BuckNaked began as a dream before I even reached high-school. I made my first film when I was in 8th grade to accompany a speech I had written. The speech and film were about the most important influential place I had experienced at the time, Sun Valley, Idaho, just like my idol Warren Miller.
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I took this hobby to high school where I took a photo class and learned how to create my own prints. After that, filming and photography became serious passions, along with building jumps on the golf course. In college I slapped together my first film under the pseudonym BuckNaked called “Shotgunning Dew.” I was a look at our lives during winter in the North Country and a trip to SV. The following year I put more effort into my second project named after the most easily seen color to the human eye, “Chartreuse.” It was another look at winter through the eyes of college kids.
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After I graduated from St. Lawrence University I took off on a massive road trip with my roommate. The epic trip took us all over the continent, mountain biking, exploring and snapping photos. We ended up back where we started in Leadville, Colorado just in time for me to start work as a history apprentice at the High Mountain Institute. On December 17th my time was up in Leadville so I packed up and drove to Crested Butte. The next morning changed the course of my life forever.
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My first morning in the butte I woke up as excited as I have ever been, I was about to go explore my new home mountain for the first time! On the last run of the morning before I was about to head out of town to meet up with my family for the holidays, tragedy struck. In this case tragedy was a huge freakin rock and what it struck was my knee.
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Instead of training for the Freeskiing World Tour, filming a movie that I had been planning for months and getting a job, I was rehabbing my leg and trying to reassess what my priorities were. February 1st of 2009 I incorporated BuckNaked Visual Works, LLC with the vision of filming unknown skiers all over the rocky mountains who are out trying to break into the ski industry in any way possible.
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That summer I moved to Boston, Massachusettes to edit my movie and take a class at BU. I completed “One Winter” and moved to Jackson, Wyoming just in time to take the film on a 12 city film tour dubbed the BuckNaked Face Shot Tour 2009. Upon returning to Jackson I was enthused and set out to make my next big movie. The idea was to shoot all in Hi-Def and cover the pursuit of the local backcountry that is abundant in the Tetons.
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It isn’t always as simple as you think it’s going to be, and some years the snow doesn’t settle up in a way that is conducive or safe to go out and film. With a mixture of very spotty weather and various injuries at critical times, I was put in a position that would essentially make or break the dream. At the end of the winter I had an instalation of artwork at a local gallery in Jackson and moved to Boston. When I got there I realized there was in fact a story to be told about the season so I went to work, and somewhere mid june “Driven” was done.*
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I decided to present Driven in a new way. I called it the Pray For Snow Tour 2010. The tour was a 4 city series that was a string of events all very different from the last, custom tailored to the region. There was a hipster band at an NYC nightclub, an underground bar with electronica in cambridge, a huge music venue and funk bands in Denver and a log cabin bar with local band on the outskirts of Jackson.
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As we move forward into 2011 with a whole new concept I feel like it is always important to look back and appreciate our history and heritage. We’ve come a long way and we’re just getting started.
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-n. harrison buck, jr
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*it would later be updated days before the actual film premier in NYC on 10/16/10
