I put this together in 2014 just after setting out on my own as an independent freelancer. It gave me a good deal of traction by highlighting my own individual work as a cinematographer and creative. Up until that point I think my work was generally known as part of a larger company, but having this to put out there helped create my own signature and identity and opened up the doors to lots of new opportunities and clients. Five years later, it’s hopelessly outdated, and I’m hoping to put together a new one with more recent work in the next year or two. —Ben Sturgulewski
In the modern drone age this piece is likewise insanely outdated, but I like the story behind it. In the early days of drone cinematography, I wanted to learn how to fly, so picked up a Phantom drone and an old GoPro and started doing some very sketchy flying around summertime Alaska with no real goal in mind but to learn. After checking out the footage, I was pretty unhappy with the image quality, so spent a ton of time editing to see how much I could pretty it up in post. After the summer was over, I ended up putting this short film together and it somehow got a lot of traction across the internet and garnered my first independent Vimeo staff pick. Since then I’ve crashed many drones in horrific fashion and fly much less carelessly, ha! And I’ve generally eased away from flying much, but this flick serves as a reminder to me that if you really put your all into figuring out a new skill, good things can come. —Ben Sturgulewski
While maybe not Sweetgrass Productions’ most known work (that’d be Valhalla), Solitaire is my favorite feature ski film that I did with those boys. The project was two years spent living down in South America, post-college. We were young and dumb and truly threw ourselves into a vast and wild adventure. I learned an unfathomable amount about exploring, traveling, production and self-motivation, all in very difficult filming scenarios. And on the editing side, putting together the story was incredibly tricky… but I think that somehow it all came together. A lot of heart and madness went into it all. In the end, watching this film, I’m still filled with amazing memories from just about every shot… and am really thankful that it helped craft me into the filmmaker I am now. —Ben Sturgulewski
After I’d made some successful ski films, Matchstick Productions handed me the keys to the kingdom with the offer to direct their yearly shred flick. I told them I’d be up for it, but wanted to make it really, really weird and ambitious. Shockingly — for a company that more or less invented the ski film formula — they were keen to give it a shot. The result is, I hope, a ski film unlike any other. It’s very far from perfect and wasn’t at all well received by their core fan base hungry for a normal, yearly shred flick. But I’m very proud of what we were able to create on an insanely short timeline and budget, and some of my favorite memories of life stem from the pure weirdness of finding myself with an amazing film crew out in the roasting sands of Namibia passionately trying to create a post-apocalyptic ski film. In an ideal world, filmmaking is at its best when it’s taking risks. Things don’t always work out exactly how you hoped, but that’s the nature of the game, and I’m very grateful that I was given the opportunity to take such big risks with this film, and for all the crew and athletes that believed in it and made it a reality. —Ben Sturgulewski
I’ve had the pleasure of working with director Ben Moon for maybe 5 years now and it’s always a delight, and a reminder of the joy of collaboration. While I’m often directing my own films, for this piece and others with Ben I’ve been in DP/cinematographer role. While directing can be a lot of fun, it’s also quite demanding and stressful, requiring your brain to be in so many different places at one time… and sometimes it’s so nice to be able to focus strictly on creating beautiful shots. I end up learning a ton from Ben and how he handles the intricacies of a production, and am able to integrate that into my own way of doing things when I find myself back in that seat. Ultimately, over the years I think collaborating with good friends has been the most rewarding part of filmmaking, both in terms of memories created and in learning and advancing my own way of looking at films and at how one can move through the world. Artists can be serious control freaks (I’m certainly one of them) and I think learning to give a little of that control away, to collaborate and play well with others, is incredibly valuable as a human being, in any occupation or place in life. —Ben Sturgulewski
I made almost 20 films (including trailers) for this series over five years and it was hard to pick just one for this. But at the end of the day Snowflake holds a special place in my heart. It’s a bit more than just ski porn and hopefully inspires some joy in those who watch it. It was hard not to smile the whole time editing it, and that’s something I certainly can’t say about any other film I’ve worked on. A good little backstory— we shot in Switzerland for two weeks and all our attempts at filming a storyline failed miserably. I was getting incredibly stressed that we had a lot of decent ski footage but no story whatsoever to tie it together… and of course, story is king. Finally, on our last night there, at the last possible moment we happened to find Snowflake on the tram and asked him if he’d sit down for a quick interview. We did so, under the setting sun, and in the course of 45 minutes it all came together… an incredible character to give meaning to all of our imagery. We left the next morning with a film in the can. Yet another example that if you don’t ever give up, in the immortal words of Jurassic Park, “life finds a way.” —Ben Sturgulewski
Artwork provided by the artist.
NAME: Ben Sturgulewski
OCCUPATIONS: Cinematographer, Director, Editor, Filmmaker, Writer
LOCATION: Girdwood, Alaska, USA
ART: Instagram: @sturgegram | sturgefilm.com | Linkedin