Up close and personal with Vlad. Photo: @jerometanon

A lot has changed since 1998 for snowboard video productions. Social media, Youtube and Vimeo have replaced big movie productions to become the main marketing avenues for companies and subsequently, Instagram is now many people’s go-to for snowboarding content. Whilst Instagram provides a quick fix, it’s often unsatisfying, over diluted and the overall quality will never compare to a full-length video part. Filming snowboarding is a tough job and whilst filming snowboarding for a living might seem appealing there are only a handful of filmers that gain international respect. After almost two decades working as a filmer, Vlad has some of the best insights, a lot of experience and some incredible stories, here is his industry interview.

Interview by Tom Kingsnorth

Firstly what came into your life first, snowboarding or filming?
Snowboarding, for sure. Yeah, I was probably between 12 and 13 when I got into snowboarding. Yeah, it was around 1990/ 91, and it was not that easy to get snowboards at the time; they were quite rare and not so many shops were selling them. It was also not really accepted that much in the ski resorts and my parents were not super down for me to go snowboarding either. Then I convinced my parents to rent me a snowboard for the season, so I had that one, then, out of the blue, Look Snowboards went bankrupt and somebody my dad knew got paid in snowboards, so we visited the guy and picked one up for a pretty cheap price. It was Steve Graham pro model and then it went on from there.

Laughing at Sylvain Bourbousson’s bail. Photo: @jerometanon

How did you get started working with Absinthe?

I came out of photography school and was already filming three snowboarders that I was friends with; one was Romain De Marchi and Darius and a few others. I was already working for a French company at the time, and we did three movies, which gave me the chance to meet David Benedek and a lot of other European riders that were good at the time. The last movie that I did together with the French company was with Patrick Vermeulen, who afterwards became the Onboard Photo Editor. This was around 1999/2000 and the French company really wanted to get into the Internet, more than movies. He was way ahead of his time, and he wanted to and did create a multi-sport website that also had snowboarding. He was a total visionary and could see DVD’s being dead in the near future and everything going online already back then and there would be no point making movies anymore. The Summer before that I met Justin Hostynek and Brusti from Absinthe and in Oregon and they were shooting for Transcendence. We had some riders that overlapped with Travis Rice, Jonas Emery, Romain, Kalbermaten and JP and because I was friends with those riders because I had filmed for a smaller European movie. The first movie I worked on was Vivid, because Romain at the time was a rider that everybody wanted to have in their film crew and Absinthe wanted to have someone full-time filming him, so we made a deal. That year I filmed Romain, Nico, Tristan Pico, Freddie etc and that was a pretty good crew.

You have a lot of different roles as Absinthe, from cameraman, editor, to tour planner and channel manager, what is the most satisfying part of your job?

Well, it’s satisfying when everything all comes together with all the footage from all the filmmakers, it gets edited to the music and then you are at the premiere and people are feeling it and enjoying the finalised movie. Of course, it's always hard to really know what people think because they'll be people telling you it's good, even if they think it's not that good. There are a lot of fake people in this industry or in general that just want to please you. You can tell when people really like it and get it through and that’s satisfying.

When the riders get first part or even last part, do they know in advance or do you leave it as a surprise for the movie premier?

We do tell them, it's pretty rare that the riders won’t be a big part of the editing process, so they already know. Especially these days it’s so much easier with WeTransfer and things. They usually know what spot in the movie they have and also sometimes they get to pick the music themselves too.

Back in the day, movies like Vivid had soundtracks such as Radiohead, The Beastie Boys etc. and just way bigger bands than the stock music that we get a lot more of nowadays. What effect do you think that has on the movie and do you the music industry and videos will make an agreement so that we will see videos with those kinds of soundtracks again?

Well, it's not really an agreement, you either pay or you don't. Basically, if you don't have the money, then you get to use stock music, or you have to make original soundtracks with a musician. Then if you have the budget, you can hire a music supervisor that will deal with the music label and the artist and make deals for you, but you know then you are talking about between 15 and 30 grand for a movie just for the soundtrack.

We’ve had David Bowie, we’ve had Radiohead etc. and music like that, without the great music and songs that you've heard before, it's difficult to have a good feeling about a snowboard movie. It's like when you watch a Hollywood movie, some of the songs you know and some of the songs are made for the movie, and they become famous but there is a better feeling when you know the song already because it creates the connection between the audience and what's happening on the screen. if you don't have that at all, it definitely makes a huge difference. It happens often, when ill be editing footage and listening to a famous song and you have this feeling like wow, this song works so well with this part, it’s so sick, and you just know you will never be able to get the rights to it.

Vlad capturing Garett Warnick. Photo: @jerometanon

Why do you think that traditional Snowboard videos and that format is so important these days when people can just go on Vimeo or YouTube or a company website? Why are videos like Absinthe important in 2021?

I mean, diversity has always been pretty important to me. That's what we've been trying to do, making brand movies. I think brand movies are cool too, but the diversity and then trying to get new riders into our program and get them on the front row seat of snowboarding has always been one of our main goals. I think that this is going to get lost in the mix now, because now brands are only pushing people that are bankable. It's harder for young riders to make it now. For example, there are riders like Tom Tramnitz from Mayrhofen; he's humble, he is a machine when riding and has so much talent, he works hard and is like fit as fuck, like a true athlete, can take big beatings and would be the perfect pro rider because everything is there. But no one is going to be there for him to push him on the front row of snowboarding to be a big name. It's really hard right now for riders like that, so maybe we can help him a bit to get there. But now with COVID, it's going to be really hard for riders like him, which were growing in popularity because we have lost basically two years now. Now brands are only investing money on already bankable riders with 50k Instagram followers or that already have an established name. When we took a young rider into our roster, it was kind of an investment; we were going to invest our time to try and get this kid at the level that he should be in his professional snowboarding.

