AERIS a film by Lukas Huffman

Lukas Huffman is an ex-pro snowboarder. Remember his part from Mack Dawg's Shakedown? It changed the game in 2003. Lukas now lives in New York City and works as a filmmaker. He recently created a documentary for VICE Sports called "Lady Shredders," which follow the Too Hard crew. You can check it out HERE if you haven't seen it.

Lukas' latest endeavor is creating a full-length feature film about a female snowboarder. He wrote the script with his business partner, Phil Thomas, and he's now ready to put the wheels in motion. Here are some words from a recent conversation with Lukas about his new project: AERIS.

So, the title is “AERIS,” which is like a play on words, as in “the heir to the thrown” and “hang time” [laughs]. Phil and I wrote an outline to the script over a few years. The main character is a scrappy, small town person, who snowboards. Very early on, I made the decision to make the lead character a female, so that’s been kind of set in stone.

I was chomping at the bit to tell some female snowboard stories. We went to Wisconsin and spent a week with the Too Hard girls, and made a series for VICE Sports, called “Lady Shredders. It did really, really well and that’s now a main part of the pitch for AERIS. It’s a cool fuckin’ story. None of the Too Hard girls are really making it, industry wise, and that’s part of the story. If you’re a fuck-it kind of person in snowboarding, and you’re a girl, nobody wants to get behind you. But if you’re Danny Kass, and a loose canon, people just throw money at you. It’s a bit of a double-standard that those girls exemplify. And they rip, hard.

Spencer O’Brien is the person involved in AERIS because a big thing in making this movie is the stunts need to be really good, and she’s it. She’s one of the sickest park riders in the world, so she’s doing all the stunts for the lead character.

It’s also about the pressure of what it is to be Spencer, where the whole snowboard world is like, “What are you going to do for the sport this year?” On the best days, most people handle that fine. When I was pro and everyone was like, “What are you gonna do this year that’s 100 percent better than last year?” I know what it’s like.

Burton Girls is in, so the lead character’s dream is to ride for Burton and win the US Open. She’s pretty scrappy, got a deadbeat dad, and sells weed to fund her snowboarding. You know Shandy Campos? It’d be like if Shandy was a female and on the trajectory of Spencer [laughs].

What happens now is the Indiegogo campaign is out to raise a small amount of money for us to go out and film a short version this winter. In the biz, that’s called a “proof of concept.” The funding is tough because most people in the industry don’t know me and don’t know Phil. We’re nobodies. We just want to attract enough money, so we don’t have a super sketchy movie. The magic will be in how we can film the actual snowboarding.

If you support women's snowboarding and cool ideas, you can help Lukas make this film by throwing some loot at his INDIEGOGO page. There are some great rewards available if you donate, including a custom snowboard from Powder Jet.