words by Charles Burroughs

photos by Olivier Aubin

Last year, Red Bull launched a new ski event in Quebec, called the Video Contest.  The concept was simple; a couple of teams composed of 2 skiers and one filmer/editor would have 6 hours to shoot in a private park, and then have 5 hours to edit a 2-5 minute clip of the footage they gathered during the day.

With the success the event had last year, a 2nd edition had to be held.  This year, the contest moved from Mont-Orignal, it's original location, to Mont Adstock, a pretty steep mountain just an hour away from Quebec City.

7 teams showed up this year to try to win the grand prize: plane tickets to Vancouver, $500 cash for every team member, and a special spot for their clip in the bonus section of Poorboyz's next year's DVD.

The day started off great, with blue bird sky and a spring like temperature.  Plus, the park rangers from Mont Adstock did a great job to set up a high-quality park, with 2 great jumps and an infinite selection of rail lines.  DJ Slipmat was spinning music that was plugged on every speaker in the park, and a tent was set a the bottom of the hill for riders to chill between runs.

Skiers started killing the park very early during the day, with cab 9s being thrown on the first jump from a lot of the skiers, only an hour into the session.

Additional filming equipment was available for the crews to use, including a 12-foot crane and a 20-foot dolly.  Filmers started to use those very well to produce incredible shots on various features.

After lunch-break, teams started to focus on more creative ways than the park to get footage.  Team Toastés spotted a natural gap just on the side of the park and asked the snowcat driver to build a track for them to hit it.  Francis Bouchard owned it with a huge frontflip.  NS's very own Cedric T-Fournier, from Team Outline, looked at the starter of the jump and asked a snowmobile driver to tow him uphill to hit it.  Ced threw a couple of 540s on it.  In the meanwhile, the local Team TMC went to hit a handrail in front of the ski lodge.

At 3 o'clock, the park was closed for the teams, and they were asked to get into a private section of the ski lodge with their computers to start the editing.  An intense 5 jours of capturing, editing, and stressing then started for all the participants.  A few minutes before the clock hit 8, a panic started with everybody trying to compress and burn their edits on time for the deadline.

Then, the party started while everyone was anxiously waiting for the results.  At 10 o'clock, the 7 clips were shown on plasma screens in the ski lodge, while judges Phil Bélanger from D-Structure, Mat Melançcon from Oakley, Guyaume St-Cyr from D-Structure and Charles Burroughs evaluated the videos on their skiing, cinematography, editing and originality.  The clips shown were all of a very high-level of filmmaking. At 11 o'clock, the judges announced the results.  3rd place and winners of 200$ each at D-Structure shop were the guys from Highland Productions of Ontario, with their 1999 concept.

1st place was a very tough choice with two totally different edits being shown, but in the end, Team ESK's catchy editing and insane park slaying by Paul Bergeron and Alex Bellemare took over LC Chartrand's amazing cinematography from Team Outline, who was awarded 2nd place and 400$ each in Oakley goods.

After the awards ceremony, the party went on at Balmoral, a local bar near the mountain.  It was a great way to end what was another very successful Video Contest.