Now when riders are getting into the 30s and he's more aware of their career, that's usually when brands kick them out and that's always a shame because when they to that age they have the experience and a smart attitude towards their career, they make better decisions and don't get injured so much.

So, the problem with not having any more videos is that nobody's investing in those kids and so they only really have the option to either ride contests or street rails now to get paid. They can maybe do a brand movie, but those are also super hard to get in too. Now it feels like it's brands competing with each other, and you don't see any young backcountry pros, there are a lot of park riders and that's it. There aren't any riders coming through that you can say are the next Travis or Wolle Nyvelt. Where are those type of riders going to come from? I'm not disrespecting anyone there; I like jibbing too, but it's easier and cheaper to go to Helsinki and film a street part than it is to get into the backcountry.

Beers with the boys. Photo: @jerometanon

A lot of people say Instagram is killing big video productions but then on the same hand, it gives riders that chance to break through on a free platform, what are your thoughts on it?

You love it and you hate it, you know, it's been hard for our company because it's so immediate, you know nowadays riders go to somewhere like Saas-Fee right now and film with their phone and then they sit in the gondola and then the next thing you know they did a part during the afternoon and it's on Instagram. I know brands actually love that it's so immediate, but also the problem is that there's so much shit and also so much bad stuff on there. It's really hard to find the quality things on there as it's just overpopulated with really average riding footage.

We aren't too bad with Instagram and Facebook and all that and it's been a good tool for Absinthe, we see the ups and downsides of it that we all do. I think people are definitely on their phone way too much these days, including me and that's maybe the problem too and we all need to take breaks from it. When people are out filming every day to put it on Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok etc., there is no surprise anymore when a movie comes out now, most of it you have already seen.

It's definitely a love and hate relationship, but I think I'm not the only one who thinks like that. It is what it is, and you have to live with the times, or you are just sitting on the bench and watching other people playing.

You have been part of some huge tours for the premiers of Absinthe, plus snowboarding was a bit wilder back in the day, what is the most memorable tour stop you went on and why?

There have been many wild moments for sure, but one that was surprising was definitely in Prague and the first time we went there was crazy. It was so packed with like 1000 or 1500 people, maybe. Then the first time when we went to Bulgaria to Sofia, and we didn’t know what to expect. The premier was in a huge Communist-era theatre that was also packed, it was so busy. The TV was there, and we were just not prepared. We had just come from a long stretch of maybe ten shows, we were in Romania the night before in Bucharest and we had to leave right after the premiere, and it was crazy crossing the border. When we arrived in Bulgaria, we were hungover with some people that had puked already and were really tired, but we showed up and there was a really long list of things we had to do with the TV interviews, a real Hollywood experience. We were treated like we were superstars, but we definitely didn’t feel like that on the inside when we arrived and we all looked like shit, so that was a heavy one.

I think another pretty, pretty crazy one was when we were in Rome, we were off to Milan the next day for the premier there, but the people in Rome just wouldn’t let us leave. They kept insisting we would have another drink, then insisted they take us to another bar on their Vespas and then to another bar we just couldn’t leave at all.

Vlad and the cover star of our next print issue, Romain De Marchi.

What rider would you say is the best you have filmed and why?

That's the question I get asked the most and really, it's impossible to answer. All the riders were from different eras, so you can't compare them to nowadays and also, some were kicker riders or backcountry riders, so there is no way to compare them. I am lucky to have filmed many talented riders.

Have you ever missed a shot of a rider or fucked up the shot?

Well, it's crazy because I shot on film for 15 years and I never missed a shot, not a single one and since I moved to digital in 2013, I would say I maybe missed between five and ten shots in total. There's definitely one a year that I'll miss and not be so happy about it. Most of the time, it's for technical reasons and not even your fault, it would be that the fucking camera freezes and whatever.

Corona has had a hugely negative impact on all of us but obviously snowboarding too. How has it affected Absinthe?

Well, Absinthe's goal is to get crews together, be it Americans or Russians or Scandinavians or whatever, people from different countries getting together and we film them. This is what we've been doing for years, since the beginning, we always put say, French people, German people, Swiss people wherever they were coming from and try to fit the crew together and get them travelling together and that's what our movie interesting because these are people from different backgrounds. So now knowing that you cannot do that kind of travelling anymore, it's quite difficult for us to imagine like another way of doing it. Yes, we can always go to Austria with some Swiss riders or French riders, but I cannot then have my crew from the US coming over anymore or I could, but it will cost way more money because of the tests and it's just not easy anymore.

There is definitely a bunch of people that are not stoked on the vaccine mandate in general and that's including the snowboard community. I'm not gonna say if we should be pro or anti-vaxxers as I think it should be their choice, but the fact is if you don't have the vaccine, it's way harder for you to come over and if they don't have it, also other riders don't feel that good about hanging out with them. That makes it super hard for the crew synergy; it's already a little harder when you have people coming from different backgrounds, if we only have the Swiss crew or the Austrian crew, that's fine and you know they will work together. But now you get the Americans that are super anti-Vax, and this creates tensions that you don't really want to have at this moment.

So, we have been releasing the MicroDose episodes and I really think there is a lot of potential for those episodes and on the other side of that we also have been developing our channel on Samsung TV and phones for two years now. We have our own channel with Absinthe TV in UK, France, Germany, Austria and Switzerland on all Samsung TVs and phones. It's been a long journey to get it going with a lot of time spent on that alongside other project like the movies. It doesn't provide enough money yet to really be sustainable, but it's definitely getting there with something like 1.5 million views per month, so that's one for the future for sure.

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