Screening process

Miller film packed (as in snow) with labor-of-love stuff

Brian Metzler, Special to the News

Published September 30, 2006 at midnight

Text size

More Skiing & Snowboarding

More stories »

Having lived in Colorado most of his life, Max Mancini has skied the fruits of many big snowstorms. But he had never experienced anything like the mother lode that fell on Steamboat Springs in November.

That's when a whopping 96 inches dumped on the resort in a little more than two days. At the headquarters of Warren Miller Entertainment in Boulder, there was little time to think. Just call in some talent, pack up a truck and hit the road.

Mancini, a rowdy freeheeler who incorporates terrain park and all-mountain freeride style into his innovative brand of telemark skiing, was lucky enough to get the call.

"That was unbelievable," said Mancini, a Breckenridge resident. "There were just endless face shots all day. I don't think I'd ever skied that much snow, especially not that early in the season."

Although planning began weeks earlier, the frenzied trip to Steamboat was the real starting point of Warren Miller's new ski and snowboard film, Off the Grid. The 57th edition of the annual get-you-fired-up-for-winter movie will debut Oct. 18 in New York City and Winter Park when the 300-stop national film tour begins.

"It was puking snow the whole time and there was horrible light for filming - darker than the inside of a football," said Josh Haskins, the line producer and a cinematographer for the film. "But when you see those guys skiing chest-deep powder, it works."

The crew at Warren Miller Entertainment made the final editing tweaks to Off the Grid on Sept. 12. While the film contains many of the pulse-raising scenes that audiences have come to expect, it also is a departure from the traditional mold.

First, the company hired Micah Abrams, who helped launch Freeze magazine in 1997, to write a lively script for the film. It also did away with blatant sponsor plugs that had become commonplace in the annual film and added some creative twists without reducing the awe-inspiring powder skiing and cliff-dropping footage.

And for the second straight year, it used the youthful voice of Jeremy Bloom, the former Olympic skier turned pro football player, to split narrating duties with the company's namesake founder, Warren Miller, who is 82 and only semiretired.

Bloom is on the injured reserve list of the Philadelphia Eagles and won't see any game action this season, but he's excited to be tied to his other athletic passion, especially because he got hooked on Miller films as a kid growing up in Loveland.

"When I was 12 years old, Warren asked me to be in his movie," the 24-year-old two-time Olympic moguls skier said. "After I woke up from passing out, I became the coolest kid in fifth grade."

Bloom's passion shows

You won't see Bloom skiing in this film, but you can hear the passion in his voice as he talks about some of the wild venues captured on the silver screen. Aside from Steamboat, the other most prominent scene from Colorado is a shot of TJ Schiller pulling a 1440 (that's four full rotations in the air) in Vail at the U.S. Freeskiing Open. But extraordinary segments from Utah, Alaska, Montana, Canada and the Kashmir region of India are enough to make you tune your skis and start making travel plans.

Based on an advanced-viewing DVD released to the media in early September, Off the Grid appears to be the best Miller film in years. Among the highlights are Jamie Pierre's 245- foot cliff jump in the Wyoming backcountry, the fascinating Kashmir story shot at Gulmarg ski area in India, heli, snowcat and backcountry skiing in interior British Columbia and scenes of U.S. Disabled Ski team members Kevin Bramble and Monte Meier tearing down 50-degree faces in Alaska's Chugach Range.

"Every year, our goal is to raise the bar, and this year there is no question we did," said executive producer Max Bervy, who has been with the company for 17 years. "It is noticeably a different movie, and it's much better. I'm really happy the way it came out. It's definitely our benchmark, that's for sure."

While the Steamboat segment happened spontaneously, most of the other segments were meticulously planned out well in advance. That means getting film crews, world-class athletes and loads of gear to exotic places such as Austria or Japan with the idea that there will be enormous amounts of fresh snow to be able to shoot epic scenes during a one-week stay.

Strange things happen along the way. It's inevitable at least once every winter that a crew and athletes will get skunked and instead are forced to make do with hard-packed conditions, as was the case on a trip to Disentis, Switzerland, for Off the Grid. Last winter, the crew accidentally destroyed a new $26,000 camera, trashed a $7,000 snowmobile and temporarily lost - for three weeks - all of the footage shot on location at Big Sky Resort in Montana.

