PHOTOS | SPINDLE PRODUCTIONS
Black Diamond, makers of quality mountain equipment, teamed up with Spindle Productions, to create a series of short films profiling people for whom the mountains are more than a passion, it’s their way of life. We spoke to British filmmakers, Greg Hackett and Dickon Ireland at Spindle to discuss how the relationship came about.
Firstly, tell us how you came to work with Black Diamond seeing as you are based in one of the flattest counties in a country not exactly known for its ski resorts?
Greg: The Creative Director at Black Diamond, Alex Hamlin, saw Experiments In Speed, which is a piece we made with a local frame builder, Donhue Bicycles, a year previous. He basically contacted us and said I love the way you make films, it’s a bit different, you’ve got a real emphasis on storytelling and then invited us out to Chamonix. We didn’t really need an excuse to head out to Chamonix, so booked a couple of days and… Dickon: Padded it out with some snowboarding! [Laughs]
Greg: So we got out there and spoke to Alex and realised we both – Spindle and Black Diamond – have a similar love, a desire to create content that’s more than just marketing, more than just advertising. That wasn’t the outset just to make product videos, it was more about how can we create a voice for Black Diamond on the platform of video and we did that through stories. We decided that we needed to find people that have genuine, interesting stories that are to do with snow and climbing ultimately.
Dickon: It’s kind of like the antidote to skiporn. There’s no shortage of films with incredible first descents and tricks which is obviously great and we all love watching that but I think there was a gap for something different.
Greg: I think we quite often find – in all walks, not just in the snow – that once everybody has the same technology then the game is equal, then how you can differentiate yourself from the field is by telling good stories and capturing people’s imagination. And that’s our philosophy at Spindle. So, we hit it off with Alex and it was the perfect time in our career, we were only two-years-old at that point and were just starting to work with bigger brands outside of the UK.
Looking at your work, there’s almost a romantic element… it feels as though you have a passion and empathy for the mountains. I assume you have an interest in skiing/snowboarding?
Greg: Massively!
Dickon: Yes, well that’s how Greg and I got to know each other really. We worked in shops that were close by and would say hi to each other in the street and then ended up on the Snowfit/Revolutionz [shop] snowboard test trip in Sauze d’Oulx, Italy. Greg was out there filming stuff for the shop and I was generally helping out for the week. That was also the first time Greg and I worked together in a filming sense I suppose, so we bonded over that. We’ve been on a few other snow trips since then and both got bitten by the bug but I wouldn’t say we’re…
Greg: …We’re not ‘mountain men’! We’re not like some of the guys at production companies that are mountaineers but we understand the elements to tell the stories. We can get by on a splitboard and skin up a mountain happily with The Forecaster and ski down in the backcountry but we’re not professional athletes slash filmmakers, we’re just filmmakers that enjoy a bit of snowboarding.
So is that how you accessed that terrain to get the footage, on splitboards?
Greg: Yes, all splitboards. We’ve got some funny stories about that.
Dickon: Most of the people who make these kinds of films have spent their whole lives (in the mountains) doing it. It was a steep learning curve for us. Our first day working on The Forecaster… trying to keep up with an Avalanche Forecaster in the backcountry of Utah, his home turf! [Laughs] He’s fast – especially at altitude. But equally, it’s one of the most fun things I’ve done all year.
Greg: With One Seven Eight we had 24 kilometres of flat splitboarding. 24k! Me and the camera assistant… it was like a marathon, over five hours and disgusting with cameras on our backs! [Laughs]
What is the average weight of your packs when you are out shooting something like that?
Greg: I’d say about 30kg each. I really enjoy that whole endurance thing though. I’m a cyclist at home so I have a bit of a sadistic side and Dickon just loves a challenge. So we’re very suited to that stuff. Y’know, equally we weren’t completely naive. This was the first time we’d done real hardcore ski trips in the backcountry but we had been out with Chris Sturgess at Snowfit/Revolutionz and done some avalanche awareness work, transceiver training and some backcountry skills. Any time we’re out on these trips we try to increase our knowledge.
