Nates honest thoughts on Tom Wallisch and JP Auclairs segment from into the mind

who gives a fuck, it's just skiing. i honestly dont care if skiing becomes a "novelty sport" in the olympics. let that branch do that, fuckem! if they're just in skiing for the money and the bullshit, let them have it. the rest, the underground crowd, the urban grime, the backcountry killers will live on.
 
This isn’t a situation unique to Freeskier, Nate, and Sherpas. If you substituted this with any magazine, any journalist, and any production company, we’d be in the pretty much the exact same spot. You worked at a magazine so you know better than others about the dangers of rubbing ski people the wrong way. That’s why I said you should answer your own questions. You might not exactly know why Nate did X because of Y but you understand how situations like this play out and why we don’t see them. From that you could have added so much light to the situation.

Granted you gave Nate props in your post, when you ask questions like that it rubs me the wrong way. This is an issue that everyone knows about and no one wants to talk about. I just think it’s much easier to start these discussions and when you make yourself vulnerable when you say, the problem is ______, this is what I think about it, does anyone else care to weigh in? I don’t know what the psychology behind it is but I know that you know what’s going on here, to just ask those questions and not weigh in is weak and really doesn’t invite others to make themselves vulnerable to state their opinion if you actually wanted to start a discussion.

So now you gave some light to why it's a big deal this was posted. It's also kind of interesting this was posted on his tumblr and would have been so boss if it was posted on Freeskier but that's a third tier discussion and there's no chance in hell you'd ever get Freeskier to come out and say who and why that call was made. You know that. Imagine if you wrote that review and posted it on NS when you were at SBCskier?

Q: Why don't journalists always write honest opinions?

A: Money talks. Media outlets can't compromise potential ad revenue by writing negative opinions.

Next question: How does this get changed. Now we're in the ugly. Now we're beyond what I know, it should be discussed, but I really can't put any insight into how this could/should be done.

Did you see what Doug wrote on FB last night? That shit was fucking real.

I also thought the why nate doesn't post this on ns question was really funny.

 
basically hes saying why not point out the obvious, which you happen to be in a better position to do than those of us who have never been a part of skiing media. And until you choose to be as blunt as Nate's review nothing will really change.

But I'm not pissed at you like T-rob seems to be, but I am miffed at Abbott for not posting this at least to freeskiers website if not the magazine itself. If this is something he stands by, why not use it as the real review or an opinion peace, and really piss off Sherpas? This is where you can shed light, will the potential additional readers of a controversial piece plausibly generate enough revenue to offset the potential loss of personal ass kissing relationships? I don't know, but im going to assume you do.

This leads into another issue semi related issue that has nothing to do with Moose or T-rob, when do ski magazines ever offer anything other than positive reviews? Gear, movies, resorts, I have not once read not to buy something or not to go somewhere. Its obvious they are either being directly paid for it or have a mutually beneficial relationship, but its bullshit. And its something we as the target consumers for the reviews should be pissed about. If its marketed as a review, I should be able to trust that the author at least attempted to keep bias out of it. If i buy a ski that is made like shit based on a review from Freeskier or Powder that tells me its decent, I have a right to be mad. Not legally, but if they truly care about the sport they would be willing to be honest.

But then i thought even more, when was the last time i read a bad piece about anyone or any specific thing? In the world of Freeskier, every skier is a nice person, there are no selfish assholes, no groups that hate each other, and no drama. There is endless dancing around issues they don't wanted pointed out, opinions they believe but dont want to express. A perfect example is Jason Levinthal responding to Cody Reisig, who used to be part of freeskier:

"By the way, you not calling out the specific instances & people you’re referring to in your question is just another form of you not having the guts to be honest in the name of risking what people think of you."

 
Basically what I'm saying is that no, it's not obvious, and no, I'm not going to make an assumption as to why it wasn't posted on or printed in Freeskier.

If this kind of content was in the magazine, I'd definitely consider subscribing... so why isn't it? I sincerely want to know -- and think the answer will bring a lot to this discussion. If you disagree, that's totally fine.

