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Chimping shots with the crew, a favorite pastime of Etienne's. Eric Tomasak photo.
If there’s one ski brand today that was made famous through the internet, it’s Faction. Thanks to an athlete roster spanning from Candide Thovex, the Sildaru siblings, and now all the way to Johnny Collinson, Faction has taken audiences by storm with their game-changing edits and a film featuring some of the craziest skiing ever seen.
While the skiing may be insane, capturing it and presenting it in a new way is a whole different beast. Enter skier and filmmaker Etienne Merel, the mastermind behind the “We are the Faction Collective” webseries, which nearly broke the internet over the last few seasons before leading to a feature-length film “This is Home.”
For our next Behind the Lens, TGR caught up with Merel to hear what it takes to balance directing, shoot, and skiing and learn a little bit more about one the loudest teams in skiing.
TGR: How did filmmaking and skiing come together for you?
Etienne Merel: Well, where do you start, I don’t know! I started filming when I was maybe 15 years old, skating around with my friends. My dad bought me this tiny camera from Asia, one of the first digital cameras ever made, and we started filming each other. When I was 24, I finally realized that this could turn into a career. I actually studied Civil Engineering at university in France, and it was not really my goal to become a filmmaker at that time. So long story short, I decided to give it a shot for six months to see if it would work, and landed my first client, skipass.com. Luckily, Faction came along early, since I was skiing for them and I proposed a short series which turned into We Are the Faction Collective.
A behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to shoot a 7-minute urban segment in Finland, heavy hits and heavy bails included.
TGR: The web series seems to have become a business card of sorts for Faction, what role did you play in it?
EM: First, we only had a small crew of maybe three. The first episode in Breckenridge was our pilot, to see if it worked at all. We had Duncan Adams, Adam Delorme, Candide, Cody Cirillo, and Tim McChesney and some Frenchies skiing together. Turns out it was pretty successful, so we made two more that season. We didn’t really know what to do, which was fun, but we definitely got lucky! From there, we learned.
With roots in skateboarding, Etienne says shooting urban comes very naturally to him. Alric Ljunghager photo.
TGR: How has that team grown and evolved since then?
EM: The cool thing is we are from all over! I don’t really think there is a unique style in the Faction team, I think everyone skis very differently. It definitely started coming from a freestyle background, but now it’s expanded to more freeride skiers with the addition of Johnny Collinson and Sam Anthamatten on the roster. It’s evolving and moving for sure.
It’s super cool working with guys like Johnny, he’s a cool character and he’s always motivated to go explore on skis and find new things to do. That’s really cool for me, because I wasn’t used to filming big mountain lines or going on adventures in the mountains with my camera. It’s a totally different world than urban or park skiing, which I do so much of. Making a freeride segment is physically much harder than that, having to deal with the conditions and avalanche risk. It’s a little bit hard to keep up with him sometimes!
Where the series all got started, shredding with the homies in Colorado.
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TGR: Any crazy stories from the field?
EM: Yeah, actually. It was from last year in Zermatt. I was with Johnny and Sam on the last day of the shoot, and we wanted to shoot something on the glacier. On my way to the Barbie angle, I fell into a crevasse, breaking some bones in my leg and a rib. It was a foggy day, and a snow bridge collapsed beneath me. So, Johnny and Sam rescued me. They didn’t see me fall in, but after about thirty minutes they found me and sent me a rope. It was scary, but since I only fell about 10 meters, I was lucky.
Some of the faces might be new, but the good vibes and insane skiing haven't changed.
TGR: What about working with the enigma that is Candide Thovex?
EM: I would say it’s either super easy or really tough. Candide is a very hard worker and a super good skier, so when you are working on his projects, it’s super easy because he knows exactly what he wants to do and then does it. But when you have to propose ideas to him or make him do things he doesn’t really want to, it can be tough! He likes to do his own thing, but he definitely deserves it. He has come this far managing his own career, and he has nothing to prove anymore now that he is 36, and I have a ton of respect for that.
TGR: In This is Home, how did the Candide and Henry Sildaru segment come to be?
EM: That was actually the only segment in the film that I wasn’t behind the camera for, I just directed it. But, the relationship between Candide and Henry is something really cool. Candide really likes Henry’s style and sees a ton of potential in him. It was Candide’s idea to make a segment where he shares the passion of skiing with the next generation, from an old guy to a young kid. Henry, of course, is blown away by it all. The first day before shooting, when we were scoping the line, Henry was amazed at how fast Candide actually skis in person, especially off piste. It made me nervous at first for making the segment, but Henry learned how to ski fast and keep up pretty quickly.
Shooting This is Home involved a ton of this. Not a bad day at the office. Eric Tomasak photo.
TGR: The movie was a different look at the classic ski film, what did you want to show with it?
EM: As director and cinematographer, I filled a few roles in making This is Home. I worked on the movie for almost two years with Faction, and together we wanted to create an idea about home. We wanted to find a connection between everybody on the team and show how everyone’s very different home influenced their style of skiing.
I have a few favorite segments from the film, but the ones that I remember being the most fun are the big-mountain Zermatt segment with Johnny and Sam before I fell into the crevasse, and the Finland urban segment. I really like shooting urban, probably because of my old skateboarding days.
