"Look Up" – A Love Letter to Winter

“Who are we in the face of untouched majesty? Is the person who started at the foot of this mountain the same person who carried themselves to the top of it? Is it the same person racing the wind back to the bottom, chasing their breath through trees and catching it in splashes of powder? The quiet here is loud enough to make space for asking these questions. The stillness here moves just enough to remind you the world is a living thing…” – Words of Shane Koyczan, as featured in Look Up.

Just about anything the folks at Sherpas Cinema touch becomes gold, and this “Love Note to Banff National Park” is no different. Created to celebrate Canada’s 150th year, the video combines some of the most beautiful mountains in the world with some of the finest skiing and nature cinematographers in North America.

“This wasn’t about producing another ski showreel, or commercial spot, but our intention with this project from the outset was to create a poetic, and visually-beautiful narrative; a film for the Park. The timing was perfect, with the world celebrating all-things Canada, so we quickly got to work with the creative team at Sherpas Cinema,” explains Pete Woods, General Manager of SkiBig3, the destination ski marketing organization for Banff National Park.

Narrated by celebrated Canadian Spoken Word poet Shane Koyczan, whom the producers coordinated with via the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the audio might be the most striking element of the project. According to Tim Symes at Sherpas Cinema, “The words Shane wrote weren’t simply the complement to the footage we were editing, or the story we were telling – but were completely shaping it. Shane’s poem set our whole narrative. As filmmakers, we were being guided by the beautiful words of Shane, with the words ‘Look Up’ then becoming the title.”

For those who have never been to Banff and its surrounding mountains, this project is certain to stir the soul to make plans to ski there soon.