The sixth season of Salomon Freeski TV is starting up this fall (the teaser for the season, above, just dropped), with weekly online episodes shot around the world featuring Salomon athletes and other mountain characters. This year, the series, which is created by Mike Douglas and his crew at Switchback Entertainment, promises to bring a fresh take on ski filmmaking for the web. We spoke with Whistler, BC-based Blair Richmond, a visual effects expert who joined Switchback last fall, about what we can expect in the new season.
What exactly do you do at Switchback?
I'm a bit of a jack of all trades with a bit more focus on the post-production side of our work. I'm a filmer as well as an editor but I also bring my experience in visual effects and motion graphics to the table. This season, I edited and co-directed an episode of Salomon Freeski TV we produced in Austria. Primarily, though, I've been working on lots of subtle visual effects as well as graphics and titles for all of our projects.
Where did you work before?
Before Switchback, I was working in Vancouver, BC, at a boutique VFX studio called Faction Creative. Our work came from all over the world, including Hollywood. I worked mostly as a digital compositor where I had to do anything from remove wires or rigs from shots to composite a new background into a scene that was shot against a green-screen to make worms crawl out of fake holes in a person's hand. For the Clint Eastwood-directed rugby film "Invictus," I had to add digital makeup such as cuts, bruises and blood to Matt Damon and his teammates in the film.
So I take it you're a skier?
Definitely a skier. I grew up in Whistler and worked with Jeff Thomas at Theory-3 Media before moving to Vancouver to focus on VFX.
What can we look forward to in the new season of Salomon Freeski TV?
I think this season will be really interesting. We're moving away from the TV series feel of episodes and more toward a series of short films. We have some really interesting stories and trips as well as some very unique visuals.
What kind of visuals?
We've definitely approached this season with an attitude of "How can we take this further?" especially with visual effects. We've done a lot of subtle effects that adds to the overall quality of our films. Ninety percent of VFX are things the viewer will never notice, that is, as long as the VFX artists are doing their jobs correctly. That said, there are one or two episodes where VFX had a large role and I think those will be obvious.
