Jeremy Mackie relied on muscle memory and “the dumb things we’d done on skis as a kid” to shoot video while skiing.
Jeremy Mackie didn’t even know there was skiing in South Korea before the 2018 Winter Olympics.
But Mackie, who shot videos in PyeongYang before the games began, learned that Koreans are avid skiers. Thousands of people of all ages flock to the slopes until midnight, even in frigid weather way below zero, he said by email this month from his home in Singapore.
They also benefit from niceties that would be unimaginable on Mackie’s home terrain at the Loup Loup Ski Bowl. Mackie grew up skiing at the Loup from age 2, where his father ran the rental shop.
Korean ski resorts offer amenities from compressed-air guns at the ski rack so you can clean off skis and snowboards, to food stalls and rental shops situated at half-mile intervals all the way up a mountain.
And every resort is covered in snowmaking equipment. “It felt a bit like a grand golf course for skiing, large Asian-style TV billboards all over, K-pop music playing at the base, every piece of nature in place,” said Mackie.
The hills he skied in South Korea are only about 3,000 feet in elevation and get considerably less snow than mountains in the Northwest. The have “a sort of windswept ocean peninsula feel,” said Mackie.
By comparison, runs at the Loup can feel like they’ve been cut through the wilderness, and conditions change with the weather, he said.
Korean resorts have a totally different vibe. “They’re more like massive Autobahns where you could always expect the same manicured experience, you could work on your perfect turns, and you definitely learned how to work through traffic,” said Mackie.
Getting the shot
While Mackie’s main job in Korea was to direct the shoots and manage logistics, he occasionally picked up a camera to capture the action. For one video, Mackie filmed a snowboarder carving turns on the slopes while skiing himself. “It was one of the first times besides [making] snowboarding videos — messing around with my brother — that I’d been able to shoot on a hill,” he said.
Muscle memory from years of both skiing and using a camera helped, but Mackie admitted it was daunting at first. “It is a bit frightening to try to adjust a camera, watch where you’re going, and keep an eye on what the snowboarders were doing,” he said. “But eventually you just had to trust your feet would be in the right place when you needed them, and focus on getting the shot.”
“I was really glad for all the dumb things we’d done on skis as a kid. Like one-ski runs and going way too fast,” he said.
Mackie did encounter some familiar equipment on the slopes in Korea. “One of my most vivid memories is riding on the back of a snowmobile with the lead Sno-Cat operator driving, a Korean translator in-between us, and getting to film an army of the same snow machines that had transformed skiing at the Loup when I was a kid,” he said.
He also got to work on a shoot about the construction of the Olympic-sized half-pipes, the towering crowns of snow that are even more intimidating in person than on TV, he said. “I’m so in awe of what those half-pipe riders pull off — it’s like jumping off a 40-foot building repeatedly while doing tricks,” he said.
Hooked on film
Mackie first got involved in film when he left Omak in 1996 to attend college in Seattle. He got hooked on film working as a projectionist at a movie theater and went on to film school. Most of his work has been as a lighting technician, but he’s made a few independent films.
“While You Weren’t Looking,” Mackie’s first film, from 2012, is an 11-minute comedy — with a message. It’s a story of growing up and letting go, told from the perspective of a little girl smothered by her mother’s over-protectiveness. She has to wear goggles to protect her eyes in the sandbox and a helmet and knee- and elbow-guards for trips around town. Ultimately the girl finds freedom racing down the aisles of a grocery store on a shopping cart.
“It’s a humorous expression of the battle we all face of trying to convince the people around you to let go of the reins and let you take a shot,” said Mackie. It made the rounds of film festivals and was nominated for several awards.
Mackie moved to Singapore two-and-a-half years ago when his wife got a job there. He’s the video content director for Click2View. The videos he made in South Korea were a campaign by Visa to promote the Olympics and to show Korean culture and commerce.
“Singapore is the mirror-opposite of the life I grew up in. It’s a benevolent dictatorship far from nature, everything is created and curated in some way, and the pace of life is fast and unforgiving,” said Mackie.
One of Mackie’s favorite moments was to call his family from the top of a ski hill in Korea to thank his father for experiences that proved universal, allowing him to connect with snowboarders and Sno-Cat operators halfway across the world.
After more than 40 years renting skis at the Loup, Mackie’s father, Ron, relocated the Loup Loup Ski Rental Shop to Twisp about eight years ago.
Makcie found that South Korean resorts have a totally different vibe from the Loup, with manicured runs, billboards and blaring K-pop music.
