said Todd Jones. “I don’t really know why all that buzz started and got any crazier than any other phase we’ve been through. That was kind of a misinformation campaign.  As far as people are concerned, you’re looking at it, we’re here.”

The founders are, for the most part, the principle cinematographers for the new film. Their footage – along with footage from Pete O’Brien, Matt Herriger, Rick Johnston and TGR producer Josh Nielsen – is given to MacDowell to shape into a feature length ski and snowboard flick.

“This being the fourth year of doing this, the fourth movie I’ve done,” MacDowell said, “I feel like they are giving me, Josh and myself, giving us the reins a bit more, trusting us with their decisions.”

Groupies and Gropers
The door swings open abruptly, sending blinding rays of light into the dark editing suite. The silhouette of long-haired, six-foot-something Josh Nielsen fills the doorway – followed by a less recognizable figure with way less, if any, hair.

“Hey, man, Tate, sorry to interrupt you,” said Nielsen to MacDowell, before turning to the guest. “You may know him as Hottate,” he said, reluctantly introducing MacDowell by his TetonGravity.com forum tag-name.

 “Hey, how’s it going,” the stranger said. “I’m Brian – uh, MountainMan,” he said, using his own forum tag-name. “I’m driving cross-country from New Jersey to Seattle. I’m going to move out there, so I thought I’d stop by and say hi. Nice to meet you.”

MountainMan is not the first completely stoked fan to wander into the TGR offices, and he won’t be the last. A lot of people buy TGR videos and watch them obsessively over and over again. The TGR forum is where a lot of the cult followers wind up hanging out. Some are legit mountain men, some live in New Jersey; you never know who you’re talking to. One thing is for sure: wherever they are, they are hooked on skiing, hooked on TGR.

Some of the appeal is the attitude, which is quite clearly communicated with the music selected for each film. Matching the music to the riding makes the movie pop, draws people in. This past year, TGR Music Supervisor Dustin Handley left the company, so the licensing of songs had to be out-sourced and the selection of songs became a collaborative effort. 

Ski movie soundtracks often have the same cult following as the film. Kids end up bumping tracks they first heard in ski videos on the way to the mountain, at the resort, or afterwards at a party. For some, it can become their winter soundtrack. Which lead to the question: Which comes first – the music or the edited ski segment?

“It’s way easier to do when you hear that mix in the track that’s really weird, or a lot of hard beats,” explained MacDowell. “You can edit to a million of those.”

Boom. The door pops open again. This time it’s TGR founder and cinematographer Steve Jones.

“What’d you do? Give the soundtrack to the VC?” asked Jones.

“Yeah, we were down there partying the other night and we brought the soundtrack down, they’ve just been playing it on a loop,” said Tate.

“They need to settle down on that, man.”

“I’m stoked that they’re so amped on it being a sick mix.”

“I know, it’s good,” said Steve.

“You know that guy Adam that works down there that never talks or says two words?” MacDowell asked.

“The guy with the Boston hat?”

“Yeah, he kept picking my brain about every song on the sound track. I was like, ‘Umm, ah, it’s Puscifer and ...’”

“That’s mint, because every time I go down there he’s got the full Jerry Show going. So the fact that he likes it —“

“And there’s that one dude that plays The Police down there all the time …”

Puscifer is a side project of Maynard James Keenan, front man from the band Tool. MacDowell tracked down the elusive rock star on MySpace and set up a deal to license the song they wanted for the film. Maynard got back to MacDowell agreeing to license the song for “Lost and Found” with all the rights and regulations that TGR requested, as well as the amount of money TGR had to spend, with one hitch. Maynard requested a hand-job.

“Somewhere in the TGR licensing agreements, we have a hand-job to Maynard James Keenan, as a written agreement,” said MacDowell. Whether either tries to make good on the deal remains to be seen.

Secret Ingredients
Before you can edit, before you can have a soundtrack, you have to have raw footage. All the great edits in the world combined with a booming soundtrack wouldn’t make a good film if the actual shots are sub-par. Luckily, over the past decade, TGR has assembled a posse of professional athletes to star in films that year after year continue to push the level of riding to new heights.

