Ok yeah, you caught us, the Iron Curtain doesn’t exist anymore, but it seemed an appropriate subtitle for this webisode. At this point you’ve seen the Russia seg in the movie, read the web updates, the feature article in Freeskier, etc, but we promise we’re NOT beating a dead horse- check out this webisode for some fresh content, fresh humor, and a fresh perspective on our Moscow jib trip.

April showers bring May flowers, or, blizzards? The first week of May saw nearly 5-feet of new snow falling in Summit County, CO. We had to keep pushing our Breck shoot back in order to actually see some sunny skies and warm temps- key ingredients for any Spring park shoot. Running out of time before the next scheduled shoot we pulled the trigger and kicked off our shoot in a harrowing blizzard (at night, no less) before the clouds cleared and we were treated to some grade-A superpark-style features from the Breck park staff.

Check it all out in this webisode featuring cutting-room floor (crazy -the quality of tricks and treats that don’t make the feature flick!) shots of Tom Wallisch, Parker White, Chris Logan, Adam Delorme, Mike Hornbeck, Alex Bellemare, Pat Goodnough, and Banks Gilberti. Thanks again to everyone at Breck for all the hard work that went into making this shoot such a success!

Introducing a new, exclusive video series from Level 1, featuring cutting-room-floor footage from their new film, “After Dark.” “We had four camera crews traveling the world for six months shooting for our latest movie and we accumulated more content than we could ever squeeze into an hour-long feature film,” says Level 1′s director Josh Berman. “What you see in the flick, mag, and web coverage only tells a part of the story. The Extra Dark series that we’ll be dropping online features some awesome behind-the-scenes stories, a look at the filmmaking process, outtakes, extras, and a ton of grade-A action that hasn’t yet seen the light of day.”

Episode #5: Moscow, Russia – Wednesday November 30th

At this point you’ve seen the Russia seg in the movie, read the web updates, the feature article in Freeskier, etc, but we promise we’re NOT beating a dead horse- check out this webisode for some fresh content, fresh humor, and a fresh perspective on our Moscow jib trip.

Episode #4: Breck Park Session – Wednesday November 23rd
April showers bring May flowers, or, blizzards? The first week of May saw nearly 5-feet of new snow falling in Summit County, CO. We had to keep pushing our Breck shoot back in order to actually see some sunny skies and warm temps- key ingredients for any Spring park shoot. Running out of time before the next scheduled shoot we pulled the trigger and kicked off our shoot in a harrowing blizzard (at night, no less) before the clouds cleared and we were treated to some grade-A superpark-style features from the Breck park staff.
Check it all out in this webisode featuring cutting-room floor (crazy -the quality of tricks and treats that don’t make the feature flick!) shots of Tom Wallisch, Parker White, Chris Logan, Adam Delorme, Mike Hornbeck, Alex Bellemare, Pat Goodnough, and Banks Gilberti.

Episode #3: Telluride Helitrax – Wednesday November 23rd
Parker White, Duncan Adams, and Logan Imlach bag some ‘Couli’s in some of Colorado’s most epic terrain with Telluride Helitrax. Pow, cliffs, epic spires, and helicopters- booyah!

Episode #2: Sun Valley – Monday November 14th
In this episode, check out some of what went into our annual park shoot in Sun Valley, ID where Parker White, Chris Logan, Alex Bellemare, Tom Wallisch, and Niklas Eriksson get after some jib and jump features including the massive Quad Wall setup, a canon rail over 30ft of rocks, and a HUGE 120ft gap jump.

Episode #1: Quebec – Wednesday November 9th
In what’s become an annual Level 1 trip to QC, its an unending quest for everyone to step up their game and do it bigger and better then the previous year- no small task. Watch JF Houle talk about what was involved in making it happen in 2011!

As seen in the October 2011 issue of FREESKIER.