A bit of craziness

It isn't until all the scenes are shot in late spring that the craziness really begins. All summer, producers and editors view, edit and review countless hours of film, trying to narrow down the best scenes and most poignant moments. By late August, as the movie was nearing completion, music tracks were secured and weaved into a version ready for one last viewing in early September.

That the film crews came back with some of the best footage in recent years was certainly a plus. Some of that is a result of hard work on the part of the cinematographers and athletes, and some of it is pure luck.

"It was almost like, 'Close your eyes and pick a shot' for us this year," said Off the Grid editor Kim Schneider, who has been working on Miller films since 1978. "We're so lucky to get such outstanding stuff. The guys really worked hard out there and you can tell. We've got the best we've had in some time. We had a great winter last year, and it shows on the screen, for sure."

There's no rest for the weary at Warren Miller headquarters. The company has spent the past couple of weeks finalizing the film tour, but already the producers have begun tossing around ideas and drawing up plans for next year's film. One change possible for filming this winter might be shooting at one or two fewer locations to allow each of the other segments to be longer.

"That's the hard part: having the discipline to go fewer places and letting everything breathe a little bit," Bervy said. "It's really tough to get those segments shortened up and tell the story that you want and do it justice. There is so much stuff that gets cut.

"But the ideas are the easy part. Even if you think everything has been done, it hasn't. The reality is, everything can be done differently. I couldn't imagine doing anything more fun. It's a great process, a great group of people and a great project to work on every year."

To view a trailer and complete schedule of Off the Grid, visit www.warrenmiller.com.

Once in a lifetime

Could you hold your own in some exotic ski locale with some of the athletes in the annual Warren Miller film? Now's your chance to prove it. The winner of the Titanium Challenge will receive a seven-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Cordova, Alaska, to go heliskiing with Warren Miller stars and X Games gold-medalists Reggie and Zach Crist. All you have to do to enter is submit a short video and written credentials that demonstrate your skiing or snowboarding skills between Oct. 1 and Jan. 31. Visit www.Columbia.com/TitaniumChallenge for more information.

Filming tips

Have you ever tried to shoot your own ski and snowboard footage? Not as easy as it looks, right? No matter who your subject is or what kind of camera you have, there are a few things to keep in mind that can help produce entertaining video, said Max Bervy, director and producer for Warren Miller Entertainment's Off the Grid ski and snowboard film. Here are a few basic tips to get started:

1. Let there be light. Look for slopes that are illuminated by the sun, but avoid situations where skiers or riders are backlit or can be hidden by dark backgrounds such as trees, rocks or shadows. "The more you do it, the better you get," Bervy said. "It's so easy to do it, and it makes a big difference in your final product." Starting the day early, with low-angle morning light and fresh snow, is a good formula to get high-quality footage.

2. Have the camera in your hand ready to shoot and keep it running. "Those little happy accidents are the things that you forget," Bervy said. "You shoot your friend going off the jump, chances are he might hack it. Maybe the way he falls off the jump backwards or crashes is the best part. But most people typically shut it off as soon as he lands, when probably the best action is after he lands. Your fingers might be burning, but you have to keep the camera going if you want to get the good shots."

3. When editing, keep things concise and scrap scenes that are too long or just average in quality. "The key is to have the discipline to throw the shots away, even though you fall in love with those shots," Bervy said. "The last thing the people want to see is my 20-minute day at Vail. They want to see the best scenes in 90 seconds or two minutes, maybe five at the tops, because that's all people's attention spans are going to be."

Don't miss it

The second edition of an event called The Meeting will showcase several new ski and snowboard films Thursday to Oct. 8 at the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen. The films include Wear it Well (Whiteout Productions), Draw the Line (Standard Productions), Long Short Story (Level 1 Productions), Anomaly (Teton Gravity Research), Who Cares (Mango Productions) Show & Prove (Poor Boyz Productions) and Follow Me Around (Mack Dawg Productions). For information, visit www. wheeleroperahouse.com.

Other Front Range ski film viewings

Anomaly • Oct. 13, Boulder Theater, Boulder

• Oct. 14, Gothic Theater, Denver

tetongravity.com

Long Short Story • Thursday, Boulder Theater, Boulder

level1productions.com

Off the Grid • Nov. 3-5, 17-19, Clear Creek High School, Evergreen

• Nov. 8-12, Boulder Theater, Boulder

• Nov. 15-19, Paramount Theater, Denver

• Dec. 8-9, Douglas County High School, Castle Rock

warrenmiller.com

Subscribe to the Rocky Mountain News