Behind The Scenes of The Big Picture's Intersection Video
With an end destination in mind, I plot the course for Lot 8 wondering how I’ll find the guys once I pull in. Worrying proves futile as I round into the lot and see someone in a team Canada jersey and a goalie mask. Parker White, it has to be.
We shake hands and trade introductions on their second last day of filming for Intersection (which takes place this Friday night at the World Ski & Snowboard Festival in Whistler), also their first on-resort day. Having posted up in Pemberton for the week and beyond, the minds behind The Big Picture spent the majority of the week far from the resort boundaries hip-thrusting their way through what Parker described as “too much snow.”
As I approach Parker, I ask him if he’s going to be allowed back into the States if he’s seen wearing that jersey. His response: “I’d be thrilled if they didn’t let me back in.”
From the parking lot, we make our way to Whistler so the crew could bag the necessary on-resort footage for their first Intersection contest.
What follows is the highlights of one ride up Red Chair with Sean Logan.
Let’s talk about your local connect, Oli, aka Garbage Bear. How do you guys know him? We met him out here a few springs ago. Then we were over in the Revelstoke area last year for about two months and we just went skiing and sledding with him. He’s just a good hype man. And he’s knowledgeable in the backcountry and knows a lot of zones.
I was wondering how you guys were going to pick your way around these zones without a local connect. It’s always good to have some local friends show it to you, or else you’re searching for a bit. He’s good shit. He’s down to double up people and help out and ski.
What got you interested in Intersection? I learned about it a few years ago seeing some other videos. It was just good timing for us this year. We knew we were going to be out here right around now, so I shot an email over to see if it would work. The purse also got us interested. That could go a long way in the rest of our season.
I guess if you’re going to be out filming everyday then it’s only the editing that’s going to change? Yeah, exactly. Just cram for a week on the editing front. And they don’t really reveal too much anyways. They won’t put it online so we’ll get some clips for our mini-movies too.
Without giving too much away, there’s a pretty strong Canadiana element to the video. Who came up with that? I don’t know who exactly it was. It might have just been a few of us bullshitting about some ideas. We had already been discussing some things we wanted to do to add to the skiing mix of it. That Canadiana angle came up and we immediately we just started rolling with ideas.
Why isn’t Chris riding today? We were just out shooting on the second day. It was super heavy snow and we got a lot of it. He came into a landing and his ski didn’t pop off right away. So it kind of sucks for this week, but he’s looking at it for the rest of the season. He went and saw someone who checked him out and said things looked pretty good, so he’s just going to rest for another week. We got a bunch of good stuff with him from the first two days though.
What’s the plan for the rest of the season? We’re going to do some more of the behind-the-scenes series. I think it just adds to the web series. We can just put out the skiing and we don’t need to tell a story through that, but the behind-the-scenes series is a way for people to follow with a more candid, less edited, less skiing structure.
And the personality element. Right. If someones’s not just into the ski porn thing, maybe they’ll find us funny.
I think they probably will. We’ll probably release two more behind-the-scenes, then we’ll save our next mini-movie, Move 2, for the fall. We’re not going to tour with it, we’ll just do an online release. I just think that a lot of people aren’t really thinking about skiing and watching too much skiing at this time of year.
Where were you before Intersection? Revelstoke, then a little south of Revelstoke around Vernon, Valhalla and Nelson area.
Is that where Parker picked up the hockey stick? The Nelson Wal-Mart? Yeah. It’s a pretty nice spot actually. They’ve got a waterfront property.
Parker was joking the last time we chatted that you had to be a millionaire to party in Canada. But I bet you guys are doing alright with the dollar right now? Yeah. That’s part of why we spent a lot of our season up here. We’re pretty low-budget in comparison to what other people have, so to come up here and that added buying power helps. Fuel’s a little bit more but everything equals out and the money goes a little bit further. I think we all wanted to be up here anyways to check it out. Better conditions, better terrain.
Scroll through the gallery below for a behind the scenes look at The Big Picture's shenanigans in Whistler, and don't miss their video this Friday night at Intersection during the World Ski & Snowboard Festival. For more info on the event and to purchase tickets, visit wssf.com/intersection.