Brandon Mutari : 3D Goes Cold

3D Goes Cold

May 23, 2011 0

Here is a first for the site, and also how I know I’ve made it. I have finally talked someone into writing a guest post for me. The the honor of first appropriately goes to Mr. Nicholas Jaouen, owner of thejaouen.com, the 3D GoPro rig, fat skis, big bikes, and numerous other assets that would make most nerds feel pretty inadequate. Mr. Jaouen, you have the floor:

With the wild success of the last 3D film, MTB 3D, by Brandon, Ben and I (Jaouen), it was decided that we needed to test out our camera on other sports as well. So, about a week ago, I took it upon myself to film some skiing in 3D. I arrived at Arapahoe Basin in time to watch the first chair go up, on both Saturday and Sunday. The goal of the trip was to film a wide variety of shots. That meant that I would need some moguls, park and “big mountain” riding. To get the big mountain shots, I climbed up to the top of the mountain and dropped a line named “Second Notch”. On the first day, I tried to drop it with some thinner skis (Line Chronics). The snow was crusty and immediately after making it through the tight upper section, my skis slid out from under me. At the end of the day, I drove home kicking myself for not having skied the line cleanly. The following morning, the line was even harder. Sun bake had turned the whole bowl into a sheet of boiler plate ice. My second attempt was executed on some wider skis, but still had the same outcome. After the narrow, steep upper section, there was no way to dump speed before the rock hard sluff field that followed. Regardless of my poor skiing, the 3D footage looks pretty good.

I feel like 3D much better captures the sketchiness of some lines; especially tight rocky lines. Speed seems easier to capture as well. I have filmed a lot of straight lines, but until now, only in 2D. In 3D, the lines seem to take on more life. Park is park. It seems that park footage looks awesome in any number of dimensions. Now that we know more about what we can do, and what looks cool in 3D on snow, you can look forward to more ski footage next season. Until then, watch out for more 3D footage of biking, swimming, camping, and whatever else we decide to shoot.