Vice documentary on Freeskiing

I don't think it is a coincidence that all of them were sponsored by The North Face. TNF probably paid for some of the documentary and wanted tier athletes to be in it.
 
I agree that would have been better. But, the Olympics start next week. The vice journalist who did the research interviewed the big names and came up with this. Sounds like Vice should of had a thread on NS and asked openly what is Freeskiing. This is an example though of what the olympics do to freeskiing and how the public potrays it...
 
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whats the point in posting that picture without letting people know who he is, and why you think its relevant? nobody inquiring in this thread is even going to recognize the name, let alone the face....
 
I'm pretty sure that that it Tom Yaps who is the agent that represents tom wallisch and some other notable free skiers. Tanner Hall maybe?
 
Ya I doubt many people do know who he is. Still not sure what he had to do with the documentary, I guess he probably got Tom and Tanner and some of those other guys in it.
 
Vice could also have contacted us and asked some of those questions to get a perspective on what really is park skiing.

I mean honestly... newschoolers not even being slightly involved?

That is crazy.
 
What's the point in posting that comment if you're not going to let people know who he is, and why you think it's not relevant?

Incidentally, I think it was rather relevant since he's a freeskiing agent and the quoted post in question pertained to which skiers the documentary featured.
 
because i wanted to know why he posted it with the lack of info. it wasnt a post that i made so i felt no need to explain who it was, and as far as relevancy, i dont think it is or its not, i have no opinion at all. i wanted him to explain the relevance in his opinion. which is why i asked.
 
Aside from the content worth talking about, Devin Logan really pisses me off. She's skiing from a company that could have potentially not existed with THall and she's calling him a washed up has-been when he is still dubbing shit in the backcountry she wouldn't straight air.
 
These are all American North Face athletes except Tanner. hmmm. Stept stock footage, Martini rides for North Face hmm. That's the BS about this.
 
So is this about freeskiing or the Olympics? One will make me stop playing League of Legends long enough to watch.
 
It's about Tom Wallisch, Devin Logan, and Aaron Something talking about their season in prep for making the Olympic team. THall makes a regular appearance and he talks about not being allowed in the COE so he goes and jumps at BDG instead. Some of the behind the scenes type stuff is cool to watch and Wallnuts, THall, and Devin take some hilarious shots at each other but you aren't missing anything earth shattering.

You get out of promos yet?
 
NS is great and all, but not everything skiing revolves around NS. There are plenty of people that would have been able to steer the film in a better direction, maybe some people tried but it wasn't what Vice wanted.
 
I think the context of the post implies t-rob's insinuated opinion. Regardless of the latter, surely you can appreciate the relevance of a skiing agent to the skiers who appear in a skiing related production.
 
I think the context of the post implies t-rob's insinuated opinion. Regardless of the latter, surely you can appreciate the relevance of a skiing agent to the skiers who appear in a skiing related production.
 
I think the context of the post implies t-rob's insinuated opinion. Regardless of the latter, surely you can appreciate the relevance of a skiing agent to the skiers who appear in a skiing related production.
 
It's a documentary about the buildup to Olympic comps, so they talked about the buildup to Olympic comps. This isn't a documentary about skiing generally. Deal with it.

And Logan isn't calling out Tanner's skiing. She's calling him out on being a whiny, contradictory, bitter, washed-up comp skier.
 
Doug, Turn around and talk to Jason. NS was involved on a small level.

I'm reading a lot of these comments and appreciating the feedback. I worked as the ski consultant on this project and I'm super proud of what we put together. That being said, I'd like to address a few of your issues:

1) The skiers selected all had unique perspectives. I'm certain you all align with one more than the others, however, that still doesn't say that the other perspectives are not as valid as the one's you align with.

2) Including Tanner was super important to this project, as was including Scot Schmidt and J.F. Cusson. We have great footage of the Wells family that unfortunately hit the cutting room floor. We only had 40 minutes to tell the story.

3) Remember this aired on NBC and network television has a thing called standards and practices. Those are the parents that dictate that we can't say the word "fuck" on American television. They took our first cut and made us take out certain parts of the film.

