WTF is a Snowboard Musical?! Operetta Trailer & Q&A with Shoulda Danished Productions

Prairies-based Shoulda Danished Productions have just released the official trailer for their newest masterpiece, a five part "snowboard musical" called Operetta. It looks pretty hilarious and I just had to ask Will Fraser, one of the producers, a few questions about the film and the crew.

Judging by his answers I think it's safe to say this crew is all about having a good time without taking themselves too seriously (something we can all learn from), but at the same time they definitely know what's up on the snowboard side and seem committed to legit snowboarding. The trailer is pretty hilarious and we can't wait to see what the final product looks like. It should provide plenty of entertainment in the off-season!

Van Life – Darrel Giesbrecht Photo

33MAG: Can we get a quick bio of the crew? Where you from? How'd you come together?

Will: Well, there are a lot of us; basically anyone who is creative, has a passion, and wants to contribute can be a part of SDP. It is always growing, always changing, and always moving; SDP has no specific direction, but I guess you could say we are essentially a crew of creative individuals that aspire to be awesome. But as far as the snowboarding aspect of SDP goes, Dale and Ben wanted to make a snowboard video one year and that got the snowball rolling. In Edmonton, boarders were few, but between Dale, Ben, Will, and Dylan we had a solid base to get things started. However, because we wanted to make an awesome snowboard video and because of the difficulties that the dastardly banshee bungee creates, we needed to outsource and travel in order to find any boarders willing to join. From that, we have met awesome people and crews from across Canada. Much love to everyone that has helped!

What would you say is the main goal or theme of the crew? Are most of the riders intent on getting famous and breaking into the american scene, or are you just having a laugh?

Of course we want to be famous snowboarders. We’d love to travel around the world snowboarding for the rest of our lives, have all of our video projects fully funded, and have gorgeous women worship us while money from the sky rains down on us in our hybrid convertible sports cars. Our sights are set for the skies. Every opportunity or coverage we get is awesome. It encourages us to snowboard more and helps us deliver the projects that we put so much work into to the people they made for—YOU.

Dylan Vachon with John Swystun follow-cam'in – Dale Bailey Photo

What exactly is a "snowboard musical" anyways?

A snowboard musical is when you are so filled with passion about the one thing you love, you can’t help but sing about it. It’s the product of when your art form and life style finally meet at the same harbour at the same time… it’s kinda like becoming a super saiyan… (HAHA) but in actuality, I don't know if I can really answer what that means in reference to our video. I guess you’ll just have to wait and find out.

What can we expect from this project?

Happiness, and pain. Laughter, and tears. Love, and heartbreak. Passion, and apathy. Tricks, and bails. Suppression, and release.

But really, you can expect our project to be entertaining, entertaining to more than just snowboarders, entertaining to your mom, your cousin, and your deaf Aunt Susan. Also, we are big supporters of community. The best way for an individual to thrive is for his community to thrive. Therefore, the video will be filled with all of our friends’ music and riding. We support them, and in turn they support us—you know, mutual recidivism.

Where do you guys get your motivation from? Are there any film crews out there you really look up to?

We get our motivation from three pretty simple words, “Be Fucking Awesome,” and other than that, from each other and anyone we encounter that is living their passions and doing something different. We pretty much spend 24 hours a day with each other. We travel together, live together, ride together, and will probably die together. Of course a ton of crews get us hyped, there are great things constantly happening out there in the big boardin’ world, but it’s a lot more motivating to actually see yourself and your own friends killing it and accomplishing personal goals. A lot of what we do is attempt to be unique. We’re not always thinking about tricks that we want to land as much as we think about the creative side, the side that hopefully will entertain viewers of all kinds, we want to be proud of the project as a whole, not just our individual parts… There is one name, however, that has probably been the biggest inspiration—thee, Mr. Robjn Taylor.

"Artboarding" – Ben Giesbrecht Photo

Jibbing? Jumps? Backcountry? What kind of shit do you guys like to ride?

Well, we mostly jib, but we take whatever is given to us. Remember, we live in the prairies, our resources are limited; we stuff 8+ people in hotel rooms and barely have enough money to fill up our cars with gas… However, Olive Snowboards, Kingpin agency, Salmon, and Solid have been appreciated support. They allow us to go a little bit further without having to worry about dropping hundreds of dollars on new boards and gear every few months. SDP goes and rides what we can afford…. Maybe one of us will buy a sled one day and we could quadruple each other up into the blissful backcountry—hopefully without dying.

Riders – who's killing it this year?

Mark McMorris, he is always killing it… and all the kids from Edmonton—the forgotten city. haha

A crew that paddles together stays together – Dale Bailey Photo

Give us a funny story from filming this winter

This is not quite as funny as it is ridiculous.

Getting kicked out of spots is a naturally occurring annoyance in snowboarding that everyone has experienced. This was the first year, however, that we got kicked out of a snowboard spot without doing any type of snowboarding or having any snowboard gear with us. We had hit this spot earlier in the year and we went back to film the acting portion of it for our film before the snow melted. We were in an empty parking lot with two people and a camera filming us argue about a scandal involving Will’s fiancée—turns out she’s been sleeping around. How the people working late on a Friday night thought that we were up to any type of wrong-doing is completely beyond me. But nonetheless, we got the boot. Liability and trespassing laws are ridiculous and should be trumped by any form of common sense. Stupid, wealthy, oil company workers… why do they even care that someone if filming where they work. I mean, that’s some serious allegiance to the company you work for… to bad the company could careless about you.

 

As well, they're giving away a free Burton Board of Health snowboard to one lucky person who likes their Facebook page. Click the poster below to get your ass over there!