What started on a whim between professional skiers Alex Hall and Hunter Hess and filmmaker Owen Dahlberg in 2019 has come to a bittersweet end. This fall, the final film in the MAGMA trilogy—the aptly titled MAGMA 3—dropped.
MAGMA 3 reflects Hall, Hess, and Dahlberg's ever-expanding filmmaking and skiing talents. It's a bookend, a swan song to freeskiing sans glitz or glamour.
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Notably, Dahlberg didn't record Hess and Hall's moves with a swanky, stabilized cinema camera like those used to film other major ski movies. Instead, he opted for various handheld camcorders, including the Panasonic AC-160 and HC-X20. Thus, in brief flashes, the movie feels like a home video or bootleg skate film from years ago (albeit with much crisper visual quality), before Dahlberg's precise editing and soundtrack selection remind you that MAGMA 3 certainly isn't something you found in your grandma's garage, unless your grandma secretly knew how to make killer ski movies.
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Hall and Hess' approach to skiing presents another contrast. The pair spent the past winter skiing competitively in different freestyle disciplines. Still, they made time to work on MAGMA 3 whenever they had free time, stacking footage in the streets and backcountry.
This commitment to filming and competition is rare in modern freeskiing—most skiers pick one path and stick with it due to the ever-increasing demands of competitive skiing, a departure from the 2000s and 2010s when professional skiers functioned as Swiss army knives, appearing in competitions and movies alike.
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That notion, alongside Dahlberg's fresh take on the camcorder, makes the movie feel simultaneously new and old in the best way possible (Author's note: Dahlberg isn't the only ski filmer to get into the camcorder game—camcorders are all the rage right now, particularly in street skiing).
MAGMA 3 is a call back to a different time—when you didn't need a massive production budget and a helicopter to make a ski movie—without losing sight of what's so special about freeskiing's current moment. It's proof that a few dedicated friends can make magic. In short, MAGMA 3 rocks.
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