Ok ok ok, so, yeah, this isn't five clips...it's six. But, what if we call that last clip a bonus? So, five clips and a bonus. Yeah, that works, right? Besides, we got Ted Borland this week. Pro snowboarder turned pro filmer Ted Borland. That Ted Borland. How could we stifle him? We couldn't. The things this man has seen...you know what, just check it out for yourself. And if you didn't know by now, this is Shot List, a bi-weekly architectural dig through the great landscape of snowboarding. And our guest this week? Well, c'mon.
Ted Borland
Originally From: Northfield, MA
Currently Resides: Salt Lake City, UT
Nirvana Ortanez—Wallie:
I’ll start with Nirvana’s clip, for obvious reasons. We’re talking about her wallie to frontside two-seventy to switch front board down this bank in Japan. She’s wallie-ing the side of this railing and does a front two-seventy off of that into a bank. First of all, that trip was sort of like our first honeymoon. We had just gotten married the month before and although I was filming the Snowboarder video Everybody Everybody and she was filming a different video, we were like, let’s just plan a trip to Japan this winter and that would be kind of a honeymoon, and kind of a film trip for both of us. So, I was filming her for her part and it was her and Melissa Riitano for Veer and then Jill Perkins, Gus Warbington, and Gab Jacques for Everybody Everybody. And yeah, we were in this zone on the main island called Nakano, which is a really cool area. We stayed at this super sick hotel that was near all these onsens. And this is kind of just a legendary spot there and Nirv just kind of didn’t have a plan going to that spot and she was like, what about a wallie into the side of this thing and then go down the bank? Everyone was like, oh, that’d be sick. And she just immediately started doing frontside two-seventy wallies. She’s always loved wallie tricks like that and just, weird stuff, but she just came up with this hammer of a trick which is easily my favorite thing I’ve ever seen her do and my favorite thing I’ve ever filmed of her. It’s easily one of my favorites; it's just one of my favorite clips when I think of the favorite clips I filmed.
Desiree Melancon—5050 Back 180:
This next clip is of my good friend Desiree and it is the year after Nirvana’s clip. This was for Tangle. We were in Quebec and this was March 19th, 2020. So, we are in Quebec, it’s kind of the end of the year. We kind of know that the year is starting to wind down, there’s not a whole lot of snow in a many places so we were like, alright, let’s go to Quebec, we need to stack a bunch of clips really quickly. We need to make sure we have some video parts coming. The crew was Desiree, Nirvana, Jeff Holce, Dylan Okurowski, and myself. We were in Quebec City. We had all been there—I think except Dylan—so we all knew spots that we wanted to go to. So, we were scrambling around and, obviously, this being March 19th this was right when COVID was starting. A few days before we were starting to get a little nervous. We didn’t know what was happening in the world. We’re in Quebec, we’re like alright, there’s still plenty of snow. We’ll keep an eye on things but we were like, we’re gonna get these clips. Schools are shutting down so we can go to schools. We can kind of do whatever we want it seems like. We ended up at Red Ledge the day before and someone came up to us and was like, hey, and normally people in Quebec are really cool but someone came up to us and was like, hey, you guys better not get hurt. Like, do not fuck up our hospitals. Shit is getting crazy. That kind of hit us—hit me specifically really hard—but hit the rest of the crew pretty tough. We were like, oh damn, this shit is kind of real. So, we’re watching the news later that day—we were with Jérôme Tanon, a photographer who is from France, and he’s freaking out. He’s like, I don’t know if I can get back to France the whole country is shutting down. He ends up getting a flight that night and then the next day we’re like, shit, we need to make a decision here real soon. But anyway, we end up finding this ditch spot on the side of the road that none of us have ever seen before. Desiree hit up Louif and he’d never seen it before. It was this perfect natural speed hill with this natural halfpipe with a fence on the other side. It was this super sick spot. Des and Dylan hit it. Des did this really sick frontside fifty-fifty and then she did a frontside fifty-fifty back one out and it was just such a sick clip. And as we’re there we’re getting notifications on our phone that Canada is going to shut down and the United States is going to shut down and we’re like, god damnit. We had to book flights immediately after they got their tricks and we left the next day on the very last flight leaving the country to get back to the States before all the airlines shut down. It was just such a crazy time. It was very…shit…I don’t know. We were like, damn this is such a sick clip but fuck we have to leave because the world is basically ending. It was just crazy. I remember flying home the next day being so bummed the video was over, the world is freaking out, and people are dying. But, just a crazy time. Quebec City the day before the world shut down.
Justin Keniston—TV Bash:
(video not online)
This takes place at my parent's old house in Northfield Massachusetts, which is kind of in the middle of Western Mass. This was snowmageddon year, what year was that, 2015? We were just on the East Coast for…I think I was there for actually three months. We would just bounce back and forth between my parent's house or Brandon Reis’s. We went up to Chip’s house in Portland Maine for a little bit. We were just doing the whole East Coast tour with tons of snow and tons of spots. Obviously, you get burnt out a lot of times on long trips like that. This must’ve been…I think this was one of those times where we were unsure, we had too many options. So, we ended up filming in my parent's driveway and Chip always did this butter—I think it originated from Tommy Gesme but Chip always used to do it a lot. It was like a backside one-eighty tail scrape to switch backside one-eighty tail scrape. It’s like a little see-saw maneuver. We were like, oh, we should film one of these and we found—I don’t know why, well, my parents are kind of hoarders and I am too, but we found these two old TVs sitting in the garage and they were going to get thrown out. So, we were like, let’s jib these TVs. Chip was trying this butter trick, trying to scrape down both TVs. I don’t know. I think we were probably just slugging beers in our driveway, trying this trick forever. I was still snowboarding at that point—still filming video parts— but I had a camera. I ended up filming it and I’m not sure if we were cycling through filmers, like people coming in and out and maybe this was a down day where we didn’t have a filmer. But I ended up filming Chip, a really good friend of mine, still is. I’ve known him for a long time. This was at my parent's house, just a mini-shred fucking around. I’ve ended up using TVs in a lot of my videos since this and this was like an unknown precursor to my filming career which I think is cool.