Words and photos:
Chris O’Connell_LEVEL_1

THREE TOUGH LOOKING RUSSIAN POLICE WALK TOWARDS US TOTING PISTOL GRIP KALASHNIKOV RIFLES. It’s 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning in the suburbs of Moscow, in a country where few people (especially police) smile in public and corruption is rampant. All I can think about is that things can go real bad, real quick. I look around at my crew—skiers Tom Wallisch, Ahmet Dadali and Mike Hornbeck, and Level 1 Productions filmer Kyle Decker— and see they all appear similarly gripped, out of place and less than comfortable in the minus 18-degree morning.

The mission is a quad-kink rail we had been kicked of the previous night by a crazed tenant of the nearby housing projects. Obviously, it wasn’t the first time someone had come to shred the solid quad-kink rail; an old lady was on us before we even had a chance to set up the tripods. She wouldn’t stop yelling at us in angry Russian, so we left while our guide Alex yelled his own Russian insults in return. Figuring she’d be asleep early Saturday morning, passed out from a $2 bottle of vodka, we hoped the odds of an uninterrupted session would be in our favor.

The problem with the morning mission was that Alex, our only sure means to communicate with any person in the city, couldn’t make it. So, brain surgeons that we are, we used our GPS to navigate back to the spot and found ourselves confronted by Kalashnikov-packing Russian police. We played some roulette, in Russia, and got caught. Not good.

Even in cosmopolitan Moscow, very few people speak English. In this case, that worked in our favor. The absolute breakdown in communication frustrated the cops so much that they put their hands up in a big X and took off. We had already bagged a few shots on the rail before they arrived, and since visiting a Russian police station without our translator wasn’t appealing, we decided not to push our luck and bailed quickly after them.

Check out the full writeup at Freeskier.com!

As the snow begins falling across North America, cameras everywhere are starting to roll once again as another ski season approaches. With anticipation heavy in the air, over the last few months After Dark has traveled around the world getting ski fans stoked for this very moment.

The tour started off with a sold-out world premiere at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom in Denver, and to date the film has hit 60 cities around the world, including venues in Norway, Canada, France, Britain, Switzerland, Australia, Spain, the Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and more! Along the way, we’ve seen sold-out premieres in Reno supporting the High Fives Foundation, packed houses at IF3 and the UK Freeski Festival, ridiculous shows in Boston, Burlington and Bozeman, and so much more.

But the best part is, we’ve still got more shows to go–over 20 of em, with more being added to the calendar every day. And it’s not too late to schedule a premiere at your college, ski shop, local mountain or backyard. To be a part of one of the biggest ski film tours in the world, hit up adam@level1productions.com for all the details!

Portland, OR lines up for autographs!

Parker White staring down the crowd in Bozeman, MT

The Level 1 crew took home the award for Best Editing at IF3, Montreal

Massive crowd of stoked fans getting after it in SLC!

After Dark in Barcelona, Spain with the Alltheski.com crew!

Wallisch, Ahmet, Logan, Parker, Hornbeck, and Wiley throw down some autographs in SLC

Ian Compton’s season edit with a few of his bangers from filming with Level 1! Awesome edit. Great vibe. Enjoy!!!

Text pulled from Steezygnar.com – check the full event coverage and more pix on their site!

“The movie itself was highly anticipated and delivered on all levels. The world tour of shots was incredible. Skiers like Ahmet Dadali (fresh off a best male performance from last year’s Eye Trip) continued to shred, and other personal favorite riders Tom Wallisch and Parker White nailed their segments as well. Sun Valley shots were sick… as was the Moscow and Japan footy. Itunes download is eminent.

‘After Dark’ delivered the gnar, and the hosts delivered the atmosphere. Snowriders and Greatest Bar put on a hell of a party. This was my first exposure to Snowriders, a unique ski/snowboard tour organizer based out of Boston. Looks like their trips are targeted at a more of a steezy rider.. offering more than a bus ride to the mountain and back. They promise a good time, and Friday night they delivered. Greatest Bar also came through big. I’ve watched a few Bruins games there, and they know how to get down. Jim Beam and Narangasett were present with specials and swag, so the night obviously got silly.”