4) The Olympics are the story at the moment. The scope of the project was to follow these four characters from ski camp, to the world cup, to the first US selection event (The Dew Tour).

5) Consider the audience this was meant for (NBC).

I don't regret or apologize for how the film turned out. I'm stoked on it and believe we told a good story. Now, I want to get the Vice dudes in the backcountry and in the streets and show them our side of the sport that wasn't fully represented in this film.

Thank you for watching, guys. You're the best community in the world.
 
what i found ironic is when tanner said something along the lines of "some of were smoking blunts... and now you have people up their yelling and screaming" whilst he was at X games yelling at henrik to go for the nose butter triple
 
it showed a journey of a few athletes on their way to making the games.

it gave a wider audience a few american faces to recognize and try to establish a relationship with those athletes so they can have someone to cheer for and get behind as they feel they know abit about their life.

to the people saying it was shit because it didnt show proper freeskiing such as big mountain etc and the true forefathers, candide etc

big mountain isnt in the olympics, pipe and slopestyle are. candide isnt in the olympics, these young guys are. and like it or not they are the face and future of the sport for the outside world.

 
The only representation of backcountry was the one shot from the Stump movie in 1991. Urban was hardly ever mentioned.
 
The shots from Stept and 4bi9 were there as was the Stump and Tanner stuff. Like I said, I'd love to make another film with these guys.
 
You wasted 30 minutes I could have been jerking off

- thats right, only made it thirty minutes through that steaming pile of dogshit.

 
And they even failed to do this properly. In a documentary about the buildup to Olympic comps you'd at least think they'd talk about the buildup to Olympic comps. They focused on it entirely from after it was already an Olympic event. There was nothing about the actual buildup to it being in the Olympics (ie how the hell did it even make it as an Olympic event???). This is the far more important aspect to a documentary like this than talking about the individual stories of a few athletes on how they won a few comps and are able to go to Sochi.
 
I think you're misunderstanding what he's saying. The way the project came out, it's about the buildup to the Olympics for these particular athletes. It's an extended athlete profile with a bit of background on the sport thrown in there. I'd love for someone to make the movie you're describing, but it's sort of irrational to get angry at Vice for not doing so. It'd be like yelling at Pixar for not making a drama about drug abuse and organized crime because you happened to want to see that rather than another cute CGI flick.

The main problem here was packaging. The title is "Free", the whole way it's presented makes you think it's about the sport, rather than the past 6 months of preparation for four US olympic hopefuls. If you had presented it to everyone as "Road to Sochi" or something and subtitled it "Vice chronicles the journey of four skiers at the top of their sport as it makes its first appearance on the mainstream stage", or something, no one would have any real problem, because the film would have delivered on what it said it was going to deliver.

Now, even if it'd done that I still think it could've done it better. There was too much "we do this for the adrenaline", EXTREM SPORTZ bullshit, which the producers seemed intent on pushing as the skiers' motivation. That bothers me. The other opportunity missed to take this beyond an athlete profile was to do a better job working through at least one of the two major issues that were brought up: the progression of women's freeskiing, or the sport's internal split as to whether going to the olympics is appropriate. The latter would have been a lot more interesting, obviously.

So basically, I think the film is fine if you take it for what it IS, rather than what it CLAIMS to be. Not great, but pretty good, and useful to the casual non-skier American who wants to know a bit about the people he's cheering for and what they do.
 
I think the documentary was great for the audience and NBC, shit for what I expect from Vice in general. For what it needed to do in the time limit and other constraints you guys did an awesome job, it hit a little bit of the high spots as well as introducing some of the bigger characters in the current competition scene and illustrated the comp lifestyle and comp skiers perspectives on competing without putting the public off from the sport. It was a short amount of time to put as much of skiing out there as possible and I'd be extremely happy with how it turned out. Fuck the people who expected it to hit the entirety of freeskiing and all of the shit the general public doesn't know enough to care about yet.

I'd love to see what you and Vice could pull off without network constraints and a longer run time. Keep hounding them to make that project happen, that would be amazing.

 
I think that was actually really on point. I think most people here were mislead by the title. This movie is about the olympics, it should have been called #roadtosochi .