Bode Merrill—720:
I’m just sticking with all my homies because honestly if I were to choose…trying to choose favorites from everyone I’ve filmed is too hard so I’m sticking with my close friends. This was the first year of filming for his video Space Cadet. I went on a couple trips with them. I have been friends with Bode for a long time. I’ve known how insane he is. But I never really—up until that point—got the chance to see it live in the backcountry. So, this is on our second trip we went to up in Wyoming. I was a rookie snowmobiler. This zone kind of requires you to figure out what you’re doing real quick. But I was getting up there and it was a little challenging but not too bad. And I was like, cool, we’re figuring it out. I was posted up across the valley with a really long lens, filming from a different mountaintop. And then Shane Charlebois was filming a follow cam with Bode off this cliff. The snowboard video fan in me is like, damn this is so sick. Seeing Shane from Absinthe doing his thing with Bode who is the best snowboarder of all time. And Bode just does this front seven off this cliff, no pat down, no nothing. I think he did it first try and just stomped. I think he went back up and either the next try or the try after that he did a back seven. I was like, wow, so this is what it’s like to see it in real life, to see my good friend Bode just destroying terrain that I could never imagine snowboarding down. This is by no means the craziest thing he’s ever done but I just remember being up there and having that feeling of like, damn, this is what it’s all about.
Dylan Okurowski—Cab 270:
So, Dylan I had filmed with a little bit at the end of Everybody Everybody at Seven Springs with him and Denver and Miles and Keegan. I remember meeting those guys at Superpark as a squad. I was filming for Snowboarder and I was just like, I’m gonna roll with these guys and I’m going to get gold. Then we went to Seven Springs and filmed for the intro to Everybody Everybody. The next year I filmed with Dylan and Denver for Tangle. And then, a few years later, I’m filming for Slush. I didn’t really have a plan, Dylan didn’t really have a plan, Jeff didn’t really have a plan and we just ended up on this rogue trip to Pittsburgh. Which was sick in many ways, the first of which was we all got COVID as soon as we got there. So, we’re just in this city with a million spots and most of us are just dying with COVID. Dylan somehow never got it and I got it but fine after the second day. We ended up scoping for a lot of these days and Dylan just went on a tear once I started feeling better and we just went to spots where we could avoid people. This was towards the end of the trip. This was a rail he found on Google Maps. We didn’t quite know what it was because it was just a Google Maps, in the middle of a field, just looks like a down rail. It was pretty far outside of town and we get there and there are just two perfect down flat down flat downs, one on each side. Dyl had wanted to do something really crazy. He was feeling good on the trip so far. He had already done the yellow kink and he was like, alright I need to do something fucked. He was like, I’m gonna cab two this kink rail. He front boarded it before I could even get my camera set up which was insane because this rail is pretty…it’s not a chill quad kink. The first kink has a bend in it and it’s a really aggressive angle. And then he just had this process of how he was going to do it. He built the jump this certain way so he could get a certain amount of pop that he wanted to give him time to control it through the whole thing. And it was a really good example of this new generation of street snowboarders who are fucked up talented and people don’t really realize it. I think nowadays in street snowboarding there are people who get away with spots and there’s kind of an oversaturation of ok to mediocre clips. But then there are people like Dylan who are absolutely fucked at snowboarding and have the knowledge of filming things. This was a prime example of, this is a new generation of talent doing something super progressive that not many other people can do. He went to war cab two-ing this thing. And towards the end he just did it perfectly to the point where he even surprised himself. I still think it’s one of the most technically difficult tricks ever done in the streets for snowboarding. It’s pretty insane. That one definitely sticks out.
*BONUS* Freddy Perry—Frontboard:
We can consider this a bonus clip. Freddy Perry in Tromso Norway which is right on the border of the Arctic Circle. It’s northern Norway. This is in the Spring of 2019, kind of a buzzer-beater trip for a couple of people for Everybody Everybody. We were like, alright we need one more street trip to really fill out these video parts. I asked Freddy if he would come up from Oslo with us and kind of be our Norwegian guide and he can get some clips. I think he knew already he was filming for Greenberg so I was helping him get some clips for that while he was helping us with everything we needed in Norway. But this is just a classic example of Freddy fucking around at a spot and ending up with really good, classic entertainment. A really long time ago we were on a trip to Quebec and he did this boardslide where he pops his jacket. He grabs the collar of his jacket and pops it open and it was hilarious to watch so for this one he was like, oh I’m gonna do a frontside boardslide jacket pop and he did that a bunch of times. And we’re just dying laughing as he’s doing it. He’s like joking but serious because he knows he’s going to use this kind of stuff for his video part. It’s just hilarious when Freddy gets in this mode. And then he stepped it up a notch by zipping up his jacket while doing a front board. And he’s just over there like, I’m doing NBD tricks. Nobody has ever done a frontboard zip-up before. I don’t know, it’s one of the reasons I love Freddy. End-of-season trips can be pretty stressful, especially when people have this pressure of finishing their video part. And you have someone like Freddy who comes up and lightens the mood and makes things super fun. I think that’s important when you’re filming. You need someone like that in the crew.