When I was at SBC Skier, content didn't make it in for a variety of reasons. Sometimes your fellow colleagues don't agree -- sometimes they veto, sometimes majority wins, and sometimes you fight for two hours and agree to disagree. Sometimes your sales guy is about to close a deal and doesn't want to jeopardize it. Sometimes it makes it all the way to proofs, only to have the publisher take a look and have it removed. Sometimes you plan to include content, but end up having no room for it. Sometimes your editorial voice doesn't allow for personal opinions. Sometimes they are your bros and you don't want to do them any harm. Sometimes, you simply don't have the balls or confidence in your own opinion to run something negative.

I don't know the answer to my question -- that's why I'm asking it!

 
And those are some very realistic reasons why the piece didn't run in the website or magazine. (I deleted the last one because obviously Nate had the balls to share his opinion somewhere.) This is the light or the insight that I wanted you to add. If you would have also added your opinion on whether you'd have tried to get something like this posted back at SBCskier, it would have been ever stronger.

That is what, I think, Byron is referring to as the obvious and what I refer to as making yourself vulnerable. Now you're bringing everyone else up to speed on why things don't run. That's huge.

But you still want to know which one of those reasons or maybe another why it wasn't posted? I think that's obsessive and exposing the ugly reasons why pieces aren't posted in the first place is more than good enough to actually use this situation to work towards more honest words about skiing being published.

I don't think it actually matters if the sales guy said no, or the editorial staff, or even Nate decided to separate his opinion from his magazine. Those guys all are trying to do what they think is best for the magazine as a whole. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it would have been way more boss if it was posted online or in the mag but it doesn't always work out that way.
 
This. No offense to Mousseau, I think you are doing a phenomenal job with newschoolers, but I have noticed this specific tactic in curating discussion several times from you on this site. You put it out there, but don't really assert anything substantial, while hoping others will jump in and assert what you may actually be thinking, or atleast something controversial enough to generate conversation... It's like you are setting the it on the burner, but not igniting the flame or stirring the pot. Maybe that is your aim, which is fine and all, I just enjoy people asserting significant opinions in their efforts to begin discussions (ie Logan Imlach does a hell of a job with this). I feel like I've seen occur in threads to, in the olympics discussion we were discussion the realities and timelines of ski media, you and I traded off and I posed the question "the real question that you have to ask is, "is making ski movies practical/logical? and you replied saying that you werent going to answer then but you would get back to that.....

whether you agree with his message or not (I do), Abbott atleast asserted his position and didn't just say "hey guys, what do you think about this segment?". If you guys really want to get a realistic perception of film companies a really interesting discussion to generate would be, what do athletes think of working w/ company X or company Y- doubt that would ever happen in this industry....
 
I think the issue is that we're looking at my position through different eyes. Most cases I simply don't have the time to fully weigh in on every topic. I can promise you I've been doing my best, but I've basically been playing catch up since I started this summer. I like to think that most of the time I'm bringing more to the table focusing on what I'm working on as opposed to sharing my opinion, but maybe I'm wrong.

With that being said, I have an idea which could remedy the situation and get my opinion out there more often. I'll create a "My thoughts on..." type thread, where I'll take 30 minutes of my morning to answer any questions posed in the thread. Thoughts?

---

"while hoping others will jump in and assert what you may actually be thinking, or atleast something controversial enough to generate conversation..."

For me it's more about people actually just sharing their opinions -- I could care less if it's the same as mine (although I may try to convince them they're wrong).

I really do want more people to openly air their grievances on Newschoolers, and truly believe that doing so will bring a positive change to the industry. I think we can agree that that needs to happen.

Do I want the pot to get stirred? Absofuckinlutely! The difference is that I'd rather give someone the spoon and have them do the stirring. If I can convince 10 "industry" people to share their opinions per month, then we'll have 120 more people sharing their opinions at the end of the year -- which would be so damn awesome IMO.

Do I also want to stir the pot? Yes! I'm just trying to avoid jamming my opinion down everyone's throat. That or spend too much time working -- I just hit hour twelve of work for the day, and I feel like this thread will keep me up tonight...

It's also important to note that I'm not a journalist or an editor (at least not in the traditional sense) anymore, and I don't consider expressing my opinion to take precedence over other aspects of my job as GM of NS.