I thought there was some great view points into the athletes perspectives across generations. I feel torn between the two view points because I agree with both.

In terms of movie context though I have to agree with Devin. If you want to participate in the Olympics your going to have to obey there rules and reg's. They aren't going to shift how they have done things just because they are adding us in.

However, Ibergs argument about sponsors is very true. For a non-profit org it sure costs a ton of money to be involved, but I also understand it takes a ton of money to put on this event. Shouldn't an athlete be able to fall back on its sponsors for help with these situations. Im confused with why they (IOC) doesn't want it, is it purely because of advertising and current sponsors of the games not wanting to share the spotlight?

Anyways, I started freeskiing for my own reasons. I'm sure there are plenty of individuals out there who will do the same.
 
This is exactly the reason. The US Ski Team sponsors pay a shit ton of money to be one of only a few sponsors, so when a rider comes in from outside the team with their own sponsors the choice is for that sponsor to spend a shit ton of money to make the risk of pissing off current Team sponsors worth it, or for the rider to pretend he's with the Team sponsors.
 
"If you want to participate in the Olympics your going to have to obey there rules and reg's. "

That's definitely it. They titled it FREE skiing with an emphasis on the free, and then focused on only the competition aspect of it. If you're going to focus on the aspect of skiing that judges you by the number of times you spin over the creativity you put out, how free is it really?
 
No, but we do certainly hold a massive audience - one which is very passionate about park/pipe. Newschoolers is one of the single largest audiences in skiing. I just think that more people talking about this sport should include us, as we include the community. As a team, we're a pretty cool source to talk to.
 
Sure, but that level was very tiny. I mean sure, I'm super stoked you were involved and all that. Shit I haven't watched it yet, so my opinion isn't even formed. The powder guys being involved was cool too....

But we have access to a massive wealth of information about this stuff and have been extremely close to it for a long time.

You can't possibly argue that someone making a document about competitive park skiing should have not even contacted Newschoolers. Nobody is forcing them, but true journalism should have at least brought it up a bit as someone to touch base with.

 
I think this is the wrong way to go about it, dude. Nobody at Vice knows what NS is or what it does, I guarantee you that nobody at NBC gives a rat's ass about any potential resource that could have been used for this.

You can't expect, or worse wait, for a 'true' journalist to approach you and use you/the site to make a documentary for the public at large. You've gotta be proactive about it. Vice doesn't care about what you can offer because they don't know what you can offer.

If you want in on any future projects like this, if you want there to be any future projects like this, you gotta be the one putting yourself out there and talking with people. It's unfortunate but they aren't going to come find you unless you find them first. They don't know what you can offer.
 
^Again I think you're under a misapprehension of what the project actually was. If it'd been a documentary about Freeskiing from its inception to the olympics, then yeah, it would be pretty messed up not to include Newschoolers in something like that. Given what it actually was, they really didn't have to talk to anyone besides the athletes they were focusing on, because the scope of the project wasn't any larger than those four people (and I guess the people who surround them, like coaches and family).

Even having Tanner involved was more of a contextual thing than a necessity. Obviously, if you were making a documentary about the sport itself, Tanner would be a centerpiece of a flick like that.

Again, I really think the way this thing was presented to people did it a big disservice.
 
Well.... Listen first off trust me I know about being proactive. This is what I do all day every day. To be completely honest, I didn't hear about the Vice Freeski documentary until it was almost finished. Just whispers of a few people consulting with them about some ski project.

The second part is yes - I know that people might not know about Newschoolers. That is fine. However, an investigative Journalist - or someone making a documentary - Is supposed to do extremely in-depth research. I'm simply surprised that they didn't come across Newschoolers at all. I mean sure.... the world doesn't know who we are, but we're a massive force to be reckoned with in the world of Freeskiing. If you're doing deep research into it... one would hope that if your research is deep enough you'd find it. I mean hell, Tom Wallisch got his break in his career on Newschoolers. To forget that is to forget history.

Anyway in the end whatever. I'm very excited to watch it and form my own opinion of how they did. I'm excited that Vice did this project, and the people that they consulted with were smart enough to guide the project in the right direction. Will write more after watching the whole thing.
 
