Talk about big! OK, to use the word, maybe it was even extreme. But watching snowboarders Craig Kelly, Victoria Jelouse, Brandon Ruff, and Terje Haakonson rip down steep Alaskan mountains on a seven-story screen put a whole new perspective on what these riders risk when they hit the mountains.

The new IMAX Extreme movie was previewed last night exclusively to sponsors and select industry VIPs at the Luxor hotel. The shots were mostly taken by helicopter flying overhead of the snowboarders, which gave a unique and sometimes dizzying perspective to the runs that the snowboarders were taking. The crowd of Mervin, Burton, Oakley, Quiksilver, Patagonia, and snowboard media representatives were hooting and oohing during the different scenes, especially the during the snowboarding and toe-in surfing segments.

Flimmaker Neils de Jong Franken said that after the initial I MAX film comes out to North American audiences in April, there will be six different half-hour "The Making Ofs" for TV, with one devoted solely to the snowboarding segment.

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