By David F. Rooney
Two local high school students are busy exploring the intersection of skiing, music and high-definition video and discovering that they’re actually getting pretty good at it.
Good enough, in fact to win a contest with a video of local under-13 skier Tashi Townley.
“So Kaleb and I won the contest we were telling you about,” Kaegi said in an e-mail to The Current on Wednesday. “The skier we entered, Tashi Townley, is now fully sponsored by K2 at 13 years old. Here’s the link to it: http://www.newschoolers.com/web/content/readnews/id/3204/.”
That’s great news for the two teens who have a little film production company, Inflick.
But, becoming really good at something. Man, that’s time consuming.
“It takes us four or five months of filming and about a month of editing to get it right,” Kaegi said in an interview last week.
The two 11th Graders have been making videos for a couple of years now and even though their early work is pretty good by most amateur standards these guys are reaching a point where when they look at it now they’re embarrassed.
“I see all the things that went wrong and I know that we can do a much better job now,” said Weston, who loves to tweak the videos using his suite of editing programs.
The boys’ videos focus on snowboarding and skiing — increasingly just skiing because, as Kaegi puts it, “you can get to more places on skis than you can on boards” — and blend in music and BC’s great mountain scenery.
“It’s all BC,” Weston said.
This year’s video is still in the works.
“By May or June we’ll have year’s movie done,” Kaegi said. “It’s entirely being shot at RMR, the backcountry, Silver Star, Red Mountain and maybe Whistler. When we’re done we’d like to show it at the Village Idiot.”
Wherever they show it’s bound to impress viewers.
The final question for these young men is this: Will they pursue it professionally after they graduate?
Well, like a lot of young people they dream about doing some travelling and skiing elsewhere in the world and may be even doing some filming, too. They seemed a little noncommittal as they pondered their answer but they’re thinking about it: “It would definitely take a lot to make it as a professional.”
The pair will be filming at the Rail Jam on March 13. In the meantime, you can form your own opinions about their work by visiting their Vimeo channel. There, you’ll find a number of videos, trailers and other bits and pieces they’re working on.
