{"id":2449480,"date":"2019-10-03T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=313758"},"modified":"2019-10-03T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T22:00:00","slug":"matchstick-productions-return-to-sender-on-the-big-screen-at-the-meeting-in-aspen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/matchstick-productions-return-to-sender-on-the-big-screen-at-the-meeting-in-aspen\/","title":{"rendered":"Matchstick Productions\u2019 \u2018Return to Send\u2019er\u2019 on the big screen at The Meeting in Aspen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Matchstick Productions’ “Return to Send’er” will play Friday night at The Meeting Filmfest in Aspen, followed by a months-long North American tour.<\/strong>
Matchstick Productions<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The long-established formula for making commercial ski movies is to shoot segments with a ton of elite pro skiers, get funding from their sponsors, put creative people behind the camera who can blend high-flying ski segments with laughs and a head-bobbing soundtrack, then take it on the road in the fall to get skiers hyped for the coming season.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been the way of the ski porn world since Warren Miller\u2019s first movies in the 1950s. It\u2019s been Matchstick Production\u2019s formula, too, more or less, over 26 years of ski movies.<\/p>\n

But last winter, the Matchstick team wanted to try something a little different, selecting just four skiers from their roster \u2014 each at a distinct phase in their career \u2014 and focusing filming on creating extended personal segments for each.<\/p>\n

The result is \u201cReturn to Send\u2019er,\u201d<\/a> which screens Friday night at the Wheeler Opera House as the centerpiece of The Meeting, the Aspen Skiing Co.\u2019s annual industry conference and film festival.<\/p>\n

Shot around British Columbia, Jackson Hole, Squaw Valley and Sun Valley, the film bills Mark Abma as \u201cthe legend,\u201d Sam Kuch as \u201cthe phenom,\u201d Karl Fostvedt as \u201cthe innovator\u201d and Logan Pehota as \u201cthe legacy,\u201d following them on a winter\u2019s worth of cliff drops, crash reels and backcountry uphills.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s just simplify it,\u2019 go to these four different personalities and tell them, \u2018We\u2019re going to give you 10 minutes of screen time, you can do whatever you want,\u2019\u201d Matchstick executive producer Murray Wais said in a phone interview this week.<\/p>\n

Matchstick let the athletes each lead the charge and decide where they wanted to film and how they wanted to hit specific areas. They sought to fulfill these four\u2019s vision for their ultimate 10-minute segment.<\/p>\n

At winter\u2019s end, they brought all four together for a heli-skiing trip to Revelstoke, where the film climaxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s heavy on the shred and probably the most progressive movie we\u2019ve ever made, in regards to the level of skiing,\u201d Wais said.<\/p>\n

While \u201cReturn to Send\u2019er\u201d showcases the familiar gravity-defying feats of the veteran Abma, who will turn 40 this winter, and the Pehota family tradition (Logan is the son of mountaineer and Warren Miller star Eric Pehota), this four-man showcase also serves up the future of the sport.<\/p>\n

Matchstick believes the film will be a star turn for Kuch, a 21-year-old Canadian who has never had this kind of feature platform to perform on. For \u201cSend\u2019er,\u201d he went to his home ski area, Whitewater, near Nelson, British Columbia, and put on a cliff-hucking show that makes Kuch\u2019s case as a next big thing in pro skiing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe stunned minds,\u201d Wais said.<\/p>\n

Fostvedt used his long solo segment to display his fourth-dimension downhill style, both in B.C. and in the King and Queens of Corbet\u2019s competition at Jackson Hole.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just has a different approach to looking at mountains and coming down mountains,\u201d Wais said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t make a traditional turn \u2014 he spins down the mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Planning its 2019-20 winter, Matchstick is expanding its cast again and planning to shoot with at least 10 athletes. And while the \u201cSend\u2019er\u201d foursome stuck mostly to the backcountry, the next project, Wais said, would return to some resort and park segments.<\/p>\n

From Aspen, Matchstick\u2019s tour will criss-cross North America through the end of the year, with some side-trips to the U.K. and Poland.<\/p>\n

While ski movie tours are a tradition nearly as old as North American skiing, they\u2019re evolving rapidly with the advent of digital media (the subject of much of The Meeting\u2019s industry conference). The annual ski movie, once the end-all and be-all for skiers and snowsports movie studios, are part of an ever-widening constellation of video outlets. Pro skiers today, of course, cultivate followings on social media while production companies like Matchstick are sharing segments during filming and crafting shorter bits along with the annual features.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are loving it and embracing it,\u201d Wais said of the changes. \u201cIt gives us another way to interact directly with our fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Level 1, the youthful and irreverent production company that\u2019s been making features since 1999, this winter marks the end of the road for full-length films. Level 1 is billing \u201cRomance,\u201d with 28 credited skiers on-screen, as \u201cthe final chapter.\u201d It\u2019s the 20th and final of its annual film releases, which have documented an era of hyper-speed progression in skiing in street, park and backcountry. It screens Friday evening before \u201cReturn to Send\u2019er.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with this weekend\u2019s screenings at The Meeting, several more ski movie tours are making their way through Aspen this fall.<\/p>\n

Teton Gravity Research will bring its latest \u201cWinterland\u201d to the Wheeler on Oct. 18, and \u201cRoadless\u201d on Nov. 9. The Warren Miller tour comes to the Wheeler on Dec. 5.<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matchstick Productions’ “Return to Send’er” will play Friday night at The Meeting Filmfest in Aspen, followed by a months-long North American tour.Matchstick Productions The long-established formula for making commercial ski movies is to shoot segments with a ton of elite pro skiers, get funding from their sponsors, put creative people behind the camera who can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2449480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-27 18:40:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2449480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2449480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2449480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2449480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}