Along the way, the original cinematographers, the founders, have dialed in their alpine filming techniques. When the company first started out, they were loading their film backwards. Now, with “Lost and Found,” we see some of the crispest ski and snowboard footage to date from locations few have seen, heard of, or get to travel to.

TGR is known for exploring Alaska ski terrain and documenting the experience on film. Dirk Collins – who grew up in the Chugach Mountains of Alaska – Todd Jones and Steve Jones all used to guide for Doug Coombs when he operated Valdez Heli-Ski Guides. After the Valdez scene was explored, TGR began pioneering lines in Haines, and this year they headed to the Tordrillo Mountains in the Alaska Range, far away from civilization.

“It’s a killer spot,” Todd Jones said of the Tordrillos. “I think that’s something we’ve always done, is just kind of explore and look for new areas, and that was our idea of going to Haines in the first place. Everyone was focused on Valdez, and there was some stuff going on in Juneau, so we went into Haines, and that was great. We’ve ridden Haines exclusively for a number of years, and that sort of became the new Valdez, the place to be.”

But despite the footage collected from the Tordrillos, and the hype it will inevitably spark in the ski-world, it will most likely not become the next Haines. As Nielsen put it, “For production, it was especially difficult because we where in the middle of nowhere, we had to take a bush plane in to get to the lodge.

If you forget your tripod or you need extra film or you run out of batteries, you’re fucked. It’s not like being in Haines, where you’re like ‘We had a great day, we need more film, ship it up.’ You’re really preparing to just get out there.”

Haines and Valdez have towns, roads, airports and infrastructure. The Tordrillo Mountain range has nothing except the Tordrillo Mountain Lodge, which opened last year and is owned in partnership by Jeremy Nobis, Tommy Moe and Chugach Powder Guides.
“The logistics of being there and getting in there are extremely intense, thus the whole operation is pretty expensive,” said Todd Jones. “We definitely want to go and explore it more there. We left some gems on the table.”

That’s the goal of TGR: to show viewers the best riding on the best terrain in the world, year after year. Going to new spots, like the Tordrillo Mountains, always keeps things fresh, but sometimes new talent fall right into their lap. This year it’s all because of puberty.

Whistlerite Kye Peterson, the son of legendary skier Trevor Peterson (considered to be one of the best true mountain riders who ever lived), first wowed audiences in 2005 during his segment in TGR’s “Tangerine Dream” when, at the age of 14, he was spinning 7s over the infamous 120-foot Pyramid Gap in Utah. Now, at age 17, he has changed up his game and decided not to hit any park jumps this year. The result is a big mountain segment that changes Kye from a grom park-rider into a force to be reckoned with.

“You sit there up on the peak and you’re looking through the lens,” said Steve Jones, “and he’s just this little stick figure guy, and all of a sudden it’s ‘3-2-1 – go,’ and your just like ‘Oh my god, he’s not gonna –‘ and he’s ripping down, boom, three off of this, back flip off of that, and stomp. He’s just a really exciting skier to watch.”

“He hung up in Whistler with Ian MacIntosh and Dana Flahr,” said Neilsen, “which I think was a really great influence on his riding. They were just blown away. Their jaws were on the floor because he was picking super gnarly, really aggressive lines, but he was skiing them like a veteran.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious one of everyone’s favorite things in the movie is Kye Peterson,” said Todd Jones, “Considering what he did last year, who knows where he’s going to take that.”

True, TGR has a formula. But each year there are different elements to plug into the equation, which in turn creates a different film. Who knows where TGR is going to take it next, because it’s unpredictable to tell where the athletes will take it, or if, when and where the snow will fall next. The company will change – this March they have to move offices, as their building is getting demolished – different skiers and ’boarders will come along and star in flicks. But as long as Dirk, Steve, Todd and Corey remain in the Tetons, there will always be TGR.

Courtesy Photo
Rumors of TGR's death have been greatly exaggerated

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Riding High | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories

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