Slice ‘n’ Dice began life as a short edit filmed in a single morning in Avoriaz. Sam McMahon and I drove to the top of the mountain before the lifts had opened and shot two runs down the piste with a couple of local instructors called Dave Crozier and Lewis Sonvico.
Over the past few years there’s been a fresh growth of interest in carving, as riders move away from ever more technical spins in the park and get back to the basics of pure edge control and speed. Dave and Lewis both run their own snowboard schools, so they know a thing or two about how to turn a board.
“Over the past few years there’s been a fresh growth of interest in carving”
Slice ‘n’ Dice Volume 1 saw them laying down old school ‘euro carves’ and doubling up for a few piste-based tricks, like jumping over each other. While Sam manned his FS700 from a tripod to capture the slow motion footage, my job was to ride alongside the boys with an SLR mounted to a gimbal, which would film super steady tracking shots. Though I wasn’t doing any tricks myself, I needed to draw on all my riding experience just to keep up and follow the action without damaging the camera!
The resulting edit was impressive to watch without being totally out of reach for the average snowboarder – in fact, it seemed to tap into the whole #relatable craze seen on social media. With over 50,000 organic Youtube views in the bank, Swiss snowboard manufacturer Nidecker came on board to sponsor sequels in Austria and Japan, and by April 2019 there had been no fewer than five episodes in the Slice ‘n’ Dice series. My own role had now expanded to cover still images, follow cam and drone footage.
Volume 6 was intended as a swansong. We had covered almost every imaginable carving angle, from pre-season hardpack to riding under floodlights, so we returned to the French Alps – and the little-known resort of Samoëns – to sign off with a surf-inspired edit featuring slushy spring conditions. The pistes here were steep and empty, which made for some dramatic shots of the boys darting amongst the trees.
Check out the final edit below.
