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In their new online ad, This is Backcountry, Backcountry.com spends three minutes and five seconds splashing unforgiving outdoor footage across your screen. Less ad, more short film, the piece has gotten a lot of attention (and more than two-hundred-thousand views) for taking chances. There’s no clever hook, just raw, crazy moments both of euphoria and pain, from outrageous locations across the world. (Check it out fullscreen if you can.)
Director Anson Fogel, a well-known outdoor filmmaker, says the film’s approach is, of course, calculated. Backcountry.com sees themselves as catering to the more experienced members of the outdoor world (they only sell higher-end outdoor gear) so the point was to be honest about what it’s like to really go after those extreme experiences. (No, we didn't get any free stuff for writing this, we're just fans of the commercial.)
“The founders know that there is a certain sacrifice to being outside, an element of fighting through a lot of unpleasantness for a few fleeting moments of perfection,” he says. “There are a lot of broken bones and hospitals. It’s not REI and campfires. If you're really going to play the game, it’s gonna kick your ass and if you want to have your ass kicked, [backcountry.com] is where you want to go because the people running it get it.”
Parts of the video are pure outdoor porn. Talented people doing incredible things in beautiful light. These sections are a testament to the planning and skill of the filmmakers who spent over a year putting all the footage together and editing the film. Like the photographers featured in the recent Red Bull Illume contest, the videographers for the ad not only had to haul themselves to these incredible locations -- a highwire over an enormous waterfall in Mexico, for example -- but also had to be comfortable enough to shoot from these remote and uncomfortable positions (feats documented in the five behind-the-scenes videos that are being released now).
“You aren’t going to get a great shot without a lot of work,” Fogel says.
Predictably, a ton of logistics went into making the shots. The opening scene where the camera is flying through the mountains, for example, was one of the toughest. The shot was made in Alaska, and the team was using a high-end helicopter-mounted Cineflex ELITE camera system that kept breaking. Because they were in a remote part of the state, there were no technicians around to help, so the crew had to perform major surgery on the system themselves, more than once. They also shot the footage in summer, a time when there are a lot of bugs in Alaska. The insects constantly splattered against the lens, forcing the team to land just to clean the lens -- often in remote spots they needed special permits to access.
“It wasn’t just about shooting, it was also an engineering exercise,” Fogel says.
It's not just the beautiful shots that make the commercial stand out, it's also the gritty moments of human emotion. The scene where the guy falls to his knees while out catching a huge fish is a real moment. None of the scenes where people are falling or bloodied are faked.
“I think about it like this,” Fogel says. “You probably aren’t going to remember even the best car chases from Hollywood movies, but a particularly compelling, human moment in a movie will stay with you. When there is an element of humanity, that’s where you get great storytelling. It’s a balance [in outdoor films]. You want to show these incredible [athletic] moments and hopefully you are also showing moments that have emotion.”
So how much did it cost? The company dropped close to half a million dollars making the video, which is a lot but nothing compared to the primetime ads you see on national networks. Chief Marketing Officer Scott Ballantyne says the ad is reaching the intended audience -- those who are out there doing extreme things and those who aspire to do extreme things -- so they’re already planning on several more, which are supposed to be even more epic.
“Hold onto your shoes,” he says.
