A Thousand Words

Lovley short by Ted Chung:

A Thousand Words from Ted Chung on Vimeo.

Nice creative Canon commercial


CANON Commercial - Freeze Tag from Saman Keshavarz on Vimeo.

And check also out Vimeo's 25 favorite videos of 2009. Nice stuff!

Last weekend hike

Last weekend was almost depressing. Especially on Sunday. Such a nice weather, good snow here in Austria but no chance for me to get to the mountains for snowboarding. I mean I own a seasonticket!!! Damn! All that because I don't own a car and friends either had no time or were sick. But lucky me lives in a nice house here in Salzburg (during my job at Red Bull) were I can just go behind it and hike up the mountain till the Gaisberg Spitze. I'm really happy I did so on Sunday. Due the bad weather on Saturday I didn't hike up to the top just until the Gersberg Alm.
Fortunately I could grab a nice Nikon D300 with kitlens from my buddy Birgar for taking some shots! Awesome camera! I really liked it and it performed superb in the cold conditions. I mean it was freezing. The water I took with me on the two hour hike was frozen when I arrived up there!!! And as so often when doin photography in wintertime I didn'd feel my finger when triggering the shutter! Yeah! So actually the weekend wasn't so bad :)

Here the new Flickr set (the dark pictures are from the bad weather Saturday).
Check out some of my favorite photos form that hike:

View from our house


Gaisberg hike on Sunday







Gersberg Alm hike on Saturday

Johnnie Walker - The Man Who Walked Around The World

Pretty amazing "one-shot" commercial directed by Jamie Rafn for Johnnie Wlker whisky.
Head over to shots.net for an interview with him.


via filmdetail.com

Scratching the surface

It seems like every top pro surfer is getting his own movie these days. Nice! :)
Here the trailer for Julian Wilson's:

Life

I wanna see this:

Life - A preview of the series. from Documentally on Vimeo.

London Photos

Last week I spend some days in London with Julia. It was my first time up there and I'm a
fan now :) Yeah! London is pretty awesome. Sadly time was passing by really quick. But
we'll come back for sure...
I put some photos on my Flickr (though I have to say I'm not too happy with them).
Here are some photos which turned out ok :)

















Oh and thanks to Julia W. for hosting us! Thank you!

Lives Of The Artists



The guys from Relentless did it again. After "Powers Of Three" they put "Lives Of The Artists" online. It´s a diverse documentary about people driven by the love for what they do. You just have to watch this! The Gallows part impressed me the most. Such a passionate, honest band! Talking about cinematography there is some of the best underwater footage I've ever seen in there... Bravo Mickey Smith!

Carroll's Hangover Flip

Damn! I was thinking about how to attach the GoPro to a skatedeck and now I found this:


Yeah this is done in post but it's totally cool! :)

Beautiful cinematography

While browsing the dvxuser board I stumbled upon Macgregor's cinematography showreel. Very impressing, inspirational and beautiful work! Maybe a little bit too long...
I think lots of his stuff was shot on RED according to the website he posted on his Vimeo page: redlab.es
However... love the compositions and the use of light! The action shot at the end is freaking awesome!


WORKS from Macgregor on Vimeo.

UPDATE 02/Dec/2009
Check out his website: www.macgregor.autoecstasy.com

RED News...

Specs & Information here! Better save your money... :)
Btw item 21 on that list sounds interesting haha! Should be an interesting 2010...
This in combination with VDSLR (bigger sensor than the Scarlet) should be an awesome kit for the snow-skate-surf film maker.




Veitsch

This weekend I needed some time off.
So I went up on my local mountain the Veitsch watching the sun going down... it was beautiful!















I put some more shots on my Flickr.

Knife Show on skateboarding!

Knife Show got kind of famous for their fresh snowboarding flicks, now they enter the skateboard world too...

Heavy Metal Knife Show from Mike Benson on Vimeo.

Knife Show is going to be filming some skating in 2009 and 2010. Here's a taste of what's to come: Jeffrey Garcia, Casey Wrightsman and Brent Chastang. Shot and edited by Mike Benson and Casey Wrightsman, with help from Chris Johnston. KNIFESHOWINC.COM

Powers Of Three



"Powers Of Three" is a surf documentary by Relentless (direction and camera work by Andy Lawrence & Mickey Smith). It´s wonderful! Three very sympathic characters, a good story in a beautiful country combined with great filming and an awesome soundtrack. This works out just great! I love it! Aside from the jet ski this would have to be surfing in one of it's purest form, surfing for the sake of the experience alone. Those guys are charging!!! Total respect to the surfers and film makers! I think I´ll watch it hundred times again. I´m inspired! This is for me surfings true face, it's pure love for the nature and not the money or fame orientated lifestyle (as often associated with pro surfing nowadays). Thank you guys!

Full movie:

And don´t miss the Bonus Footage here.
Tom Lowe Website
Fergal Smith Website

For their next feature-length documentary "Lives Of The Artists" all three guys were heading over to Tahiti. Check out the trailer it has some stunning underwater shots in it!
And then I found this one. No documentary, just pure surfing in the cold:
From Shadows "...a full blast, skin of the teeth ride through the heaviest cold water slabs in North Europe." - Michey Smith

Btw I stumbled upon this movie on Sebastian Funk's blog.

