Posted by: Goran Razic
27.12.2017
The complete organization agreed that the event at Bakačeva Street was a kind of extra World Cup race, but in a whole new format and ambiance.
Preparations for two races on Sljeme and one city race started pretty early. Already in October I gathered (never bigger) team of photographers and cameramen and we were attending numerous organizational meetings through every detail of the events that took place. The record-breaking photo & video team, which numbered 12 people in the days of the race, had quite demanding but also creative tasks.
In agreement with V. Pavlek, I was assigned with photographing and recording the preparation of the slope, which required about 20 visits to Sljeme to capture all stages of the preparation. The result is the movie Sljeme Crveni Spust - Making of. In addition, short films for studio TV shows and social networks with Ivica Kostelić, Leona Popović and Filip Zubčić were also needed.
Ivica Kostelić - 1 min TV announcement
But this was just a warming up for the main job in video production. As the former and current winners of the World Ski Cup were participating in the City Event in Bakačeva Street, short 1-minute overview for each of them was made (18 in total!). A seemingly trivial task took over a month of digging in the HRT archives to retrieve footage of legends like Alberto Tomba, Marc Girardelli, Jean Claude Killy, Charles Schranz, Petra Kronberger or Pernilla Wiberg ... Additionaly Swiss, Austrian, German and Italian national televisions also helped with their archives and just about seven days before the race I completed the materials. It was only a matter of figuring out an intro, music, look and feel of short clips in a way to raise the whole production level of this great event. Since the whole concept of competition was modeled on the opening of the Olympic Games, with some sort of defilement of the countries of the World Cup organizers, the country's animation was supposed to be designed as well, which was to be displayed on TV and a video wall in parallel with their exit on the track. A bunch of tasks that were done almost in photo-finish, with the latest rendering of material in New Year's Eve.
Toghether with the HRT camera and air shots, already mentioned valuable photo and video team at the same time recorded the preparation of Bakačeva Street and the construction of a ski slope in the city center to have enough material for "aftermovie" within 48 hours after the event...
All this would be quite enough for ourselves. But there were also regular races of the Ski World Cup at Sljeme where we covered a complete photo production with two photographers on the course, one in the finish area, two in the stands and Platinum / Gold tents, one in celebrity-wall photo point and one in the party area on Krumpirište.
And finally ... all the jobs were done successfully. Even though it was 16 hours a day, everything has come to an end and behind us are the materials we are all very proud of.
(Photo: Goran Razić, KL-Photo, Mitja S. Bricelj, Primož Jerončić)