I'm glad this was made, with that being said there is room for improvement, a lot.

First Off, DEVIN LOGAN, really? Womens Skiing is progressing like men's and is about 5 years behind?!??!? Lets think about that, the basically chronicles the years of EDIAS and refresh. Yes the berth of the double flip, you 'gal's are not doubling flipping, let alone double grabbing yet, so enjoy your 5 mins of fame and i hope for your sake you don't put on embarrassing show at the olympics.

Once I got over how Devin logan thinks shes the cats meow, i thought it was decent, there are some obvious errors in the documentary, but everyone is going to be a critic and think there opinion is best.

My advice to Mike Rogge, who was stated as the liason for this project, please if you do another one, chronicle more than just competitions and a broader range of the sport, include key people on both sides of the extreme opinion, I'm sorry but the really only feature a select few greats and the rest of the newcommers was very poor, would've been nice to hear OG opinions, including industry people and not just the new talent of people who no one even knew who they were (blunck, logan and girl with big teeth) when the olympics become an idea.

Again i get its for mainstream, but we can all learn a lot from this and hopefully if another is made they will take from this and create something better.

 
Man, I was so stoked when I heard Vice was producing this, but the quality was way below what I've come to expect from them. 'Vice' used to mean gritty, raw documentaries on underground subjects - and the rise of freeskiing would have been a perfect topic for a film like that. They're really diluting their brand by putting out this bland network-friendly stuff.
 
Hahaha the focus on the supposed progression of women's skiing is hilarious. I'm sorry to say, but women's slope and pipe is well over 10 years behind men's. The fact that women argue that they should have a similar caliber prize purse to men is insanely idiotic. You wanna get payed, sack the fuck up and start chucking some shit. Jesus christ, 90% of the kids on this website, 15 and under, given a couple months of the same training Devin Logan and alike are receiving could score well above their best run. Tom says it how it is, I understand there are people out there who try and sugar coat reality by explaining that girls are trying and progressing everyday. Well fuck me if that's the case, cause not a god damn thing has changed in the past 5 years. Devin Logan is a fucking chad, who should step up and ski like a man if she wants to talk shit about dudes who could beat her best runs with their worst runs black out drunk and on snow-blades.
 
I posted this in the Q&A thread, but thought it might be good to post here as well...

So we came on and helped the guys from Vice shoot action at Dew Tour early this winter as they were wrapping up production on the project. A few points and observations for everyone-

I found it really strange that in the last month of production they had no idea who Henrik was- I introduced them at Dew Tour and they shot some interviews with him, obviously those did not make the cut, but I made it very known that if there was a documenty on freeskiing and the olympics that Henrik should be a principle character or at least a very important supplemental character. Unfortunately, this was not a completely independent production for Vice which I think is why you guys are raising such harsh criticism as the vast majority of their docs are independently produced in-house... it was originated and funded through The North Face and NBC.

The footage of race skis being tuned in both the trailer and final cut is quite strange- there was plenty of pipe skis being tuned around those contests and I am surprised that this slipped into the final cut. Chalk it up to whatever you want, but definitely could have used some more cohesive authenticity.

You guys should all be well aware by now that whoever is funding a project- especially in our fiscally tight sport- gets incredible say regarding direction, athlete involvement, final cuts etc. I know that there was a different final cut that encompassed a wide variety of athletes/characters that unfortunately was nixed by NBC- they wanted a more detailed story of the 4 primary characters (and TNF athletes). For what its worth I think you guys are being a little harsh- Vice was very stoked to get street footage from us and Stept and they understood that our segment encompassed the more core elements of the sport which you guys clearly would rather see documented. The growth of skiing requires baby steps and I think it's fairly shortsighted to expect something perfect the first go around- I think we should be generally stoked that street skiing and some decent footage is going to be shown to the world whereas they definitely could have just limited it to the contest jock scene. Additionally, after Vice became aware of the street segment that we focused on there was some talk about a potential street skiing project in the future. All in all, it's a step towards the right direction and any random viewer will be able to tell that there is more to skiing than competitions due to the street footage and T-Hall pow material

 
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