Snowboard on the Rocks

Behind the scenes with Standard, Videograss and the La Familia crews. Check the photos. Gallery

A lot has been made about the "return of Kevin Jones," but I have to be honest here, he already quit snowboarding before I got into it, so he wasn't one of my big "snowboard heroes," you could say. What I mean is, I'm not being biased when I say his was a standout part. You've heard about his triple backflip by now, but beyond that, the dude can seriously ride. "To be a part of the twentieth film Standard has made is pretty incredible," said Jones when I cornered him for a quote. "To be a part of this gathering of so many snowboarders in one place celebrating together is nice, too."

Beyond that, "TB20" was what we all have come to expect from a Standard movie: a lot of slow mo, some heavy backing tracks, really big mountain focused with sweeping heli shots. Xavier De Le Rue is insane, booking it down what you really could call "extreme" big mountain lines. Halldor Helgason's part is really creative, mostly urban with a lot of trick variations and feature variation. Kimmy Fasani had a solid showing, with a double backflip and some big mountain lines and some booter shots, but overall I thought the women's part was weaker than last year's movie, and definitely a lot shorter.

The difference between the Standard movie and the Technine and Videograss movies is pretty huge. The first is very big mountain, very much like a snowboarding dream that takes place is far out zones like Alaska and deep in Canada. "La Familia," in contrast is the opposite of that. Technine movies are so gritty. Sometimes it's overkill, but the locations they shot in -- coming from the perspective of a photographer who shoots urban snowboarding -- were pretty incredible. It seems like they're trespassing everywhere they go, jumping into spots that when I go to I'm scared that I'm going to get arrested and get all my stuff taken away. It's kind of incredible that they get away with it.

The best thing about Videograss movies is they're always shooting in environments where people just are walking down the street, not expecting to see snowboarding happen. It's like something you would tell your roommate when you got home, like, "Man, I saw these guys snowboarding on this statue in Washington D.C. It was crazy!" There is a lot of fun, yet technical snowboarding in "Shoot the Moon," shot on features that are really creative -- almost features within features within features. It's pretty cool.

All in all, it was a great night. Some came for the snowboarding, others for the music, and everyone walked away satisfied. The best thing about the event was the variety of acts. Snowboard on the Rocks founders Pat Milbery, Adam Schmidt and Andrew Heard really stepped it up from last year's event.

"I feel like the wave length of the snowboard crews integrated very well with the wavelengths of the musicians," said Milbery, "so we really tried to emphasize that. The connection of the two is the most important. And that's what made this event so successful!"