Fancy yourself as a film-maker? Want to work with the world’s best riders? Now/Here’s your chance…

We’ve teamed up with Absinthe once again to put on a pretty special kind of competition, ‘Can You Cut It?’, giving budding snowboard film-makers the chance to edit footage from their film. The latest movie, Now/Here, features a veritable galaxy of snowboarding superstars – including Nicholas Müller, Wolle Nyvelt, Gigi Rüf, Jake Blauvelt, Romain de Marchi and JP Solberg. Not only will you have the chance to work with these guys’ footage, but the winner of the comp will get their edit included as an extra on next year’s Absinthe DVD!

If, like us, you’re looking at that rider list and weeing yourself a bit in excitement, here’s how to get involved:

1) Go to the toilet and calm yourself down.
2) Now get excited again and download the raw footage and sponsor logos here. Note: This is a 3GB file.
3) Be careful, this part has changed a little bit since last year. We now want you to edit the footage into an alternative teaser for the film. There are a few rules as well: Your teaser should be no longer than three minutes, and should use no more than one song. It should include the film’s title, Now/Here, but you can style that however you want to fit the mood of your piece. It also needs to include all the sponsors’ logos we give you in the download, as well as the Absinthe Films and Whitelines logos. Otherwise, go wild. Use any program, graphics or editing techniques you like to make sure your edit is the best.
4) Once you’ve completed your masterpiece, upload it to mpora.com before January 31st 2011, making sure to tag it WLNowHere. The tag is really important, cos otherwise your video will get lost in the mass of snowboard footage up there.

All the teasers will be available to watch on a dedicated new section of the WL site. Patrick ‘Brusti’ Armbruster himself will then help narrow the entries down to a top 10, and the winning video will be decided by a public vote. Runners-up will get a collection of t-shirts, stickers and other goodies from Absinthe and their sponsors.

Of course this comp is about much more than just winning, it’s about showing your editing skills to the snowboarding world. Who knows, it might just kick start an editing career. Whether you’re using an Early Learning Centre Leapfrog laptop or editing with Avid on the latest 12-core Mac Pro, we want to see your efforts – good editing is about getting the feel right, not just technique. Have a look at the official Now/Here teaser for inspiration, check out Brusti’s picks and comments from last year’s comp for a bit of guidance, and get involved!