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Local adventure-sports filmmaker bit by bureaucratic snow snake
Photography Courtesy of Eric Daft
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Admit it. If you’ve ever been a ski bum, you’ve probably fantasized about appearing in or even making a ski movie. Maybe you’ve watched the evolution of ski flicks, from Warren Miller to Teton Gravity Research (TGR), and thought, “Heck, I could do that!” Well, some of it. On a good day. If you cut out the landings … and could afford the camera equipment … and had a clue about editing.
Oh, never mind. Better keep the day job. Besides, even if you could launch that eighty-footer (or get your pal to do it), crafting ski movies is unlikely to make you rich, or even pay the bills. And so your fantasy dies. Unless you’re Driggs resident Eric “Ed” Daft.
Ed has steadily plugged away at that dream for the past decade, mostly in his own backyard on the west side of the Teton Range. He began by shooting his buddies’ ski and snowboard exploits as well as his own, eventually editing the footage, adding effects and a progressive soundtrack, and offering DVDs for sale. He dubbed his first major effort, aptly, My Backyard. Presto, self-made ski film auteur. Well, sort of. He’s having a blast making movies, and many locals know and respect his work. But it’s hardly a get-rich-quick scheme, and his efforts have run into some hurdles. The cost of upgrading video equipment tends to outpace the modest income he has made from his films, and the fact that he is selling videos shot on public lands has drawn scrutiny from the Forest Service. But Ed keeps going with his camera work as a part-time profession, hoping to fund new adventure-film projects by pursuing commercial video work.
Patrons of Grand Targhee’s Trap Bar have watched Ed’s videos while toasting their ski day, perhaps recognizing familiar terrain in or adjacent to the resort.
After a big powder dump, Ed and his crew can frequently be found shooting on Targhee’s back side or on Peaked Ridge, ripping grin-inducing powder lines and repeatedly launching big air. They could easily be mistaken for a bunch of friends just playing in front of the camera, because that’s essentially what they are.
To say that Ed is laid-back would be an understatement; he has a low-key presence that extends to his production style, which utilizes a handful of friends trading off on video and still photography—as opposed to, say, helicopters and a huge support crew.
“It’s a really low-impact approach,” Ed says.
Growing up in Seattle, Ed began skiing at the age of five, moving into snowboarding in his teens. He made his first videos in junior high school, mostly news show parodies or spoofs on sports coverage. Using the family’s home video camera, he had no way to edit his features. “So,” he says, “we just shot in order.”
After moving to Boise in 1997, Ed began traveling to Grand Targhee to snowboard on winter weekends. Within three years he became a full-time Teton Valley resident, with the itch to make ski films. “After that first season,” he says, “I was inspired to pick up the camera because of all the action I was seeing.” Using what was then an $800 compact video camera (which he describes as “worth about $200 today”), Ed began work on his first local ski movie, a loose collection of ski footage called Mama Tried, named after a vintage Merle Haggard tune. “Our mamas tried,” he says, “ but here we are, a bunch of ski bums.”
During the 2002–2003 ski season, Ed produced My Backyard, which—though it was made on a shoestring—he describes as his first film featuring semi-professional production values. He then offered it for sale to the public. The film’s point-of-view shots of Ed’s own snowboard lines were created using a jury-rigged helmet camera, housed, he says, “in a Tupperware container attached to a helmet with a couple of butter knives and a lot of duct tape.” The film’s camera work had improved over Mama Tried, featuring a variety of cliff jumps, Teton backcountry descents, deep powder lines, and crash-and-burn shots at a local “big air” party. The film featured a host of familiar local faces, including Eric Anderson, Andy Brooks, Shannon Walsh, Nick Hunt, Zahan Billimoria, and Larry Johnson. Ed says he included a list of local “sponsors” at the beginning of the film “mainly to make it look more legit.”...(Continued)
