REVIEW: Cutting Contours DVD

ImageCutting Contours is the latest show reel from Sketch Book Films (SBF), the Les Arcs based production company who make ski movies for holidaymakers and seasonaires. Filmed exclusively in Les Arcs, France, during the 2005/6 season, Cutting Contours documents some of the skiers and snowboarders who eat, live and sleep in the resort.

Don’t expect big name pros busting ground breaking tricks; there aren’t any. Instead, the film captures locals ripping it up on their home turf, showcases this stunning area of the French Alps and looks into the everyday lives of a range of resort residents, from French ski patrollers who’ve been working there for decades, to Brits who are washing dishes for the season.

With a great soundtrack and varied footage incorporating steep and deep back-country powder turns, big spins in the park and balls-deep tree runs, the film not only whets your appetite for snow, but also provides a window through which we look into the lives of the locals, and this is what makes Cutting Contours a little different from the competition.

In a world where so many snow movies use the same tired formula of jump, jump, rail, jump, interspersed with corny jackass style drinking and vomiting, it’s a welcome and refreshing change to see a film with a little more meat in. We visit the ski patrol explosives experts to see how liquid dynamite is fired from pneumatic cannons to trigger slides, learn how a search and rescue dog is trained to find buried victims of avalanches, and glimpse into the lives of the seasonaires.

With some superb aerial footage of the local para-gliders and some lovely tree riding sequences, it’s obvious that SBF have the equipment, expertise and most importantly the creative ideas to put together an intelligent, well edited, good looking movie.

David Benedek, watch your back. 

ImageTo purchase Cutting Contours on DVD, or for more information on how SBF can film your ski or snowboard holiday, check out sketchbookfilms.com

To read an interview with Rich Crow of Sketch Book Films read “WHITE DREAMS: Shooting for Snow

 
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