---

I purchased the Sherpas movie this year because I really enjoyed All.I.Can, and was curious to see what the guys were going to do with a larger budget and two years to shoot. Working for SKIER, I was also privy to a ton of photo content from the two years, and heard about a few of the ideas they had for segments -- ideas that got me stoked at the time. This was enough for me to warrant buying the iTunes version.

I don't necessarily regret buying it, but I probably won't be watching it again. I definitely did enjoy a few segments, but REALLY wasn't a fan of the JP & Tom segment, for a lot of the same reasons listed in the NS comments.

---

tl;dr I'm doing my best here, but I think it's more important for me to stimulate opinion sharing than share my opinion. I also think members like you are what makes NS, and only hope that more industry people will have the nuts to share their opinions such as you and Nate.
 
I finally sat down and watched the entire movie just this evening. I thought it was absolutely incredible! I couldn't wait to watch it after reading all the various opinions of the movie. I found if very intriguing, exciting and captivating. Obviously, whether you liked the movie or not, you have to admit the scenery and cinematography was breathtakingly beautiful. The editing and special affects were like nothing I'd ever seen before! I enjoyed the chapter theme of the movie and story line. I'm not going to critique this movie chapter by chapter. I just enjoyed the entire movie, although the indian/eskomo guy was kind of gross to look at.

I'm a enthusiastic bird watcher and lover of all nature, and this movie was a masterpiece. So beautiful were the birds of prey. The landscapes were magnificent. What a dream to be able to explore and concur those destinations. I've never seen such regions of the world, so it' was amazing to see it with such magnitude. I loved the changing season time lapses throughout. Very cool!

Anyway, after reading all the negative feedback about the movie, I for one was pleasantly surprised. Definately a change from what we are used to watching in "ski" movies. But I have plenty of those to watch. This was a nice change of pace.
 
Oh and I left out an important part. The skiing was incredible. I don't watch a lot of Big Mountain/backcountry edits or movies, but what I saw here was jaw dropping to me. I thought there was quite a bit of skiing shown. The pillow lines and steeps are unimaginable to me. How dangerous and scary, with avalanches and all. This was all very thrilling! Shoot I forget all the names, but that Kyle guy was something else! I'm going to definitely watch this again to aquaint myself with the Big Mountain skiers I'm not to familiar with. Much respect!!! And the urban Chapter "Into the Darkness" was as Nate put it...."Spooky" and kind of erie, like a batman movie or something.
 
the fact that you just compared an urban segment to a batman movie made me gagalso, though i can agree the big mountain skiing was pretty amazing, it was completely ruined by pointless cinematics that didn't always relate back to the skiing.

my opinion is basically that the editing was next level, but i dont consider it to be a skiing movie, more made for people who don't really watch skiing all the time

lastly JP and Twalls segment had so much potential, and they fucking blew it.

 
Great post Jason- I understand 100% where you are coming from.... there are only so many hours in a day, and less in a work day, and I know first hand how blurring those boundaries too often is not good for the rest of life ie girlfriends etc. ha. You've made this site so much better and I think it is on the road to your vision of an open platform where skiers, fans,athletes, and industry folk can be forward and honest with their thoughts, opinions, and criticism. Like you said, even 120 industry opinions a year would be great- if that stimulation is perpetually increasing it could get to the point where it produces enough new ideas and insight and lead to solutions to all the shit we all already bitch about on this forum.
 
and my opinion on Into the Mind in short form was that it was the single most impressive project ever produced in our sport. However, I think it relied a bit too much on camera specs, technology and advanced production techniques. While all those attributes are great to have, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to break them out in every single frame of your project- I wish they let a lot of the action "breathe more". I feel like that is a bit of a result of their budget- where you have all these resources so of course you use them, but I think some aspects needed to be utilized more sparingly. My single gripe with Valhalla is also applicable to Into the Mind- having great friends that dedicate their lives to pursuing a "pro" ski career I know first hand how insanely hard some of them work to acquire footage- these movies in a way almost disrespect that effort- was anyone able to pick out some of the individual skiers in Valhalla, if they weren't advertised on the trailer descriptions etc. I doubt anyone would really have a clue- hell it was tough even to identify Pep in the film.

