Left Right: snowboard movie by Nidecker

I think the best thing about snowboarding today is that there are endless ways to experience it. Now that the first generation of “let’s smash everything” style riders has grown up, it has given way to a new wave of riders, from big air lovers to those who just want to carve, splitboarders and those who only see powder in the distance from the pristine resort slopes, strictly not too steep. We want to tell about all the variety of the snowboarding world through what binds everyone together: the turns on the board. – Sam McMahon

We recently had the opportunity to have a word with Samuel McMahon about his latest snowboard movie made with the Nidecker team, “Left Right.” Released on online platforms in late November and previewed at various film festivals, including the Freeride Film Festival Tour around Europe.

What can be called the result of nearly five years of Sam’s work with the guys at Nidecker is an ode to the simplest yet most sublime act one can perform on a snowboard: curving. In fact, for once, the protagonists are not 20-meter jumps, quadruple corks or 15-meter rails, but curves: what Sam is really passionate about. A difficult work, which the director felt ready to put in place only after 10 years of experience. In an era dictated by thirty-second clips for social media, it is not easy to manage to entertain a viewer for twenty minutes in front of the same movie.

“You have to be really good, but most of all you have to believe in it,” Sam explains. In this his fast-paced style plays a winning role: pacing, constant scene changes, and variation of shooting techniques, then again a killer location as are Norway and Japan. Five years of filming resulting as always in a handful of minutes of video, after so many brutal cuts. “Five years in twenty minutes, cut here, cut there…. It ‘s kind of like they say – Killing your darlings – the things you’re most fond of, you have to let go of them in this kind of work.”

Two trips to Norway with the whole team and one to Japan, as well as some filming in the French Alps in Avoriaz with Dave Cruziek and Mat Crepel. Sam confesses that the intention was to be inspired by the old video-zines, two different chapters following different riding genres by differentiating the footage between steadycam, drone, and tripod.

The film consists of two different genres: on the one hand resorts, curves, freeriding, and powder on the other a focus on Nidecker’s locales in Japan. Kind of like a magazine, you show a little bit of what you you goes to show and find the right cuts. What I liked to do was to film each style with a different technique, and so we find the resort part very fast with steadycam cuts, the freeride part with the French riders is almost totally shot by drone, and then there are the scenes shot with a tripod, which is what I do best.

We also talk about the various riders in attendance, how it was important to give space, not only to the quality of riding, but more importantly to the personality of each of them to achieve an enjoyable result that conveyed an emotion. A detail that is often overlooked, thus ending up with entire monotonous clips with no variation. He gives me the example of John Myhre. of the Nidecker team, wanted by Sam himself for creative flair as well as skills on the board. He says how she did not want to plan any clips with him but just hit the record button and let the magic happen.

Although these guys would be able to produce a standout film even in their own backyard, the locations always play a very important role in the project-they are then the ones that make you dream of setting off with friends to shoot snowboarding. Tromsø and Hokkaido, these two cities so distant and different from each other culturally, but with a very similar characteristic, that of community.

You can really feel the community typical of islands, these are places that have to deal with extreme cold, the darkness of winters. So the people you meet there are one with the place where they live and the beautiful thing is to feel welcomed to feel their happiness in knowing that you are there to do the same thing they love do them.

Ten minutes of snowboarding that gather all the magic and inspiration to remind us that no matter what we do, whether we are at a resort in the Alps, in meters of Giapow or on the Norwegian fjords, we will still be there painting curves on the snow, united by the same very strong passion.