White, along with a generation of East Coast skiers, were influenced by the SAS Films movie, Wicked . Photo: Ben Grunow uring the next three years, Parker was on fire. He had the opening segment of 2011’s After Dark , the closer of 2012’s Sunny , and a short-but-standout part in 2013’s Partly Cloudy . He took third in the X Games Real Ski Backcountry the same year, and second at the Red Bull Line Catcher competition. But even as a star, Parker struggled to fit the industry mold. “Parker’s closing segment of Sunny put a kind of a period and exclamation point on what had been a very fast track,” Freedle says. “After that, I think he needed to do something different, just to mix it up. When you reach success that early, you can’t necessarily keep it up.” That change of pace came during the summer of 2013, when Parker and Chris began dreaming of starting their own project. They envisioned something similar to their skiing: intentionally low key and style-centric, with complete freedom to let their creativity wander. At the time, webisodes like LINE’s Traveling Circus were bringing skiing directly from athlete to viewer, a perfect platform for what they had in mind. After enlisting Sean Logan to film and edit, they started The Big Picture and released a 26-second trailer that fall. D
The Ski Journal Volume 12, Issue 3: Page 68
