Magnetic – Geneva premiere

Yesterday I went to Magnetic’s Geneva Premiere and I really enjoyed some segments of the film and found that others were less interesting. Keep in mind though, that this film is two hours long and that this increase and decrease in interest is normal.

What made this screening special is that many of the people that we saw in the film were present at the event. Before the film started they were presented to us individually, said a few words and then one person won some skis and another won for tickets to a ski resort.

The sports covered in this Nuit De La Glisse event were skiing, snowboarding mountain biking, e-mountain biking, speed flying, kite surfing, wind surfing and surfing. These sequences were shot in Hawaii, Tahiti, Spain, Portugal, Pakistan, France, Switzerland and one or two other countries. I don’t remember seeing that Portugal had some of the most consistently big waves. It would be impressive to see those waves in person. They can be up to 27 metres and more. Tahiti is a good place for riding barrel waves.

It’s interesting to see a sequence with an e-mountain bike because the sport is still so new. It does make biking in the mountains seem more interesting, if it about more than riding on hiking trails or going down dedicated tracks. The biking sequences were fun. They might have changed how I feel about the growing popularity of mountain bikes in the mountains. The film has achieved something.

Speed flying was filmed with a 360 camera and the image was stabilised so that the image was level but the flyer was moving from side to side as well as up and down. It was interesting to see how good this image quality was. I also like the use of the drone to film a variety of shots. Drones, when used correctly, provide the camera operator with the opportunity to get close to the subject without the use of a telephoto lens. This means that you preserve depth of field. This was used effectively in some of the mountain sequences, the surfing sequences and others. It made me want to get out and film with a selection of cameras.