An extraordinary spectacle has recently quite literally lit up the slopes of the French Alps. Pro snowboarder William Hughes masterfully carved the pistes of Tignes adorned in a LED-charged snowsuit for a short film by the acclaimed fashion photographer and filmmaker, Jacob Sutton. Following Hughes as he slaloms through the night in a glowing suit, the unprecedented clip is so impressive it has attracted a staggering 750,000 views thus far on YouTube in just two days.
The concept for the film arose after Sutton was approached to make a film about skiing. After conducting a great deal of research into films on snow sports, Sutton observed a striking absence in thought provoking skiing and snowboarding films, an absence he was keen to remedy. Choosing to exclusively focus on snowboarding as it “felt like a much more intuitive movement than skiing”, the filmmaker made it his project to capture snowboarding in a “more textural aesthetic way that felt more emotive and expressive”. From both this ambition and Sutton’s long held interest in unusual lighting techniques came the idea of “a lone character made of light surfing through darkness”.
Shooting the film was not quite as straightforward as the graceful snowboarding of Hughes may suggest. To procure the desired footage, four nights were consecutively spent in deep snow at an altitude of 2500m and at a temperature of -25C for stretches of six to eight hours. When asked how he dealt with the weather conditions, Hughes revealed: “Luckily there was plenty of vin rouge to keep me warm, and Jacob’s enthusiasm kept everyone going through the cold nights”. Neither was Sutton’s enthusiasm to be undermined by the difficulties involved in capturing the extremely rapid movement entailed in snowboarding, the most extreme he had yet to encounter in his professional life. To film Hughes, Sutton rode alongside him in a skidoo and used a $58,000 RED Epic, a camera famed for its ability to produce amazing frame rates at very high resolutions. Of the filming process, Sutton concluded: “It was one of the most challenging shoots I have ever done but definitely one of the most enjoyable”.
The difficulties generated by both the prevailing weather conditions and the extreme speed of movement to be captured paled in comparison to the issues involved in maintaining the LED-charged suit. Sutton’s father Jake Sutton, the unlucky man charged with the suit’s welfare during the shoot, explained: “The technology behind the suit is relatively simple but it was stretched to its reliability limits by the extreme cold temperatures of -28C and the stress dynamics of the suit when worn for snowboarding”. The combination of extreme cold and stress led the wiring to become brittle which necessitated a great deal of soldering to be performed in nearby bars and hotels throughout the shoot. Laughing, Sutton’s father recalled: “’Incredulity’ is the term which springs to mind when you request facilities to repair the ‘glowing’ man standing next to you at the reception desk!”
The small team’s efforts have certainly paid off, the result being an awe-inspiring short film in which snowboarding emerges as an art form. The marriage of Sutton’s original approaches to both lighting and filming has created something completely novel and truly beautiful.
