Joel Whalen by Rob Heule

Joel, Andre Nutini and I have been slaving away over the past month, consuming far to much caffeine and spending way to many hours in front of computer screens to make sure we get our recent production Extra.Ordinary. completed by August 7th. We are entering the film in several festivals including IF3 in Montreal and the Banff Mountain Film Festival.
We are excited to announce that our film has already confirmed a showing at Freshtival in Calgary in October. Stay tunes on the exact date and time for that showing and send us your good karma so we get picked for the finals at IF3!

A selection of photos from my earlier days. Late teens to early 20’s. Getting my feet wet.

I found several rolls of  undeveloped black and white film recently and had no idea when they had been exposed and no idea what I would find on the them. I had prints made and man what a surprise. Most of them spanned the time that I spent in Norway and Denmark during 2005. Some of them were pretty neat so I shot them against some grass with my digi cam. Here are some of the best! I’ll be shooting the rest of them soon and there is some definite keepers. I’ll let you know when they are up!

Enjoy!

A few black and whites from my time in Norway and France. between 2004 and 2005.  Lots more to come. Just gotta put the ol’ scanner to use here!

Coming to your computer screen in August – a fresh look at one of the craziest things you’ll have ever seen. WRV’s is a light hearted look into the river surfing scene in Kodiak Valley BC.

Wave Riding Vehicle

It will also me entered in the Kendall Mountain Film Festivals “Short” category. That is of course if I can make the deadline! Here’s to that! Cheers!

This is going to be a super fun edit with tons of great surfing! The movie was shot in Hidef and the slo mo’s will blow you mind!

In the meantime check out the my little river surfing edit “Elk Love” from last year.

Now that my good man Jimmy Bones has shown me how to ride this horse called  a website, I’m going to do an experimental blog here. The following photos come from a little toy camera I recently purchased. It’s called a Holga and it’s pretty sweet. It’s an awesome camera for all the wrong reasons as you’ll seen in the photos. but the results are something that just can’t be found in today’s world of crispy clean digital imagery!  I took digital shots of the prints against different backgrounds and spent about 30 secs each in iphoto to make the colors pop a little more.

Enjoy the Holgas.

I’ll be keeping this blog up to date on a weekly… possible daily basis so make sure your checking in on a regular basis to see whats up behind the scenes at DBFilms.

We are currently working on a feature HD shred flick entitled “Extra.Ordinary.” a film being co-produced with Jah Raven Creation. It’s been an interesting year, not a lot of snow at home in Fernie and a brutal snowpack. But, we’ve had a fantastic time filming this winter and found plenty of pow and fun stuff to ride. We ramped it up to Full HD this year and the result is nothing short of mind bending. The film will be released sometime around September/October 2009 and will be available online here or at select shops in From Vancouver Eastwards all the way to Japan!

The Film will be showing at Freshtival in Calgary at the Uptown Theatre  on

We are also entering Extra.Ordinary. in IF3 in Montreal, the Banff Mountain Film Festival and the Kendall Mountain Film Festival in England.

Feel free to check out the film overview. Download the PDF file here.

A  couple of seasons back  Mikel Witlox, Glenn Johnsen, my brother Thom and I took a trip to Mt. Baker in Washington. It was a great road trip for a lot of reasons. We saw the famous Baker road gap, but couldn’t hit due to some lousy weather. We watch the baker banked slalom and got some awesome cameos for our film Cold lampin’, drove over night to Snoqualamie to link up with our buddy Jeff Arnold and help shoot a Volcom rail jam. But the real highlight for me was meeting a man named George. His last name I didn’t know at the time. It wasn’t until the sad news of George’s death in the spring that I learned his full name. It was George Dobis.

We were introduced to George by a Baker local who was working at the Mt. Baker snowboard shop. We were warned ahead of time that George was quite a character. Well within three days of being in the little town of Glacier at the bottom of Mt. Baker I realized that George was more then a character, he was a living legend that had helped shape the snowboard world as we know it.

We drank beers and talked into the early morning with George and the Baker locals one night and for the remainder of  our trip George let us plug our van into his work shop and we slept in it ever night we were in Glacier. We were lucky to be around for  George’s annual waxing/drinking session in his workshop. It turned out George had been hosting this night of free wax, free laughs and great times every year during the Baker Banked Slalom. The people that turned up for it were the people you’d expect to see at some kind of “Legends of Snowboarding” event, which I guess in a lot of ways the Baker Banked Slalom is.

Anyway, all the greats, past and present were there and they all knew George in a very personal way. It was easy to see his impact on the sport and its fore fathers. We later learned from George himself that he had mentored Craig Kelly and been like a father to Craig, during Kelly’s early days when he and his band of crazy brothers started shredding at Mt. Baker and revolutionizing snowboarding. George showed us a pair of custom made snowboard bindings, built from old stop signs. He had made a pair for Craig Kelly’s daughter he told us. George’s own daughter was also an champion racer during her prime.

Just before my trip to Baker I found out that my girlfriend at the time ( now my wife ) Miyuki was pregnant. I dropped the news on my brother and the other boys one day at the mountain. George was probably the 4th person I told. I announced it later that evening as the waxing session was getting started and I’ll never forget his words of encouragement, the ‘toast” and the ensuing great night that followed.

Anyway, the following link is a to an article in Frequency – The snowboarders journal. It’s written by someone a lot more qualified then I when it comes to talking about George Dobis. All I can say is that after my time around him I felt had really met someone special.

Please read.

Requiem for George Nobis from Frequency – The snowboarders journal – click here

Our presense is finally online, its going to be truly amazing. Keep your eyes peeled because this site is going to be updated daily, and your gonna love the shit we put up here its going to be insane!

Also wait till you see the trailer for our new movie, “The Beat Goes On”.  It’s shaping up nicely, and we should be releasing it soon!