Can you film me with my phone?
In order for shots with the camera cableway to come out well, a few lucky coincidences were needed. The slope of the terrain had to fit. Two anchor points were needed to attach the cable, e.g. a tree or a metal railing. The camera had to have the same speed as the athlete. The orientation of the camera had to be fixed correctly. And the start moment had to be right, so that the camera was at the rail or kicker at the right moment. "It was like fishing in murky water. The fishing rod with its nylon line for braking and retrieving the camera cableway symbolized the difficulty of timing and framing," Elmar Bossard tells us about his attempts to realize winter sports action shots with a camera cableway.
Christian Bieri, Luzern, 2006 Photo: Ruedi Flück
The digital revolution
After decades of purely analog filmmaking until the end of the 20th century, digitalization led to a democratization of film production. "We were the first generation that could afford to buy a film camera and produce films for a broad audience as amateurs," says Elmar. Anyone could operate his first Sony camcorder. There were no big setting options and the recordings were usually not that bad. The focus was set automatically and the exposure was controlled by itself. "I don't think you could really adjust anything manually, even if you wanted to. That suited me for shooting, but I realized when I was editing that something had gone wrong and that there were probably things that could have been done better," Elmar says of his early days.
Many of the visual designers in winter sports, like Elmar, have had a career change. As amateurs, they learned how to use the camera autodidactically and made the leap to professional thanks to the eternal search for new inspiration in the creative winter sports scene. Trends are picked up and adapted very quickly here. There is always someone who has a new idea to represent the sport audio-vi- sually and so there is an enormous dynamic in the representation of this subculture. Technological advances in camera design are used without restraint.
Elmar Bossard, Mägenwil AG, 2005 Photo: Ruedi Flück
During the early days of digital film production, the main difficulty was dealing with the current standardization of file formats. For example, in America there were NTSC formats with 24 frames per second, in Europe PAL with 25 frames per second, and these were of course incompatible. Furthermore, videos were watched on very different devices. Tube televisions needed completely different formats than flat screens. Film editing programs were still in their infancy and were therefore complicated and limited in their operation. Today, a smart phone with one of the relevant applications does everything that used to require a camcorder, recording device, computer and DVD. Recording, processing and distribution are now completely taken over by apps.
I can remember well the time when I jumped over small and big jumps after the athletes with the big SLR camera. I don't know where I got my inspiration from, but it was exciting to take action shots from a bird's eye view, very close to the freeskier in the air. It took quite a few attempts to figure out how to hold the camera in flight to capture the action as well as possible. At the time, this led to surprising perspectives. Today, such footage is captured with a GoPro camera, which has potentially put the entire action sports world in a whole new light. Extremely close shots of athletes or even from their point of view thanks to helmet or body cameras are now established in the mainstream and have defined their own genre.
Emma Dahlströhm, March 2011, Photo: Ruedi Flück
Every generation of photographers and filmmakers experiences nostalgia over time as they discover the history of visual imaging. Around 2010, Elmar turned to 8mm film technology to create a historical look in the footage. Today, camcorders, as they were omnipresent at the turn of the century, are again referred to as stylish and used for their image aesthetics. The crew Buldoz from the French-speaking part of Switzerland films mainly with old camcorders that have a superzoom.
"The more the digital became widespread, the more analog became important," says Dominik Fellmann, who made the Shabacru films with Elmar Bossard and Pi- erre Bernard. "I think every filmmaker deals with analog recording at least once. For us, it came from a need to leave aside all the compli- cations with digital processing. "
From Sörenberg to Hollywood
In March 2005 the big " Moni Meloni " session with a 42 meter kicker took place in Sörenberg for the third and last time. At that time the rule was: bigger equals better. In addition to some athletes, film makers were also invited. Davide Tiraboschi from Meiringen and Dionys Frei were two of them who were invited by Elmar. Dionys was a model heli-pilot and Davide a winter sports film producer. There was an immediate spark between the two and in a very short time " Dedi- cam ", a film production company for drone footage, was born. The idea to fix film cameras to helicopters was groundbreaking at that time and probably never used before in the production of winter sports films. With their unbelievable technical enthusiasm, the two quickly became world leaders in drone filming and today film for Hollywood productions such as "Fast And Furious" or "Transformers: The Last Knight" all over the world.
The Swede Ruben Östlund is another example of a former ski film producer and cinematographer who made the leap as a director to the global stage of cinema. He was a self-taught cameraman who produced the ski films "Free Radicals 1+2" in 1997 and 1998. After that he studied film in Gothenburg, where he was accepted because of the ski films. Today he has already won two Golden Palms in Cannes with " The Square " and " Triangle of Sadness ".
Samuel Duss filmed by Dominik Fellmann, Tampere Finland, 2009 Photo: Ruedi Flück
Ski films today
The production of films in winter sports has not really changed since then, only that it has become much more difficult to get started because the structures are already saturated. What we consume today are on the one hand overpaid, highly professional marketing videos or on the other hand scenes from the lives of influencers. They only use their cell phones and thus move within a comprehensible aesthetic of the viewers. Anyone can make it, has access to the technical means as soon as they have a smartphone.
Elaborate independent and professional film productions, as they were made at the beginning of the 21st century, have been almost completely pushed aside. Even Level 1, one of the few productions that was still independent, stopped after many years. Today they produce mostly commercials. MSP and TGR are in a complicated dependency on their sponsors and investors, reproducing the same storyline over and over again. The lack of innovation of the big producers on the one hand and the cell phone aesthetics of the influencers on the other hand has created a need for new inspiration from the scene. Today, so many winter sports films are shown at film festivals that it is difficult to get an overview. Often they are semi-professionally produced, like Elmar Bossard's films were back then. There are talented visual artists hiding behind the productions, but most of them cannot make a living out of it.
“The more the digital became widespread, the more analog gained in importance.”
@socialmediaskier420
Today, pictures and videos often serve to prove to one's acquaintances and oneself that one has experienced something at all.
The aesthetics of professional productions are diametrically opposed to simple recordings with a GoPro or cell phone. A cell phone or GoPro is like a snapshot with a compact camera, without the filmmaker thinking about the technical details. Thus, the content and context take on an above-average importance that determines whether something only consumes space on a digital data carrier or also has relevance. What happens to hours of body camera footage of ordinary tourists skiing down a conventional slope will probably never be known. But I doubt that anyone will ever look at the content. Today, pictures and videos often serve more to make oneself known and to prove to oneself that one has experienced something in particular.
The constant availability of top camera technology also has the effect that winter sports article manufacturers increasingly demand that athletes produce their own content, i.e. pictures and videos, which they make available to the brand for communication purposes. The self-made professional athlete turns the camera on himself and produces and distributes everything himself. Or they ask their colleagues: "Hey, can you film me doing this trick with my cell phone? "
Samuel Ortlieb, GoPro Shot of Remco Kayser, Braunwald 2021