'Betty Ford' is the latest movie from Beyond Medals and is set to drop online fall 2020. We caught up with Kevin Backström to find a little bit more about their latest video project and how the current Corona Virus situation is impacting their plans for the rest of the year.

Interview by Theo Acworth

You guys have made a lot of movies. How do you keep the fire burning?

I guess cruising with all the homies keeps it going for us, always fun and we try to mix it up a bit each year. We have been working with different filmers and editors. Last season we had some surf and skate in there and a full movie mixed with all riders, Zootapes killed it with the filming and editing and gave a new unique look to it. He shot a lot of the movie on 16mm as well and that made a big difference compared to the previous years. This year we are back on high res cameras and our main goal is to films parts and hopefully we can make that happen under these circumstances.

Tell us what’s up with Betty Ford? 

The teaser will tell you what it’s all about! Our plan was just to try and get out there as much as possible and shoot. We are the same crew as back in the days which is me, Tor Lundström, Sebbe De Buck, David Djité & Max Buri. We filmed in Laax, Austria and France so far. Hopefully we can get some more days of shooting if the world lets us. Gotta stay safe though.

We’ve seen a lot of pretty heavy side hit action on your insta, is that something we’ll see a lot of in the movie?

We get inspired by watching Arthur and we really enjoy riding side hits so we did a little bit of that early this season. The plan was to shoot more side hits now in springtime but Corona shut us down.

Any particular standouts from the winter?

Sebbe got a pretty insane shot in France a few weeks ago. It was a big hike to get speed for this feature, it was cooking in the sun and the landing was gnarly so he struggled a bit to put it down. He drops in, random snowboard guy rides right in front off the takeoff eats shit and Sebbe almost hits him, still goes for it and stomps! There was a lot of people watching from the slope and everyone went crazy.

That sounds rad, stoked to see that shot! Who was running cameras for this one? 

We went back to the roots and started filming with Diggles, we had a few years break so it was nice to get the band back together and shoot again. He was kind of our mentor back in the days telling us where snow is good and what can work and not and it was pretty much the same this year which was nice. We have also been shooting with Colden Rand, a sick up and coming filmer from the states.

What other shooting plans did you guys have before Corona shut things down?

We definitely got shut down real quick. We missed the best part of the season shooting spring park in Laax which we all looked forward to. We missed a few weeks shooting backcountry as well. Hopefully we can make it up to Riks and keep shooting there so we can get this movie together. If not I guess we have to send it down to NZ this summer. Maybe that won’t work either, who knows.. 

And to close things out, you got any BYNDMDLS tips for dealing with lockdown?

Booze.

Thanks for the insight Kev, stay safe out there.

Starring:
Kevin Backström
Tor Lundström
Sebbe De Buck
David Djité
Max Buri

Sponsors:
Monster Energy
Laax
Bataleon Snowboards
Capita Snowboards
Union Bindings
Riders Hotel

Music:
Small Million - Outro (Cathedrals)