Scott Gaffney

Bio

Director

Scott Gaffney grew up in northern New York, ripping up Big Tupper Ski Area from the age of 3. He went to Ithaca College with the intent of doing something meaningful in the television industry, but during his junior year he saw Greg Stump’s Blizzard of Aahhh’s, and from that point on responsibility was thrown to the curb. Skiing became his principal focus in every respect; for the course Autobiography, he entitled his 100+ page work “Pursuing a Passion”, which essentially described how everything in his life had led to this: going skiing. And the culmination of his collegiate career—a 12 minute documentary video—was entitled “A Need to Fly” and simply documented his own need for this: going skiing. He moved to Colorado after graduation in ‘91, where he skied Arapahoe Basin by day and watched chairs spin as a Keystone lift op by night.
With a Hi-8 camera that first season, he shot friends and compiled his premiere video, Adrenaline Descents. The following year Gaffney patrolled at Keystone and frequented A-Basin and its surrounding backcountry and Berthoud Pass. He got in over 200 days in the 92’93 season and worked on another video, The Edge of Existence. He slept in his car in Crested Butte while at the International Ski Film Festival where the video took second in the ‘Adventure’ category. With a $2,000 budget, he had bettered Warren Miller.
Gaffney moved to Tahoe and Squaw Valley for the 93-94 season and has lived there since. In ‘95 he bussed tables and released the cult classic, Walls of Freedom, which was awarded “Movie of the Year” by Skiing magazine. Following the success of Walls, he teamed up with the DesLauriers brothers and The North Face for the films breathe and The Promised Land. With a more substantial budget, Gaffney started shooting 16mm film as he experienced his first real ski travel with trips to Nepal, Europe and Alaska, the latter involving a week and a half camped on a glacier with his hero, Scot Schmidt. He had realized a seemingly unrealistic collegiate dream in just seven years.
In ‘98, following Steve Winter’s helicopter crash, Gaffney teamed up with MSP on Sick Sense as a principal cinematographer. In 1999 he made his own film again, 1999, another fairly underground classic that was named Movie of the Year by Freeskier magazine. Since then, he has stuck with MSP as cinematographer/co-creative director throughout the Ski Movie trilogy and for Focused, Yearbook, Hit List and Push.
To satisfy his own creative interests, during that time he also created There’s Something About McConkey in 2001—which was awarded Best of Snowsports at the Grenoble Film Festival in France—and Immersion in 2003—which won Best Cinematography out of all action sports films at X-Dance.
But above all, Gaffney considers himself a skier. He’s been featured on the cover of Freeze and Powder magazines and was named one of the 50 Best Skiers in North America by Powder in 2000. He relishes his playtime, and he figures he’s simply found a way to combine his passion for skiing and creating through his still photos, magazine writing and ski films.
He relishes his filming experiences—traveling and working with friends and several of the most talented rippers on the planet in locales he never could have envisioned visiting—and he appreciates MSP letting him do what he does best: ski, shoot and edit. To sum it up it the most clichéd manner possible: he’s living the dream.