"Everything's a gamble and that's why when it comes to film shoots, if I want to have 7 segments on film, I'll budget for 12. I pretty much expect at least 40% of anything we plan to fall apart."

Curt Morgan is one hell of a talented filmmaker. It is apparent that he could have moved on to more lucrative mainstream TV and feature film projects but chose to stay true to his roots and fulfill a passion to make the greatest snowboard films of all time.  His latest accomplishment, the mind blowing Art of Flight, is taking not only the shred world, but the world in general, by storm. Incorporating state-of-the-art cameras, camera-mounting systems, an outrageously talented crew and an uncanny ability to tell a great story through cinematography, voice-overs and candid interviews, Curt has changed snowboard movie making forever. So much so that during post production he had Dolby take notice of this project and the final sound mix was mastered at Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas's audio nirvana that has garnered no less than 18 Academy Awards since it's inception. Art of Flight is not only a core snowboard and public success, but is considered the same within true film making circles. Bravo Mr. Morgan, bravo.

I was going to write an introduction outlining Curt's early years and then throw to the interview, but it makes way more sense for the story teller to do what he does best...

I grew up in Albany, New York, unfortunately, and started riding at Jiminy Peak, which was about 25 minutes away in Massachusetts. It's super small but a lot of fun. I was involved with snowboarding, not that I'm not still, but in a different way. I've always been into photography and filming but snowboarding was kind of my thing from when I was a little kid. I moved up to Maine and worked at CVA (Carrabassett Valley Academy). I ended up breaking my back. I didn't actually know I did it at the time so I drove myself to the hospital because the mountain was already closed. About an hour later I found out it was broken and over the next few years I just kept re-breaking it. Eventually I had to quit snowboarding, which was fairly depressing and I spent about six months trying to figure out what I was going to do. I ended up going to film school up in Maine as a result. Film then became my passion. I went to Iceland for a while and honed my skills there, randomly, but that's kind of a long story. I then helped start up Grenade with Danny and Matt Kass and all those guys, and we started a production company with them. That lasted for a while and then I went on my own and started a company with Travis (Rice). We didn't really have a name for it. We made Community Project together, which he funded and I worked for him for a while until Oakley picked it up. Afterwards we took a little time off and I got involved with commercials and stuff like that for TV. We then got back together and made That's It, That's All.

Community Project trailer:

For That's It, That's All, you guys worked for an entire year with little to no financial backing except for your own bank accounts, how was that?
Yeah, we went to New Zealand and Travis put up, I don't know, a couple hundred grand and we did a shoot there. You know, the whole heli thing and it was really cool, we got to see and use the Cineflex for the first time. It was really eye opening. Red Bull - well, this is kind of funny ­- we wrapped a helicopter with the Red Bull logo in the hopes that with us doing that we'd be able to get them to sponsor the film (laughing). Quiksilver and Red Bull came in and backed it the second year, similar to Community Project where Oakley came in and backed us the second year. So yeah, that was That's It, That's All.

That's It, That's All trailer:

When you guys first stumbled across the Cineflex, was it fully developed or did you start toying with it a little?
Yeah, that was fully developed but we got to use it in it's infancy, which was cool. They were using it for Planet Earth and that's how I heard about it. I researched and found this guy, Tim Thompson, who's incredible and definitely inspires me, he had shot for Lord of the Rings and he owned the system. He gave us a really good deal and helped us out. We went and shot and it changed my life for sure. That was the very first time that I saw digital images that I thought looked better than film. So yeah, that was kind of my transition out of working with film. Not that I don't still love film, that was just the start of the move to digital. Then I made a little movie called Art of Flight (laughing) among other things. We started Brain Farm Digital Cinema, and a few things changed over there with ownership and so on and so forth. We built a pretty big production company that's going crazy right now.

(keep reading for more on Curt's winning gambles)