Production Research "The Art of Flight"

The film I am doing my production research on is on debatably the best snowboard film ever made from a production standpoint. The film is called "The Art of Flight." The film was made by Brain Farm Digital Cinema in association with Red Bull Media House. Brain Farm is an Elite Turn-Key production house out of Jackson, Wyoming that specializes in aerial cinematography and action sport productions (http://brainfarmcinema.com/).

Brain Farm's President and CEO is good buddies with Travis Rice, who is probably the best back country snowboarder in the world. They teamed up to make this film. They had to pick a crew of professional snowboarders that would be patient with their tedious production tasks and who would get along with Travis Rice. My Focus on this research is basically what this crew had to go through to get all their equipment up on the mountain to film all these incredible shots that they got for this film. According to the behind the scenes it was really tough being a professional snowboarder who just wants to ride ride ride, to wait wait wait for the crew to get cameras set up and all the gear in place. But a few of the riders said that working with this crew is pretty much top of the line in the snowboarding world.

First I want to talk about equipment. The Art of Flight has bonus features where there is a whole section on the behind the scenes of this movie, and that is where I am getting most of my information from. As far as cameras go, almost 100% of the time they were filming with a Cineflex, which is an extremely expensive camera that most people use to stick underneath helicopters to get extraordinary aerial footage. They also have a Red One camera, two Varicams, and a phantom flex. Those are the big guns that they have, thats not to mention all the DSLR's that some of the crew usually had along to take photos and behind the scene videos. Other equipment they have is a great big jib arm that was probably at least 12 ft long. They would truck that up the mountain via snowmobile usually to get great shots. also they have a Ford F-250 Diesel truck in which they were able to trade the tire for snowtrack systems where they could drive the truck through the halfpipe and through other hardpacked snow. They also have one of those big 4-wheeler side-by-sides which they were also able to put snowtracks on. That's not even the cool part. They were able to mount the cineflex camera on an articulating arm on top of the truck and the side-by-side to get these super steady shots. Oh yeah and the truck is equipped with a 17" LCD monitor that is built in the dash of the truck, where the passenger can remotely run and operate the Cineflex camera all from the inside of the truck http://www.brainfarmcinema.com/cinema_truck.aspx).
Oh yeah, and you cant watch more than a minute of the film without seeing a shot that was filmed from a helicopter. There was a sequence filmed in Alaska where they had a bush plane and a helicopter to ferry the riders up the mountain, and a helicopter just to film out of. Talk about a budget. They also had access to a mini heli in which they mounted the phantom camera to.

Now that they have all of this fancy equipment, Brain Farm has to find a way to utilize all of this fancy stuff. According to the behind the scenes they would sometimes have 15 cameras with like 7 crew members to operate them. Its one thing to use this equipment in the studio or at warm temperatures for that matter, but to be outside in the snow halfway up a mountain takes some strong guys who have to know what they are doing. Its one thing just to keep yourself warm and energized out in the snow like that, but to also have to haul equipment and film these professional snowboarders is a completely different story. Some of the snowboarders joked that after they got one shot they were done for the season. They said that there was sooo much work into getting one shot that they didnt want to put in the work to get another one. Some of the crew said it was basically a logistical nightmare getting all this gear  up and down the mountain. But they all said in the end, the product was totally worth the work.

This research doesn't focus on just one specific part of production like on a feature length film, this is an overall look at a small crews production tasks. Curt Morgan, Owner and CEO of Brain Farm was the Director, the Editor, cameraman and DP for a lot of the shots that they got. The film has the look and feel of a major Hollywood production, actually it looks better than that. The shots that this crew was able to get was absolutely spectacular. Brain Farm actually made a snowboard film in 2008 titled "That's it That's All" that ESPN claimed as the most visually stunning action sports film ever  ( http://artofflightmovie .com/). Its funny because Curt Morgan and Travis Rice say in the behind the scenes that "That's it That's All" was more like an on-the-job training for "The Art of Flight."