It's probably the most personal project [The Fourth Phase] I've done, which changed the dynamic a little bit.

If we want authenticity we have to initiate it.

It would be really nice to have a venue stop in Japan someday. Japan would be perfect for it.

Ultimately it's a snowboarding film [Fourth Phase], of course, so the main thing that we wanted to celebrate was how awesome snowboarding is! Secondly, we wanted to celebrate the environment that we all shape our lives around. So the film documents myself and other like-minded individuals attempting to follow the hydrological cycles that shape the worlds we've committed our lives to.

I realized pretty quickly just how big and aggressive some of the mountains were down in Nagano Prefecture.

While researching the project [The Fourth Phase] I stumbled across this amazing research by a scientist called Dr Gerard Pollack who had done studies on what he called a 'fourth phase' of water.

Shin [Biyajima] rides down with this big ol' Japanese grin and giggle and I'm like what? Two years later, when I started planning the trip, I knew Shin was from the Hakuba area, and I didn't want to come film in Japan without a Japanese rider. Shin had the time and availability, and it worked out perfect.