For starters, I've noticed that a lot of popular skiers and trendy guys at the moment don't really have many full length edits. It's moreso just Instagram clips posted sporadically and never usually full-length proper edits anymore. There aren't as many proper edits coming out with segments it's kind of just these disorganized conglomerates of clips. This isn't really a bad thing, it's just what I've noticed. However, the reason I personally find this frustrating, is because I have seen less and less emphasis on people trying to make meaningful projects to showcase their best tricks. Like if somebody like EZ does a sick trick, its buried in a 30 second instagram iphone clip dump, instead of in a complete edit with proper filming and cinematography and somewhere we i can quickly replay a few seconds without having to sit through the full random clip dump. I use EZ as an example because he has 2 edits on youtube, and probably enough clips on instagram to make hours worth of edits. And it just sits there on instagram, cluttered and disorganized, with only a thumbnail for me to use when digging through his old posts to pray I find "That one where he was in the black shirt and the sky was more teal than blue and there were some clouds".... you get the point.

But this isn't just with trendy skiers, it's with everyone. Solo projects haven't been dropping like they used to. Remember when the "Self-edit" was practically mandatory after your season? There are some people out there who for sure need these, Jake Carney, Mango, EZ, Noah, Zahner. And I understand people have their clips all in different places, and I understand these people are working on projects that DO showcase their skiing, but the point is people seem much less interested in bringing together all THEIR clips each year. Sure Zahner was in Bermuda (One of my favorite street cuts ever btw) but I know he was riding parks because I see it on instagram, so why just 2 gnarly rail hits to instagram and no edit? There's no shame in doing this, it's completely valid and respectable to film some laps and throw them up on the gram really quickly because you want to show people those sick tricks you just hit today. It's just frustrating as a viewer because stuff like THE COLLECTIVE: Antti Ollila Athlete Edit (4K) seems to be an exception, not the standard.

So this brings me to the actual opinion part of this piece where I tell you that ski media is being commodified. People can blow up and gain incredible notoriety from just posting quick edits on the gram without ever working on actual projects. I see so many people that have incredible tricks and just shoot on iphone for 2 runs and call it a day. Wouldn't it be nice if Jake Carney had more than just DEADKIND and actually sat down for a few days to film a real edit again? Or what about all those young kids who literally just shred park, rip crazy tricks, and have never even filmed with a cameraman using any sort of proper camera at all? That take feels gate-keepy though, because cameras are expensive and not everyone can just drop bags to buy the gnarliest cameras out there or even find someone down to film them all day. But my main theory is that, it's actually more efficient to just bust out the phone every now and then while shredding and just capture a moment of your skiing career, capture it, share it, and farm likes and follows in hopes that you'll blow up and pick up a sponsor. No hate to the players, all hate to the game.

You no longer need to release banger edits to blow up anymore, social media has given skiers a platform that allows them to post shorter videos that can be digested at a much faster rate than the past, and allows people to share their favorite moments quickly and efficiently. The only harm I can see this doing is killing Newschoolers traffic because people are just using a different platform to consume ski media.

X Games has a hand in this too, by creating a contest that has a time constraint on both the period allocated to filming and editing as well as the run-time of the video. You get what, one minute and thirty seconds to showcase your urban skills? That's not enough at all, not even close. How can you show your consistency with a minute and thirty second video part? How can you convey a meaningful and thoughtful idea in that time, while including cinematic genius and artistic freedom in that time. I mean Zahners entry in Real Ski vs. his part in Bermuda were so wildly different. In the x games competition, he fell short of the podium but in the movie, I think it was one of the best segments of that year hands down, and I don't blame the judges because it was impossible to package the part from Bermuda into the time allowed by X Games. But that's how people want to consume street parts, they want them short and to the point, just quick clips, no background, no personality, no artistic freedom. I mean look at Alex Hackel this year, he literally got complaints that he only had 9 tricks compared to A Halls 15 (Those numbers are wrong but you get the point). He tried to convey a beautiful emotion and include attention to artistic decisions and maintain a beautiful aesthetic within the boundaries of the competition and gets hit with "You only had 9 tricks lol". People don't want long parts anymore, they don't want real showcases of talent and consistency, they want bangers ASAP.

If you feel differently just lmk, per usually I probably forgot to go over a ton of shit but this vent was after finding out that I can't find any Jake Carney edits besides DEADKIND on youtube and I'm pissed lol