The Ongs – What makes ski families so special?

Those that have followed our work find that we often film other families we randomly meet on the mountain to be in our film shorts. 

Before we had a real following, we would put our daughter Nevada up to the task of asking unsuspecting parents if they would mind being in one of our ski films. 

It was Thanksgiving day, and it had snowed big in VT. Instead of having turkey with the fam, us Albas packed up the car and headed up to the Northeast Kingdom to ski Burke Mountain, what was sure to be the snowiest opening day. 

While we had never been before, we had passed it on our way back from Jay and knew we had to ski this last little corner of VT. The next 1 and ½ days we would film Resilience,we were actually planning on skiing 3 days, but the weather never cooperates, for us weekend warrior families. It was so cold, the fog on the summit was turning to rhyme, it was a beautiful site to see, but it was amazing that the camera battery did not fail. 

Getting to find a ski family turned out to be more challenging than we thought. After all, only the die-hards and not many families were out skiing in November. 

While we did not get a chance to film The Ongs that weekend, we kept in touch and they finally agreed to let us film them and we are so glad they did! 

You may not have heard, but sometimes coming up with the narration can be the hardest part of creating an Alba Adventure film.  With only a short amount of time to shoot, we often head home on Sunday night hoping that we captured enough candid shots to tell a story. 

More often than not, we can have a hard time turning those unplanned shots into a story.  During this process there can be many heated debates. Ray will have a vision of how he wants things to be and I will write something up in the more literal sense, and then Ray will come back and say, “No! Think more metaphorical.”  This will go back and forth until we finally work together.  

Then there were other times where we both get writer’s block and that is what happened with this one. When Ray gets an idea, he has to finish it he cannot stop. Ray had been editing this short all week and we kind of knew the direction of the ending, but the beginning needed work. How would we get the message to fit together with the end?

Well we finally took a break and decided to have date night.  Well we had a little too much Sangaria, came home and went to sleep.  Well Ray luckily had one of those dreams and in that dream we were fighting about the narration.  Apparently it seemed so real and he remembered most of what we typed on the computer screen and that is pretty much how we came up with the narration. So apparently, I am responsible for writing this one, but in Ray’s Dream. 

We hope you enjoy what may be our season finale. You just don’t know… Stay Tuned and PLEASE subscribe to our channel..

#skifamily

#skiBurke

#NikonZ6

Last Little Corner of Vermont

@aong617

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