“Wait a second. You guys are snowboarders?”
The incredulous voice came from the gathering of gun-toting football players and older gentleman standing behind professional snowboarder Travis Rice as he swiftly exploded the clay pigeons flying in front of his 12-gauge shotgun.
Ten pulls, 10 bursts of hunter orange shattering on the horizon. At the next station, the awestruck crowd grew as Rice — considered the best snowboarder riding today — shattered another 10 in a row. Murmurs turned to gasps as Rice, who turns 29 on Sunday, revealed he hadn’t really shot a gun since he was a boy.
Rice and his cohorts — all boarders in Denver for the local premiere of their movie “The Art of Flight” — stand out among the amply armed crowd of heavy hitters at the charity shooting competition sponsored by Broncos long snapper Lonie Paxton at the Kiowa Creek Sporting Club east of Denver.
By the end of the afternoon, the players and their pals have a newfound respect for the bedraggled bunch, especially Rice, who finishes the day with a near-perfect score.
That night, the adulation peaks at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, where Rice basks in thundering applause as more than 2,200 powder-hungry moviegoers relish one of the most anticipated snowboarding films ever.
While “The Art of Flight” certainly features awesome displays by snowboarding’s best athletes — Jeremy Jones, John Jackson, Mark Landvik and Scotty Lago — the movie also blazes trails in mountain film cinematography.
Brain Farm Digital Cinema, a producer of the film from Jackson, Wyo., employed millions of dollars’ worth of high-definition cameras to capture the action, pulling thousands of pounds of pricey gear to the world’s most remote, snowy corners to capture the action. The boutique production house, helmed by director Curt Morgan, used Cineflex and Phantom cameras, the most technologically advanced on the market, to document slow-motion, multiple-angle shots such as Rice ripping first descents in Patagonia in Chile and Landvik slapping a treetop while backflipping 50-plus feet off a cliff.
“Brain Farm went so far above and beyond to get those shots,” Rice said. “This was totally a team effort. Those cameras are the only way to truly convey both the experience and where we are. These guys are so good with them too. They can really set the mood and build a story line with their visuals.”
Crews would haul hundreds of pounds of camera gear deep into the backcountry and spend months revisiting remote areas to capture the perfect moment. In the Snake River Range near Rice’s hometown of Jackson, the 20-man crew spent 50-plus days snowmobiling 20 miles to reach their film zone for 11 minutes of movie.
“Used to be you’d pack a little 16mm camera and be good,” cameraman Jared Slater said. “Those days are long gone.”
The death of those camera-in-your-pocket simpler times partially can be blamed on “The Art of Flight,” which sets the bar for filming and snowboarding.
The captivating images and the adventurous theme of the explorers are gleaning national and mainstream attention, a rarity for films that tend to lure only core insiders. Even more rare is the movie’s appeal to those core riders as well as outsiders. It is likely the first action sports movie to please everyone.
“The biggest challenge, straight up, is making a film first and foremost for our peers but simultaneously speaking to the 60-year-old from Texas,” Rice said.
Snowboarder Landvik should be dead after getting swept away in a mountain-wide avalanche in Chile’s Darwin Range of Patagonia. The ordeal was captured in the most chilling, grab-your-face moment in the film.
Landvik said his parents and their friends are raving about the movie, a first for the snowboarding film veteran.
“It definitely relates to all fields,” Landvik said.
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com
