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“Avalanche”
Aerial shots bring us to the top of this mountain at the edge of the Earth. It’s so isolated that how these snowboarders got here seems like a complete mystery as we’re quickly brought into a beautiful shot of the Coors Light bottle being pulled out from within the snow as it glistens under the light. Once the avalanche begins it should always be right on their heels sending them zig zagging over this shifting river of snow.
I think it’s really important to maintain the speed and momentum of the avalanche so this scene is constantly escalating with the snow taking on a faster and faster speed until it’s such a powerful force behind them that we’re not sure how they’re going to escape. The boarders are just ahead of the racing snow but then it overpowers them, sucking them into this blind fury as the cold whips around them and we fear they’ve been lost for good in this monster wave of snow. And then the boarders suddenly shoot out of the snow, catching air over the edge of a cliff, as the avalanche hauls to a stop and they fly past it, their boards landing right at the portal door. I love the idea of them snowboarding right through the open door of the fridge so it’s a bit more of an aggressive entrance.
We’ll do a day of aerial avalanche footage where we set off dynamite and create real avalanches in the places we want to shoot and then shoot the plate of the snowboarder causing the avalanche that will then be put together in post. The close up shots of the avalanche will be done in CG (where the snow will be moving and kept more abstract in order to always look real and like it’s really happening) but the wide shots will all be of real footage. We’ll also shoot real footage of the boarder on the ground - even attaching a camera to him so we see all the extreme angles – the rush of tree branches and snow flying up –so in these close up and medium shots we’re right there in the heart of the action. Certain moments we’ll need to use CG snow but what will be important is feeling the real cold snow effects in as many of the scenes as possible.
The end scene at the Jason Aldean concert needs to be shot with the same elegance as our adventure leading up to it. This means how we frame his reaction and the perspective shift as he goes to reach for the beer is going to be very important in order to really feel the impact of the snow whooshing around him. We’ll want to maintain that momentum we’ve built up through the action sequences until the very end so the excitement takes us right up into that refreshing moment of seeing the Coors Light in the hands of those who enjoy it.