Disney Channel / Director: Paul Hoen
Cloud 9 centers around the lives of a group of young snowboarders who hang out and compete at the fictional ski resort Summit Valley. This is the snack shack at the bottom of the snowboard halfpipe.
We prefabbed this set off-site, and moving only at night, hauled it up to our site by snowcat in carefully ordered loads. It was built on a 12-foot deep pad of compacted snow at 9,000 feet elevation in temperatures well below zero. Although it was a temporary set, it had to be designed to withstand a potential snow load of 30,000 pounds. A nerve-racking experience all around.
The lunch counter in the interior of the snack shack.
Portable Summit Valley Resort sign, served us in a few locations.
The "historic" Summit Valley billboard. An escaped sled hurtles down the slope and crashes through the prized relic of the resort owner. Here it is rigged with det-cord, ready for a hole to be blown in it before it falls over and crashes on the snow.
In the story, a struggling family takes a ratty old retail space and tries to make a go of it by opening a dog spa and daycare for the pets of ski resort patrons. The challenge was to make it terrible without it being too terrible. We went with a 70's Swiss-inspired vibe.
A reverse of the shabby dog spa showing the counter.
Another angle of the shabby dog spa showing the dog washing stations.
The resort owner’s daughter (Dove Cameron) decides to throw down her gold card and give the sad shack a makeover. We originally had planned to build the nearly identical sets side by side to save maximize shooting time but ended up transforming the same room over a couple of days.
A view of the sexy remodeled kennels.
A reverse of the remodeled spa showing the counter and new dog washing area.
High School mascot sign for the Summit Valley HS Snow Leopards.
Will Cloud's (Luke Benward) basement bedroom set.
Uber-rich girl Kayla's (Dove Cameron) bedroom.
The movie ends with the climactic Fire and Ice snowboard championship, staged in the Park City superpipe, a 2002 Winter Olympic venue. We built this massive lighting/pyrotechnic installation on both sides of the 666-foot pipe. Since all these moving/theatrical lights and rigs were actually in shot, my team took the lead rather than the grip/electric departments.
Another light condition on the superpipe. We had enough instruments and programming capability to design a different look for every competitor. To enhance the light we had over 1,000 feet of smoke tube lining the pipe.