Level 1 went to Russia this past season with Ahmet, Hornbeck, and Wallisch! Yeah, we know, old news… you’ve read the article in Freeskier Mag (it was a good one!), probably seen a few pix online, and probably even seen the Russia seg in After Dark. BUT, we just came across a few gems put together by our Russian Comrades that ya gotta check out- always interesting hearing the story from the inside, even with the rough translation!

Check out their coverage HERE and don’t mind the Googletranslate rough translation- it’s definitely better then trying to read in Russian! Something cool content and rad perspectives!

Also, got some fresh content to add to the mix- a feature length interview with Level 1 cinematographer extraordinaire Kyle Decker- definitely worth a read HERE.

And last but not least, we’ve dropped this one before, but its worth another callout- I’m a RUSSIAN!

Words by Jason Hamborg

Photos by Mike Fillion

Last year when I hosted a premiere in Prince George, BC for Level 1 Productions’ 11th feature film, Eye Trip, all I was hoping for was to sell enough tickets to break even for the night, and maybe have enough money left over to buy a new pair of bindings. But when I made a last minute decision to donate the profits from the night to a young man, whose name I hardly knew, I had no idea the snowball effect I was about to create.

Shortly after last year’s Eye Trip premiere I took some time to write to Level 1’s Josh Berman to let him know what we had done with the money from the premiere, and being the top notch guy he is, Josh donated Level 1’s portion of the profits as well and posted a story about the premiere on the Level 1 website.

This is when things really got amazing, as no more than an hour or two after the story went up, I received an email from Roy Tuscany, the President and Co-Founder of High Fives Non-Profit Foundation. Roy had read the story and wanted to get involved with Landon’s recovery. I put Roy and Landon in contact with one another and the rest is history, as Roy and the High Fives crew made some incredible things come true for Landon, which is why this year I made the choice to donate all of the profits from our premiere to the High Fives Non-Profit Foundation so they could continue making big things happen for athletes like Landon.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, exactly one year since Landon and I’s relationship began, and I am standing at the main entrance to the venue, greeting guests as they funnel through the doors, each one more excited than the next to check out Level 1’s latest film, After Dark, when I see Landon and the rest of the j8r crew as they make their way through the doors. It was impressive to see Landon and how far he has come in year since we first met. Mature beyond his years, Landon McGauley carries himself in a way that never ceases to amaze me. After chatting briefly about his latest trip down to Mississippi, where he learned how to waterski with High Fives Non-Profit Foundation (which Newschoolers recently featured a story on), it was time for the premiere to begin.

Once all of the stragglers had made their way into the theatre and found their seats, I made a short speech to the roughly 160 people in attendance, and introduced a local ski film, I’m on One, which was directed by myself with the help of Glenn King and Taylor Josephy.

Once our movie was done playing we wasted no time in delivering what they all came out to see, Level 1 Productions’ After Dark. Following the movie, we hooked the crowd up with all sorts of free swag provided by Level 1 and their sponsors, and of course thanked them for supporting the great cause that is The High Fives Foundation.

I want to thank Josh Berman and everyone at Level 1 Productions, Roy Tuscany and The High Fives Non-Profit Foundation, Glenn King, Taylor Josephy and of course Landon McGauley for the positive vibes that never seem to be lacking.

Barcelona goes off! Well, at least that’s what we’re told, and we’ve got photographic evidence that they throw down a pretty sweet Level 1 premiere every year. They just wrapped up a screening of After Dark to a sold out crowd, gave away a bunch of gear, and got some dudes to strip down on stage. All in good fun, right? Huge thanks to our friends at AlltheSki.com for putting together an awesome show and continuing to support Level 1!

Check the full writeup HERE! Google translate doing its best to help those of us out that don’t speak Spanish- it’s kinda rough at times, but you get the idea! If you speak Spanish, feel free to hit the original link HERE.