Similarly in Into the Mind, I felt like the urban segment was a huge disservice to the skiers individual abilities- I think that if you have the budget and capacity to produce a segment the likes of which has never been done before- why not pair it with the best skiing your talent has to offer? Ty Evans was able to do this in Pretty Sweet- bring a higher production level than the sport of skateboarding has ever seen while not diminishing the actual skating- furthermore, they succeeded in giving the athletes involved the recognition they deserved for all the hard work they put in.

When it comes down to it though, I really love Into the Mind as a film- not a ski movie, which I think was accurate to their goal. The creative input in that project is unfathomable to the rest of the ski industry and Renan Ozturk is a personal hero of mine and massive inspiration. (who is the purple man- the story is based on his real life personal experience). The movie definitely left the door open for someone else to pair that level of production value with a correlating level of skiing in a cohesive project.
 
Basically I look at the relationships in the ski industry as an episode of Oz. The ones with the most money (your North Faces, Salomons, etc) are the giant gang leader walking around the yard causing a ruckus. His homies that nobody fucks with but he protects are the sponsored athletes in the gang. Obviously, there are different size gangs ranging from the Bloods, Eses, and Aryan Nation to smaller gangs, like the La Neustra, Texas Mafia, and Neta. Then you've got your media outlets, really any form of them, that are little fuckin artsy nerdy dudes that wanna keep to themselves and do their own thing but the big bad gang leaders want a piece of that ass. So if the nerdy dudes do a good job and cup the balls and watch their teeth, the gang leaders are happy and won't fucking kill them. But that's what the think they have to do to stay alive, because without protection frrm the gangs they're fuckin done for. Obviously, to join the smaller gangs it's much easier and you don't have to give up as much. But the larger gangs are hard to join and get protection, and so many of the members lose their fucking dignity to get on the crew. There are some bad ass motherfuckers that get on the gang just being themselves (people like Wally) and don't have to give up their brown eye. What I'm fucking stoked on is that Nate grabbed a pillow case, filled that thing up with soap bars, and started fucking swinging that shit. Fuck those big bad motherfuckers, if there are enough people banding together within the media and the small gangs you can turn the whole ecosystem of the prison on his head.

I just drank a case of beer finishing my skis, so that didn't make any sense but I spent so much time writing it I figured I needed to post it.
 
With all the writing you sons of bitches do you ought to learn to break up your paragraphs.My attention span is way too short to read your full page rants.

Now if someone summarizes in bullet form, I'd be stoked.
 
Because everyone likes a clickable link --

https://www.newschoolers.com/readnews/43783.0/A-few-thoughts-on-the--Nate-Abbot-phenomenon-
 
Ah yes. You guys don't automatically hyperlink links already? Even the ancient CMS on the TGR forums does that... which is great, because I don't like thinking about what I'm doing.
 
I cant believe that you just used the term "indian" and "eskimo" side by side. How uneducated are you?
 
It's a tactic we employ to give us 5 seconds to drop it into our news section and share our own link. Gotta spin those ads!
 
I know it is cliche to compare skiing to skating or other action sports, but let's look at skateboarding for a second.

Skateboarding is one of the biggest sports in America now. Much like skiing should be, if it is not already, video is the primary way of showing their sport to the world and drawing stoked kinds into it. Despite the fact that some 10-year-old t-ball player is going to be no more impressed by a back smith down a 20 stair than by a 50-50 down a 6 set, skate films do not short sell themselves.

With the better trick, true skaters are going to be stoked and blown away, and outsider will be no wiser. Why, given the chance to make a film that inspires and impresses skiers and non-skiers alike, would anyone chose to only live up to half of that potential? The issue here is not that Sherpas is not going to appeal to the average gaper, but that they made something that hardly acts as a ski movie to skiers, instead being little more than a film reel for the group, who would apparently rather be shooting for the Discovery Channel.
 
So I went to check this after Logan called you out just to see if you were full of shit and are actually posting under an alias. So I run an IP check, and I find out you ARE indeed lying. There IS another account using the same IP as you. What's the username?

... loganimlach.

Seriously I'm not even making this up, Logan made an alias to talk shit, then called out his own alias under his normal username for being a bitch and hiding behind an alias, and then denied he was using an alias, to himself, under his alias name.