Kromotion got a facelift

The bilingual french-english mograph blog Kromotion finally got relaunched.
Looks promising! Their free pdf magazine Kromag was always one of my favorites.

Wizard Smoke

A short skate flick done by SALAZAR Productions a motion picture collective based in Vancouver.
So good! No need for fancy motiongraphics in post :) Powdered paint, flour and natural light are the way to go. Love the flare coming in at 1:15min. The spot at 5:30 looks awesome too.


Wizard Smoke from Salazar on Vimeo.

Tech Info: "This was filmed with three Panasonic HVX200s with 35mm adaptors and Nikon primes."
Skaters: Bradley Sheppard, Alien, Nate Lacoste, Chris Connolly, Nate Roline, Stacy Gabriel, Desmond Hoostie, Mike Klinkhamer and Rob Rickaby.
Directed By Liam Mitchell
Shot By Nathan Drillot and Liam Mitchell

French Fred Reel 2008

Lovely work.


Fred Mortagne Website
Also not new, but if you have not seen his "Mirrored" or "Skateboard Static" yet check it out now!

Q&A with Machado

I haven´t seen the movie yet though... :)

The Drifter Q&A from HIFF on Vimeo.

Two movies to check out...

Yesterday I was watching "Just Add Water" a documentary style surfmovie about Clay Marzo. It´s a movie by Quiksilver and won best biography at the X-Dance 09. I have to say I really liked it and it´s nicely done. After watching it you feel like you know Clay now a little bit, so I think they did a good job. :) Some amazing footage is in there. Clay is an extremely interesting character and on his surfboard almost like a cat. He pulls off some maneuvers I´ve never seen before. The only thing I didn´t really feel about the movie was that it seemed footage was coming from everywhere. But that´s normal for a biography I guess. And sometimes they chose some weird backgrounds for there interviews... But that´s it, everything else was cool and it made me wanna go surf even more! This was also the first time I saw some tilt/shift footage in a surfmovie.




The other movie I was checking out was "Stretching The Canvas" by Chase Burns. It´s all done by himself. Filming, directing and editing. I enjoyed this movie as well. The filming was cool and the editing right on! He used at least three songs I was already planning to use for a movie haha... What I like about this movie is that he also shows surfing on standard beachbreaks and not that perfect Indo barrel over and over again. Surfing for him is a spiritual thing and his movie communicates that in its own way... What I was missing was just a kind of voice I got familiar by watching his trailer a few times. I like to hear people speaking about what they think.
Chase is a cool guy and sent my one of his earlier flicks for free (I still have to check it out). Thanks man! Some day I´m going down under and gonna buy you a beer! Read an interview with Chase here!



Alright, now I look forward seeing The Drifter, the JOB movie and "Castles in the sky" (the follow-up movie of Sipping Jetstreams by Tylor Steele).

Random photos

Some shots I took lately. More on my flickr.







Perseverance, Perseverance, Perseverance!

Portfolio Series with DJ Struntz on Surfing Magazine.
Nice selection and it´s always cool to hear a photographers thoughts... love his approach!
Just one more confirmation that you can achieve anything with passion and hard work.

Photo by DJ Struntz.

Check out his website as well.

Random find...

This looks fun!

"101 cameras were used to capture pure fun. Music: We are happy plants - Apollo"

Seasonpass!

I bought my seasonpass today. That´s gonna be an awesome Winter! I really look forward to those gnarly powderdays!!! And I´ll give my best to get some nice action & nature footage and photographs as well! Overall I can´t wait to hang out in the nature with my friends like back in the good old times :)
Let´s shred!!!



Hit me up if you are motivated to shred, shoot or just hand out in the beautiful Salzburger Land :)
Or if you wanna join on the next surftrip in spring hehe...

Morocco on film

Some more Morocco pics on my Flickr.
All from February.
All shot with an old Voightländer VSL1 from my Dad.
All on noname film.
(These are digital pictures of prints.)



I wanna surf Boilers again! :)
Good times...

“Who IS J.O.B?” Trailer - AWESOME!!!

I was waiting for this and now I´m almost speechless!
This was so good. Can´t wait for the movie!!!
Watch the trailer of Jamie O’Brien's “Who IS J.O.B?” movie here!
Turn the speakers loud, the sounds fits perfect!!!

Screenshots from the trailer:



Burning the ASP "Rulebook"





Lot's of cool surfflicks coming out these days but just a few stand out. With that said I also can´t wait for "The Drifter" and I just ordered a copy of Chase Burns "Stretching the Canvas". I love what´s going on here... and I also see my future heading in this direction. More soon :)

French Fred

Nice little clip from one of the best skateboard filmer and photographer ever: Fred Mortagne

Oldschool shots

I updated my Flickr with some shots I did in Costa Rica with a disposable watercamera. Some turned out pretty nice :) Good times!









Find more on my Flickr!