Honestly, this entire thread is gonna sound really corny. Usually when I write this much I don't do it in thread form but here we go.
Since the trailer for Slim To None and teaser for Freehand dropped in the past few weeks, it brought upon honestly an incredible amount of emotion. Initially, I thought I was just hyped that these two amazing riders (Two of my current favorite riders and probably yours too) were dropping solo projects with the best filmers around. After a few days, I realized, I was feeling hype yeah, but the reason I was so happy was because of another emotion. It was almost nostalgic.
When I was younger, the only time you could catch the best skiing that skiers put out was in the fall, when the movies dropped. Other than that, you could find promotional videos, some random quick park edits here and there, maybe a little snippet of the movie, but you always had to wait until the fall. Skiers and filmers would spend all summer chopping away at massive hard drives of film to make something beautiful, impactful, influential, and every year incredible parts from all crews dropped.
People still make movies, that's for sure, but with these two projects, I literally feel like 12 year old me, getting stoked as hell buying a 4 pack of monster for me and my brother so we could binge all the movies we bought and watch them all on DVD in the same night. We would save all the flicks for one night, chug monster, and just watch the best skiing of the past season. This feeling was always insane because, there was no instagram, and youtube was shitty and weird, honestly you could find more edits on facebook back then than youtube.
Either way, I think this nostalgic hype feeling is because I quite literally, have seen nothing from either of these projects. Other than the teasers, I have seen absolutely no footage, no previews, nothing. I think one park clip from keegan this past winter and a 540 jib thing from mango for a contest. Other than that, I know these riders are disgustingly good, are two of my favs, and honestly I can just tell these projects are going to be incredible. Ideally I could buy them and add them to the itunes library (More likely for keegans than jakes but hopefully both) and me and my brother could do the same thing we used to and just get cracked out on caffeine and muffle our screams whenever we see a sick trick.
Either way, just wanted to say I'm really excited for these projects, and it's moments like this I don't necessarily live for, but it helps me get through the day. I still watch old classics to get me stoked, and I'm so optimistic both these two projects are gonna be instant classics, and if they're not, the buildup, the hype, the excitement, even that was enough to make me feel like kooky little 12 year old with a walmart t shirt down to his ankles and the fattest bowl cut you've ever seen.
Appreciate those riders out there dropping big projects, this shit makes life just a little bit better