Behind The Miniature Mountains of Whistler Blackcomb – An Interview With Mike Douglas

Several days ago, Whistler Blackcomb released the above film, entitled Whistler Blackcomb XXS. It spread like wildfire in the ski and snowboard community, and prompted a lot of questions…mainly “How the heck did they do that?” Mountain Life contributor Mike Berard caught up with Switchback Entertainment owner, producer, filmmaker and pro skier Mike Douglas to find out.

Berard: Mike, your mini-film (pun intended) is making a big impact (double pun!). Where did you get the idea for this style of filming?

Douglas: Now that we’re in the video production biz, one of the things that we check on regularly is Vimeo. Vimeo has become the main source for cool ideas and people showing off short film techniques. Steve Horton, who was working with me up until the end of the summer, came in one day and said “oh man, I saw something really cool on Vimeo, and you’ve got to check it out”. It was a tilt shift video like the one we did here, called “The Sand Pit”, done in New York City. I watched it and went “oh man, that’s so cool. It looks mini. How did they do that?”

That was in June, and over the course of the summer I started talking to Whistler Blackcomb about basically getting rid of their podcasts, as it existed, because it kind of sucked. We thought that they should look into doing more interesting things, more creative things with online content instead of lame TV shows that nobody watches or are that interested in, and they agreed. That’s where this little video series was born. First the Nuulife video and then Blake Jorgenson’s Early Season video. We’re the third installment. I think there are seven coming out this winter.

When we were talking about ideas I told them about tilt shift and how great it would be in the mountains they said to go for it and we put together a little script.

Berard: How many days in total did you shoot?

Douglas: We began shooting just after opening day, and finished before Christmas. I think we shot for six days, and on the two best we had two cameras filming all day long. Jeff Thomas was out there, on Whistler, while I was over on Blackcomb trying to capture the moments and find the gems.

Berard: That’s quite a bit of work for such a short video.

Douglas: I’ll be honest with you; the filming was the easier part of this project. The post-production on this kind of filming is insane. I would say that only about 10 percent of our footage actually made the cut because sometimes you think the effect will work and it doesn’t translate so you pitch that shot out. Each shot, with all of the effects and treatment that had to go onto it, took at least 30 minutes to put together. It was 50-plus hours of computer render time all together. Our computers were doing all-nighters repeatedly, trying to process all of the footage.

Berard: Can you explain to the readers what tilt shift is?

Douglas: We actually didn’t use a tilt shift lens. When I saw the idea I started doing some research into different plug-ins and post-production processes that you can apply. I realized that you could do the tilt shift effect with the right kind of postproduction. We found that it would be better to do it in post than to get a tilt shift lens because if you do it in camera, you are limited to what is in focus at the moment of filming, whereas, if you do it in post production you can alter focus and make these decisions in editing.

Berard: That explains the extensive post-production.

Douglas: Exactly, and not only that, but the tilt shift is just one of the effects. There is color work to oversaturate everything and give it that plastic appearance. Toys are perfect colors. There isn’t atmosphere to tone it down. Everything is treated in more than one way so it was a lot of work to get it right. Things are sped up between two and 600 percent in order to give it that stop motion, fake look.

Berard: There has been a great response. Is it what you expected?

Douglas: Yeah, the response has been great. To be honest with you, I just got home. I’ve been out in the woods for the last few days and I quickly checked my phone as it launched to make sure that it’s out there and saw that it was going off. It’s really cool to see people connecting with it, understanding the concept that we were trying to get across, and passing it on. We’re pumped.

In the credits you’ll see that we included a couple of guys like Keith Loutit, an Aussie that pioneered this technique a few years ago, and Sam O’Hare, who did “The Sand Pit”. The tilt shift technique hasn’t been done often, and it hasn’t always been done well, but these two guys definitely set the standard for us. We’re not claiming that we invented this technique; we just thought that it would be cool to apply to the mountains. I suggest that anyone who is a big fan of “Whistler Blackcomb XXS” check out these guys and their videos.

Berard: Well great work man. I think that over time this will grow to be something that Whistler Blackcomb is known for and can be proud of.

Douglas: Yeah, we think it could have long-term traction once it gets out there. We’re interested to see where it goes.

Thanks to Mike Douglas for sharing his time with Mountain Life, and Allie Jenkinson for transcribing the interview.