Dickon: It wasn’t for any lack of preparation it’s just that we’re from Norwich, flattest part of the country! [Laughs]
Do you get to recce a location beforehand or just work it out when you arrive to shoot?
Dickon: In terms of being able to recce, it wasn’t possible to do it ahead of the shoot due to the far-flung nature and the remoteness of the locations. Therefore we did as much research beforehand as we could. This was partly using Google Maps to scout the area and scanning information from related sites etc. However, the most useful resource was undoubtedly speaking to the subject of each film, as they were obviously very familiar with the locations, and more specifically, in La Grave, we had a local fixer who was instrumental in giving us information on the area.
Were there any unexpected problems that you encountered filming in the mountains?
Greg: No, not really. We do a lot of different film-making so the same rules pretty much apply. We had different batteries for instance but there weren’t any occasions where we had any mishaps or any faults with the equipment. We also work with a really, really experienced Norwegian ski and snowboard videographer, Fred Arne Wergeland. He does some of the filming for us and will follow our brief to get some of the really extreme stuff. It’s a really good collaboration between Fred, Mattias Fredriksson, ourselves and Black Diamond. I guess we are the architects of the overall story directing these things.
The finished product is so polished and well-produced. Did you already have a strong idea of exactly what you wanted before you headed out or was there a certain amount of waiting until you got to the locations to scout and decide upon a few factors?
Greg: Our process is always similar and will be for most of our work. Whether it’s documentaries, editorial or commercials you always have a shot list upfront. You do your research into your local area and you work out what your story is before you go out. We’d agreed on everything for the three films beforehand, we knew what we were looking for and we knew how to get it. Although saying that, you always have to be adaptable and able to change up should you need to. Two of the stories had to change midway through shooting due to unforeseen circumstances we just couldn’t predict but dealing with that comes down to experience.
The main characters in each of the three films – Drew Hardesty in The Forecaster, Henrik Westling in One Seven Eight and a few of the guys in A Simple Machine – there’s an almost intimate, sensitive exchange with the camera, as though they’ve opened up to you. Was that easy for you to capture or was there a kind of veneer you had to first crack? Were they grumpy mountain men you were initially dealing with or did you just instantly strike up a rapport with them?
Dickon: We talked to all of these people a lot in pre-production. In terms of preparation, the people to talk to about the kind of areas we were going to were the same people we were going to be filming so we’d spent a fair amount of time talking to them.
Greg: It’s about building up a rapport before we get there. I think when we leave most of the shoots, we genuinely leave with a friend in a different country. It’s not like we go there and coerce people into saying something or being exploitative, we just want to go out there and make the best thing we can, that is the truest story we can tell. I suppose the intimacy and nature just evolve from that.
The backdrop to the La Grave film was the uncertainty surrounding the lease extension that could see the lift operation stopping altogether. What were your thoughts on this and did it affect your approach?
Greg: It’s probably something we’re not well-placed to talk about. It’s an amazing place to go and experience this car that’s maintained by hand and that’s all run with an analogue spirit, it’s not this digital monster. Y’know there is no piste there. You get there and you need a guide, people die there all the time. Without a guide, you can just end up going into a crevasse. But the riding to be had there is just phenomenal.
Dickon: All of the guys who worked on the lift were an incredible bunch. People who started working there when they left school and pretty much work there for the rest of their lives it seems. I think that is a really nice thing. They were a really cool bunch of guys. A lot of them ski and they just have a love for the area, the mountains and that’s obviously a big part of why they do it. It was nice to experience that strong sense of a close-knit community. There was a nice feel to La Grave in general. A lot of people describe it as an off-piste mecca and it really is. That is such a rare thing these days.
You do lots of different types of filming and work with many brands, but are the alpine projects something you would like to do more of?
Dickon: Definitely. Anything that gets us out to the mountains is awesome.
Greg: What really interests us is going to all these different places, meeting these amazing people and telling those stories.
