VAIL, COLORADO – Here at the Burton US Open Snowboarding Championships, while high-flying Olympic talents like Chloe Kim and Mark McMorris show off their skills, a lesser known crew brings their tricks to life. A team of camera operators skis backwards, using stabilizers to shoot live video while following riders down the course.
The camera crew works for a company called Motion State, whose visual work spans both the sports and entertainment worlds, from Red Bull to Ryan Lewis. Corey Koniniec, one of Motion State’s owner-operators, sits under a camera tower before the first hot practice of the day: “I made snowboard films for 15 years, towards the end of my career I worked for Burton, then I started doing follow cam work for the US Open. Eventually it was time to grow up, get a real job, and start doing commercial work like this.”
Koniniec and his team use a three-axis stabilized gimbal with a Movi Pro to get the shot while a Sony FS 5 integrates it into the live broadcast for Red Bull TV.
“[The cameraman] skis and transmits video to me on the control with the Teradek Bolt System,” Koniniec explains. “From me it is sent to the truck. It’s a hopscotching HD video system. [He] has to concentrate on keeping up with the rider while I steer it like a fun video game.”
The ski chase follow cam allows for unique visuals that wouldn’t be possible to get with traditional camera placement.
“One of the coolest things we can do with the ski follow cam is …go down backwards in the half pipe while looking back up. It’s a really technical maneuver,” says Koniniec. “If the athletes will allow him, [the cameraman] can do the jumps with them. He can be airtime, so it looks like they are frozen. We call it the bro cam because it’s like if you were with your friends on the mountain it is what you would see and experience, no other camera can bring you in like that.”
To see the Motion State team in action, tune into Red Bull TV for the Slopestyle Finals on Friday at 1 PM PST and the Halfpipe Finals on Saturday at 10 AM PST for the women’s competition and 1 PM PST for the men’s.