Making of Eurogap the movie

So we got invited to do a “small demo” at the local hill close to St. Petersburg. The crew was supposed to be Joni, Niki, Fredu, filmer Jaakko and photographer Peter. Fredu didn’t go though… smart move maybe yes/no? We really had no expectations what will happen, just took the train there too see what’s up. Here’s a teaser for the demo. Pretty epic uh?

We had no idea about this trip before we got there. Here’s Joni and Niki clueless in the train.

After a quick arrival seremony we had some late night snack at the local strip club… as usual. Here’s the view from our table.

Here’s pretty much the only cool thing we could find. It was ok to hit this, but for some reason we had only few minutes to do it before we had to quit for “security reasons”.

Strictly forbidden!

Nightlife in Russia is pretty hectic. Ready for the demo mr. Malmi?

We had a nice 14 hour session at Serena ski resort close to Helsinki. Shot few picknic tables with a cable cam.

Here’s Markku enjoying his cup of coffee after the session at 8am . Looking a bit tired there buddy!

Fredu instead looked like he normally does at 8am.

The next day Niki and Markku got some shots from this closeout rail.

Also, Heppu demonstrating on how to hold a grab here.

Ok so Eero and Heikki went to the X-games and Holymoses.se is back in Sweden. Meanwhile in Finland the rest of the crew has been shooting more urban stuff.
Here’s our current crew, youngblood  Niki Korpela and Joni Malmi at the legendary Nosturi-ledge (also known as Malmi-ledge, according to Malmi).

Niki is still learning. You might wanna wax your board before gapping this thing.

Photographer Daniel Blom from Sweden stopped by and got some really sweet flicks.
Heja Sverige. Min pappa har en segelbåt.

Fredu got hurt during the last weekend. We’re not sure how, but here’s the latest memory.
He says his wrist has been hurting, but it should be ok after few more days.
The pic is from a dinner party at some Russian style restaurant. We figured we should practise some manners cause part of the crew is leaving to St. Petersburg next week.

Heikki and Eero did it again! They made it to the biggest online newspaper in finland by teaching Paris Hilton and Stephanie Pratt from “The Hills” how to snowboard in Park City, Utah! The video of this episode “One night in Heikki with Eero on top” will be coming with Euro Gap 3 this fall!
www.iltalehti.fi

…by gapping over these church stairs

Read the story from here
(in finnish only, sorry)
Some funny comments from religious people!

So during the last month of filming urban stuff we’ve been dealing with the Finnish police force only 3 times. It’s funny how year after year they care even less about snowboarders on their 4am filming missions with loud generators and bright filming lights. Seems like they know what’s up these days… probably thanks to the Sorsa Project and Tracking Eero TV-shows, they even know the guys in our crew.

Episode 1:

We were hitting this gap-to-wallride -thingy around 6pm when 2 police cars stopped by. After 10minutes of staring at us Fredu went to ask them if everything was ok… “Yeah we just got this random call from some old lady and had to come check this out. Looks really cool! Who are the riders hitting that thing?” After dropping some names the officer asked Fredu if he can stick around and keep watching his favorite riders!

Episode 2:

3am spot next to a 4 lane freeway. A police car pulled over and 2 officers started running towards us like they were about to arrest us. Suddenly they stopped and said:
-”Whatta f…? What are you guys doing?”
-”Just filming some snowboarding. Is that ok?”
-”Yeah we just got a call that there was a big fight here. Fuck people are stupid. So over it.”

Episode 3:

Here’s Niki, standing on the top of a drop-in ramp. Under the bridge there’s a busy freeway. According to the cops it looks like the guy is about to kill himself, if you look from under the bridge. Can you believe it!?
No worries though! Once they figured out we were filming they got stoked, wished us luck and left.

Yesterday was a hard day at the office again! Heikki did a spot in the city with Erin Comstock, who was in town too! A nice rail with a cliff transfer on the other side. Both got nice shots and finished at midnight! From there on, since stupid us only have one pair of shovels and other equipement, we made a switch and continued with Eero, Fredu and Hampus to an ugly ass suburb ghetto called Kerava! All this at 1am! Setup everything on this wallride kinda thingy and it all looked quite good, but in the end all we got was just knarly slams, very dry and tired humour! Finished at 5 in the morning when people started to go to work…Drove home and made it to bed one minute after 6 o´clock am! Shiet! Here is a picture of Heikki at aprox 1.20am after shooting for the entire evening! Luxury dinner! Spinach pancakes straight from the microwave! Tough life! Waiting for those sunny powdery awesomey sweetey powder days in Europe and Japan!!!

Sometimes you need some lights to get the job done!

Last time Helsinki had this much snow was in 1973. This leaves us with a good opportunity to play in our home field. We’ve been filming for 3 weeks now and things are starting to look pretty good!