Featured Image: Teton Gravity Research
The experience and talent shared between Sammy Carlson, Kai Jones and Teton Gravity Research is hard to quantify. So if you give them a new tool, you can bet they'll put it to work. Turns out that tool is... an iPhone. Sure enough, they cooked up some heat with it.
TGR co-founder Todd Jones took to Instagram for the announcement, saying, "For three decades, I’ve filmed through almost every major evolution in filmmaking — aside from color and sound. TGR was a part of testing early POV cameras. We shot the first RED Digital Cinema camera on snow. We helped develop the Gyro-Stabilized Systems, one of the most advanced aerial stabilization systems in the world... Progress isn’t always bigger. Sometimes the future gets smaller."
With an iPhone 17 Pro mounted on drones and tripods alike, the crew set out for a few laps at the world-renowned Baldface Valhalla. Rolling pitches, perfect cliffs, undulating terrain and deep pow are a given at this mecca located outside of Nelson, British Columbia. Watching Sammy and Kai work their magic here is a treat, marking the first time these two have filmed together in this capacity.
How does the iPhone stack up to traditional cameras? Would you have noticed this was shot on an iPhone if nobody said anything? Is it here to replace our favorites? Probably not. But it is wild to think about what's possible now with just a cell phone camera compared to the pioneering days when TGR, MSP, and before them Warren Miller, were lugging literal cannons into the backcountry to shoot. Check out the full cut below.
From YouTube:
For the first time in TGR’s 30-year history, we made a short film shot on iPhone 17 Pro — with Kai Jones and Sammy Carlson, two of the best freeskiers alive, deep in British Columbia’s Valhalla Range.
High in Valhalla, the mountains don't just stand — they're alive, ever-evolving, transmitting energy, a frequency. Kai and Sammy came to Valhalla to listen and to reverberate that energy back through elite freeskiing.
For Teton Gravity Research, this is three decades of award-winning work, and a new way of capturing the line.
Sammy Carlson spent a career writing the language of freeride. Kai Jones grew up reading it. This is the first time they've filmed together at this level — the legend and the phenom on the same canvas, one watching the other, giving energy to each other, and learning as they ride.
Directed by Todd Jones, Produced by Drew Holt
Thirty-plus films, multiple HBO projects, and twelve Emmy nominations.
Shot on location at Baldface Valhalla, British Columbia.
Shot on iPhone 17 Pro.
