Filming a top-level backcountry snowboarding event presents distinct technical challenges. The action moves all over the mountain; riders navigate through groups of trees, sail over jumps, and carve around obstacles, all the while making split-second adjustments to their speed and direction. The unpredictable and fast-paced nature of the competition can leave even the most talented camera operators struggling to keep up.
For Travis Rice and Liam Griffin, the organizers of the Natural Selection Tour, this issue was compounded by the fact that they wanted to broadcast their event live. The annual three-stop jamboree sees a hand-picked field of the world’s top snowboarders (eight women and 16 men) compete at specially selected courses in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Alaska; and British Columbia.
So when it came to finding a broadcast solution for the snowboarding event, the team decided to ditch the traditional methods for shooting backcountry action and instead focus on a completely new approach: a modified racing drone specially outfitted with cameras and transmitters to capture live images of some the world’s best athletes. (Disclosure: The author has served on the selection committee that picks the riders who get invited.)
Natural Selection COO Liam Griffin explains that snowboarding footage is traditionally captured by a camera using a long-angle lens set up on an opposing mountain range, or from helicopters. “But this means the cameras—and hence the viewers—are fundamentally far away from the action,” he says.
Instead, Rice and Griffin wanted to place the camera as close as possible to the action, enabling the viewer to “be there” alongside each rider as they take their runs.
“We wanted to make the event more immersive and easier to understand for anybody watching,” Griffin says. “For most people, even seasoned snowboarders, it can be really difficult to comprehend.”
Filming the action with either a racing drone or a camera drone was one obvious solution. But as Travis Rice, himself one of the world’s most decorated professional snowboarders, explains, “the drone technology didn’t yet exist” to follow a competitor down the whole course at close range in the way the pair envisioned.
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Drones of the type marketed to consumers and filmmakers lack the maneuverability and stabilization required to shift direction quickly enough to closely follow a snowboarder’s unpredictable movements. Racing drones, which do offer this dynamic quality, aren’t designed to carry broadcast-quality cameras, which are generally heavier and more complex. Neither option is good for broadcasting live either, since doing so requires special transmitters to send the video signal.
But for Rice and his team, for whom “Natty Select” was a chance to redefine the spirit of progressiveness that has always been at the heart of snowboarding, this was just another problem to solve.
One early “eureka” moment that influenced the duo in finding their eventual solution was a single groundbreaking shot from the 2018 snowboarding film Depth Perception. In it, Rice followed snowboarder Bryan Fox down a powder-filled gully while filming him using a jerry-rigged assembly of a carbon-fiber pole with a GoPro at the top stabilized by a gimbal, a device that uses sensors and motors to keep a camera steady no matter which way the operator moves.
Griffin says that shot from Depth Perception looked “right out of a video game.” Rice’s tight positioning and close proximity to the action amplified the sense of presence. “That gamified third-person-shooter angle makes it relatable. You can imagine yourself being the snowboarder.”
Soon, Rice and Griffin were thinking bigger: How could they use this angle to bring the camera as close to the riders as possible during Natural Selection, on a contest site measuring 16 to 18 acres and filled with trees, all while broadcasting live.
The crew began working with physicist and drone-racing legend Gabriel “Gab707” Kocher, a key Natural Selection collaborator who worked closely with broadcast partner Uncle Toad’s Media Group to solve the complex, multifaceted problem.
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The first issue was the drone itself. Early on, Gab realized that a first-person-view (FPV) drone—the type where the pilot flies using head-mounted display goggles that shows a live camera feed from the drone—would offer the required maneuverability and precision.
The only problem? A drone that could do that and broadcast live didn’t exist. Usually, the footage captured by racing drones requires software post-processing to stabilize the footage and make it suitable for broadcast—not an option for a live event.
In addition, as UTMG creative director Chris Steblay explains, racing drones typically can’t carry a whole lot of weight. “They have a small payload capacity, so adding transmitters and cameras capable of live transmission really wasn’t possible before we started development.”
Gab soon hit on a solution: a hybrid between an FPV drone and a more traditional camera drone that could offer live image stabilization by way of a custom-built two-axis gimbal. Theoretically, this design would smooth out the footage and enable the camera operator to follow the action precisely by tilting the camera up and down as required.
“The drone part was relatively easily solved,” says Kocher. “We used an eight-motor rotorcraft with 7-inch propellers I'd previously customized, which is around 1.5 times bigger than a regular drone. Using eight motors is one of the more efficient ways to carry more weight while still leaving room for unobstructed camera views.”
But creating the custom gimbal necessary for stabilization was more complex. The pilot went full MacGyver, buying a 3D printer and teaching himself 3D design to come up with the required two-axis gimbal. When put together, the bespoke unit weighed 3.3 pounds and could easily carry a payload of around 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms).
“It was a huge undertaking,” Kocher says. His design also required two remote control units to operate; one for the drone pilot and one for the camera operator. “I placed two different video systems on it. One transmits video to the pilot via FPV goggles, which the pilot uses to fly the drone. The other is a gimbal-mounted GoPro that films the action, which is then sent back through a broadcast link to our operator and then out to the world.”
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There was still one last problem to solve: live transmission. Broadcasting live would require sending a wireless signal from the drone to Uncle Toad’s production compound, and from there to the world. This was a tricky proposition on a site of such scale, and with so many obstacles (trees, jumps, boulders) for the signal to get around.
Early iterations of the setup used an RF-enabled broadcast camera which, as Griffin explains, didn’t work well enough. “It just didn’t have the depth of field and dynamic range required to deal with the contrast between foreshadowed areas like trees and snow, which is obviously brilliantly bright and reflective.”
The GoPros the team was using could better capture the dynamic range required, so they worked with GoPro to “hack” a Hero 10 camera to make it output live video—something GoPros aren’t designed to do. Next, they brought in RF Wireless, live sports broadcast specialists who used their unique experience to iron out the signal transmission problem.
To operate the system, the pilot and camera person stand side by side. The pilot flies the drone, navigating the course, avoiding obstacles such as trees, and turning the camera to ensure the rider stays in the frame. The camera operator’s job is to pitch the camera up and down in response to the snowboarder’s specific movements.
Given the complexity of this relationship, and the need for both team members to be able to anticipate the riders’ movements as they navigate the course, Gab hand-picked skilled FPV pilots with a strong understanding of snowboarding. No wonder the teams were as exhausted as the riders by the end of each contest.
“Piloting is very, very draining, because you have to concentrate so hard,” Kocher says. “I always say it takes an athletic performance to film the athletes. We talk to each other throughout the whole thing, working out the shot and the angles. And, of course, we're hooting and hollering when the athlete lands something cool.”
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At the Jackson Hole and British Columbia legs of the 2022 tour, Rice and Griffin’s vision was realized.
As Sage Kostenburg, Elena Hight, Dustin Craven, and Zoi Sadowski-Synnott completed winning runs in Jackson and BC, viewers were able to witness the spectacle from that long-dreamed-of third-person-shooter perspective, floating dreamily above the riders as they sped through the course.
The next Natural Selection event takes place this week (March 20 to 27) near Anchorage, Alaska. Watch it live and you'll see shots from the drone as it follows competitors down the course.
Instead of resting on his laurels, Rice is already thinking about the next innovation.
“What’s next? I’d love to see a forward angle. But that would mean the drone operator would have to navigate through the forest while also not knowing where the rider is going to go. It sounds like an impossible challenge to solve. But, then, that’s how we approach the entire event.”
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