Imagine being a snowboard filmmaker: You spend the entire winter working around the clock, scrambling from location to location, under constant pressure to capture enough footage to complete your video. When the season finally ends, and the rest of us are kicking it summer-style, you're essentially in lock-down mode, once again under pressure to edit hours and hours of footage into one final cut. Knock, knock... do you hear that? That's your production deadline, banging on the door and keeping you awake at night.

Talk about a very bitter irony: you work all winter only to be denied a summer vacation. Yet you won't hear Carlo Wein, the founder of Alterna Films, complaining. He's been producing snowboard videos for a decade now, and is all too familiar with the seasonal grind that comes with the gig.

I checked in with Carlo at his North Vancouver, BC, office in the midst of a summer with record-setting heat. He and the Alterna crew have been assembling footage and cutting rider parts for Elektro, due to be released this fall. In spite of the heat and workload, Carlo was in remarkably good spirits. Let's just hope the office air conditioner doesn't crap out on them.

Carlo in his "office".

What's the vibe like in the Alterna office at the moment? Lots of coffee and Red Bull consumption, I assume?
You hit the nail right on the head! I don't know if it's a good thing, but Gabe [Authier] from Red Bull outfitted our office with a slick Red Bull fridge and has kept it stocked for us. When the riders come in to help edit their parts, the Red Bull Cola is the preferred jolt of energy when the caffeine from coffee wears out. The vibe in our office is always pretty relaxed, but at this time of year it always gets pretty crowded with riders, photographers and friends passing by, checking out footage and giving their two cents about the film and what we should include or exclude from our edit. I personally find it very interesting to see what varying riders get stoked on; it's always good to mix it up and try out new things and take everybody's opinions on how things should look or could look better.

Carlo making the magic happen.

Coming off the winter off filming, how would you sum it all up? How does this past winter compare to others?
This year was definitely an anomaly for us. Early season, it was so sketchy with avalanche conditions that we didn't really start filming in the backcountry until late January. A common occurrence for our crews was that they would build up jumps and the first guy would drop to test it out and make the entire landing slide, leaving us with some very unproductive days. Benji [Ritchie] had an entire landing slide right down to rocks... it was pretty scary.

Speaking of the crew, you have a pretty interesting mix of riders in the video this year. Who are we going to see in the final cut?
We have some familiar faces and also some newcomers. Our line-up consists of: Benji Ritchie, Gaetan Chanut, Mikey Rencz, Eero Niemela, Chris Rasman, Matt Belzile, Matt Beardmore, Tadej Valentan, Vera Janssen, Craig Beauliu, JF Fortin and a few friends.

Tell me about how everyone fit in together... Did you get some interesting groups, in terms of who filmed together and who really fed off each other?
Funny you asked this, but early this year we went to film a segment for Elektro in Slovenia. We had Chris Rasman, Gaetan Chanut, Tadej Valentan, Eric Greene and Phil Tifo on this trip. Chris was 13 when Gaetan had his banger ending part in Mack Dawg's Stand and Deliver, so you can only imagine that the group dynamic between Gaetan and Chris was hilarious; it left the rest of the crew in hysterics.  We are creating a Slovenia behind-the-scenes DVD extra that will demonstrate first-hand the comedy that went down on this trip.

It's not an Alterna video without a complex intro shoot.

Personally, I am just stoked to see Gaetan up in the mix again. I think he's pretty damn underrated. What kind of footage did he come up with?
I agree 100%. Gaetan is not only an amazing backcountry shredder, but an excellent guide and motivator for the rest of the crew. Gaetan has so much experience in the backcountry, and knows so many locations, that I don't think we hit a jump from any of our previous films. He helped out tremendously with motivating our younger guys to try stuff in the backcountry that maybe they couldn't read so well. Eero and Gaetan rode together quite a bit, so they are in a section together. Oh yeah: I forgot to mention that Gaetan probably takes the hardest slams of any rider we have ever filmed.

This is a pretty cliché question, but how did you name the video? Did you wake up one morning and blurt, "elektro" and knew that was it?
No, we have named our last few films from our international trips. Last year we were in India drinking "Knockout" beers in the Himalayas. This year we spent a lot of time driving around Europe listening to a radio station from Italy aptly named Elektro. We kept running into signs that had either the lightening bolt or the word Elektro in various fonts and locations throughout Europe. So we ended up googling the word "Elektro" and came up with a theme for our film that is relevant to our experiences.

Bonus points for anyone who knows the board graphic.

What about the music? It seems like every year there are one or two bands, or songs even, that wind up in a lot of the videos. Have you ever called up the other filmmakers to see what music they're using and said, "OK, you have to back off the MGMT, ‘cause I'm claiming it..."
No, not really... but I did talk to Justin Hostynek from Absinthe last year, and we changed a song that they had already edited into their video. There are way too many companies out there, and we have don't have the time to find out if a song is already being used. We use tracks that fit the segment and flow with the film.

It's a time of changing technology and distribution for videos, between Blu-Ray and HD cameras and iTunes and downloading... What is your stance on the whole thing?
Embrace the changes and enjoy the fact that your audience is getting larger and larger with all of the mediums that are out there...  We were used to delivering in just one format, being DVD. Now-a-days once the film is complete, we prepare a digital download, a Blue Ray and a standard-definition DVD, making our delivery of the film accessible to so many more people. Our back catalogue is getting more exposure with the digital downloads and our current films in HD are getting airtime on high-def TV networks such as Rush HD.

Everyone pitches in on an Alterna shoot.

Do you sometimes feel like you're one of the last older film companies standing? I mean, a few other veterans are in still in the mix, like Absinthe and Standard, but many other companies have changed focus or have faded out.
We have kept doing what we have a passion for, which is combining high-end cinematography with sick riding. Our films have helped us get other side projects that helped us acquire better tools to use in our snowboard productions. We have upgraded our cameras pretty consistently and now have use of the RED camera, which is opening new doors for us. This technology is also allowing us to be creative in ways that film restricted us; trying new things in the way we capture our images really fuels the fire that keeps us doing what we enjoy most.

On that note, aside from your own, what video are looking forward to seeing this year?
I am a fan of the Absinthe films so I am looking forward to Neverland.

Teaser for Alterna's latest, Elektro:

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Related:
Sandbox and Alterna: Part Two (Alterna)
Private Alterna Shoot at Grouse (video)
8 Mile: A Life Worth Living