GO BEHIND THE SCENES ON THE INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA FEATURE AT http://freeskitv.salomon.com/en/episodes/eclipse WINNER 'Best Snow Sports Film' - 2015 Banff Mountain Film Festival WINNER 'Best Visual Film' - 2015 Kendal Mountain Film Festival It was a ridiculous idea from the start. Travel to the edge of the earth to see one of the planet’s rarest events- a total solar eclipse in the Arctic. Faced with the likely reality of bad weather obscuring the sun and having to battle frigid, arctic temperatures and winds, the odds did not favor success. Despite this the Salomon Freeski TV team and set out on an expedition to realize photographer, Reuben Krabbe’s grand vision to capture a single unique image- one of skiing during a solar eclipse. Persistence, preparation and a positive attitude was a guarantee of nothing as March 20th, 2015, dawned. The fate of the expedition’s goal would rest entirely in the hands of the weather gods.
Eclipse premiered at the start of November at the Banff Mountain Film Festival and claimed the Best Snow Film Award which was a huge honour. 3 days later it went live on the Salomon Freeski TV Youtube channel where to date it has over half a million views and counting. Along the way the film picked up a Vimeo Staff Pick as well as a stream of main stream media buzz. National Geographic adventure blog featured an article with Brody Leven while Outside Online featured the film and article by Devon O'Neil.
Brody, Reuben, myself and Mike accepting an award at Banff
Eclipse has since picked up 3 more awards including Best Visual at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival, Best Adventure Film at the New York Wild Film Festival and Best Mountain Culture Film at the Whistler Film Festival. Photographer Reuben Krabbe also claimed the prestigious Photo of the Year award at the Powder Awards for his image.
The response has been overwhelmingly positive and the film has appealed to skiers, photographers, outdoor people and non-outdoor audiences alike.
To compliment the film Salomon, along with Origin Design and Switchback Entertainment, created an interactive multimedia website with behind the scenes videos, maps, photo galleries and even a Google Street View tour of Pyramiden. I worked with the Origin team to help layout the narrative and bring the bonus footage and stories to life. You can explore the multimedia experience at www.freeskitv.salomon.com