A film crew was in Prince George this week getting footage of highly-skilled snowboarders trying out tricks on the northern capital's local features.
"The thing is to search for new places," said director Ryan Kenny.
He and the boarders were travelling through from their base in Whistler where they work for production companies Sandbox and familytreeland.com, and decided to stop in for some rail riding at Masich Place Stadium.
"Kids will watch this and study it, and the places they see in this video they won't want to see in next year's video."
On this feature-finding mission they stopped in Quesnel where they spontaneously spotted a great snowbank for bomb drops off the roof of the Greyhound station, then settled into Prince George for a few days of rail riding.
"This rail isn't really long, but the trick is the gap," said Kenny. "They are coming down the hill, gapping Griffiths Avenue, then riding the rail down here to the parking lot."
Instead of calling "action!" Kenny was more apt to say "drop it like it's hot!" just before the cameras rolled. Time after time the small group of boarders would hike up the hill of focus, strap their board back on, and try to nail their trick.
Failure was common but always got trumped by perseverance.
It sounds illegal. It isn't.
The police were called a number of times by motorists who were complaining about the leaping of the road, and Mounties attended more than once, and observed their actions for a prolonged duration. Other than petty pedestrian infractions that might possibly have been applied, the crew steered well clear of impacting traffic in any way and public safety was not jeopardized.
Kenny said it does them no good to break laws or bylaws because then they risk losing film time, fine money, schedule disruptions, etc. plus getting a bad public reputation when attracting viewers is their end goal.
They bend some rules, like scaling onto the roof the Quesnel Greyhound station, he said, but they leave the place as they find it, co-operate with all requests by authorities, and whatever makes it to the end product, he said, becomes a calling card for that location.
"To be honest, the way we've been treated by the people in Prince George and Quesnel is quite foreign to us," Kenny said.
"Almost everybody here has been so nice to us, and helpful to us. We had one guy drive his car into the parking lot [at Masich Stadium] and he rolled down his window and called us idiots and 'How are you benefiting society?' but that was really the only bad experience we had here and in other places people want to fight us, they really don't want us there at all."
Kenny said this area is loaded with snow and people have been pointing them to all kinds of untapped areas for filming so this may not be the last time the cameras roll in the Prince George area.