Mind. Blown.
 
Thank god someone in a position deserving of industry respect shares his honest thoughts on this instead of pussying out with a PC-friendly response.

The kids on this site and those jackasses who voted it as SKI MOVIE OF THE YEAR at IF3 are fucking dum dums that have no idea of what makes a good SKI movie. Sherpa Cinemas doesn't understand skiing at all. They're a bunch of kooks that couldn't hold a job at WME.

Nate pointed this out already but this film was just a demo reel showing off their own talents while completely ignoring the talents of the skiers they were filming. It was a fucking waste. If they pulled this shit with any other action sport, they'd get the same reaction.

I really hope they don't make another film next year... if they're that compelled, I hope people don't fall for their "omg we're like totally different" facade. Let's face it, all the top film dogs can do what they do but they choose not to because THEY UNDERSTAND HOW SKIING SHOULD BE REPRESENTED.

Sherpa Cinemas, fuck off already. We don't need your bullshit.
 
That's literally not possible, unless I have some seriously fucked up Fight Club syndrome going on. Maybe it's because I posted from my phone on data?
 
Same IP doesn't necessarily mean it's the same person -- I did a bit more digging and it turns out AdmiralNelson isn't Logan.
 
The Newschoolers powers that be have silenced me. I am prohibited from revealing further IP related information in this case.

Whoever AdmiralNelson is, he's protected from up on high by the Prince of Darkness.

... Of Newschoolers.

... So, Rowen, I guess.
 
Whoa, hey man... chill out. Bro bomb understands that if they don't stay within hours of being relevant, they'll disappear back into no-one-gives-a-fuck land.

They're like herpes. Their only purpose is to show up at the worst time possible to kill everyone's vibe. Why else do you think their staff is leaving that POS website in hordes for unpaid internships?

Sherpa, when you jump off that cliff remember to drag the bombest bros down with you. You belong in hell together for what you've tried to do to freeksiing.
 
"That opened a wider discussion about ski media’s general lack of ability to openly critique nearly anything in the industry, despite the availability of boring ski movies, dumb products, and pro skiers walking around Vail Village like it’s Trenchtown Jamaica, flowing dreads in tow, without anyone even bringing up the concept of irony inherent in such a contradiction."

haha, brobomb strikes again
 
Nate Abbott really hit the nail on the head with that post. Basically sums up my opinion on the matter. All.I.Can is one of the best, if not the best ski movie ever made, and I was severely disappointed with Into The Mind. Maybe I came in with too high of expectations or maybe it was just not a good ski film. I'm going with the latter.

With that said, what I'm really pissed about is the free year long subscription to Powder that I was supposed to get when I preordered the movie, da fuck guys? at least give me something mildly entertaining to look at! sheesh...
 
Little correction, that does nothing but add to what you said, snowboarding halfpipe has been in the olympics since 1998! Snowboarding has done nothing but thrive under the attention the olympics brought to it, I hope freeskiing does the same.
 
Thanks, really good stuff! Just to throw in my slightly irrelevant opinion: I have not seen the full movie, just the released segments and from what I have seen and heard regardless of any other problems this movie relies on special effects and high quality cinematography. That is all well and good but that means that this movie will have a hard time being timeless or a classic. Just looking at traditional movies makes this clear, movies that rely on special effects over story are a dime a dozen but nobody cares about them a few years down the road. Special effects are always changing and getting better, at I think a much quicker rate then skiing is. This means that in a few years the movie will look dated even though the skiing isn't. I noticed this with Life Cycles. While I still love it and am stoked on it, it looks a little dated now. Of course that movie is built on so much more then special effects so and I think it will be a "classic" but its reliance on special effects still makes it less "future proof". It is easy to blow people's minds with great special effects right when your movie comes out but a movie's true worth is measured (I think) by how many times you want to re-watch it. Will into the mind be like those old classics that you still watch in VHS every season or will it simply be a brief burst of greatness that you watch once and never again?

Anyway, that's just my twenty year old, uneducated opinion, it will probably change as I mature, haha.

Sorry for the atrocious grammar and probably rambling block of text, posting from mobile has its drawbacks
 
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