Sony Artisan Chris Burkard and his friends at Sweatpants Media have shot a gnarly 40 minute film of surfer's tacking some of the most extreme conditions in order to ride the waves in some of the most remote destinations on planet Earth. The project, titled, "Under An Arctic Sky", is a few days away from the end of a wildly-successful Kickstarter campaign.
After seeing the stunning trailer, we wanted to know more about the project so we caught up with Burkard to find out how it came together and to learn more about his goal to take it on a world tour.
Alpha Universe: How did Under The Arctic Sky get started?
Chris Burkard: Well it was a trip for Surfer magazine that I did back in December of 2015. Essentially what happened was it was just kind of a crazy concept to go to this remote bay on a boat, but the only time we could really do it was winter time, because that's when the swell was coming. So that's the premise, but ultimately it was kind of like any trip. I just a wild pitch to those guys saying that I wanted to go there and wanted to do more in this place. I had been looking at it on maps for months and whatnot, and so that was what drew us there in the beginning.
Alpha Universe: And how did the project evolve?
Chris Burkard: We went there and on the trip we realized there was this crazy opportunity to shoot surfing under the Northern Lights. After everything that happened on the trip—we got caught by the biggest storm in 25 years, we got stuck in this house, and we thought the trip was over and then we had to get off the boat and everything. At the end of that big storm was this crazy opportunity to actually chase one of the best swells we’d ever seen. That sort of brought us to this moment where it was really, really good surf and really, really clear skies, and we were able to shoot surfing under the Northern Lights.
We came back, and we realized what we had so we ended up going back again to shoot it a little better. On the first trip we shot pretty run-and-gun style. On he second trip we were set up to shoot footage in 4K, 6K, and more and with the best lenses we could get. So we went back and we did it again and we knew we had something really special. When we got back we teamed up with a production company to get the film done.
Alpha Universe: What did you shoot with on that return trip when you were going for the super high end footage?
Chris Burkard: We used the Sony α7R II and Sony α7S II and a couple of other cameras. We only had about three to four hours of visible light a day and it wasn’t even full daylight. There was a lot of nighttime shooting.
Alpha Universe: What’s the next step for the project?
Chris Burkard: As of now, we've edited it and everything's coming together. We're in the Tribeca Film Festival and we’re doing the Kickstarter as a way to promote a world tour, because we want to be able to show this to the world.
Alpha Universe: I want to ask you about that notion of a world tour, because today the notion of a tour might seem sort of dated. We have Vimeo and YouTube and with platforms like that, anyone can distribute a film internationally and reach a global audience. What’s the allure of a tour for you?
Chris Burkard: Well, I think for me, the idea of old school storytelling is still really very romantic and fun. Sure, I love the idea of being able to bring projects to people and share them on a global scale. That's really rewarding to me, and I've always just really enjoyed that. I can always distribute it via iTunes and Netflix, and we're going to do all that for sure. It'll be accessible to everybody.
But right now, I'm just trying to focus in on like what I really love to do, which is to bring these projects to people's front door. To their hometown. I want to take it to a theater and allow them to kind of really sink their teeth in. Because to me, that's one of the best and most important things we can do today. Less FaceTime and more face-to-face time.
Rewards for backers include advance copies of the film, a book with images and the story of the film, an "Under An Arctic Sky" t-shirt, and some bigger ticket items like a private screening with the cast & crew at Chris Burkard Studios and a fully loaded 6-day Iceland photography workshop with the Artisan himself. Having already reached their initial goal of $150,000 and currently sitting at over $217,000 Burkard and his fellow filmmakers and surf buddies are sweetening the pot to ratchet up the fundraising in the final days by pledging to autograph reward items as well as include a "behind the scenes" cut of the film if certain support milestones are met.
Check out the trailer below and to back the Under The Arctic Sky campaign, visit kickstarter.com.
