Our audience insight was that people don't just want to watch the XGames, they want to live it. Better yet, they want to be in it. So we brought our fans closer to the XGames by using the Skype platform.
Pro boarder Taylor Gold got into a heated Q&A session with his fans from a hot tub in Aspen.
This series was a surprisingly technical shoot. But that's what I loved about it. We were up in the mountains of Aspen in a remote location with very low temperatures while our subjects were in a hot tub for over an hour, plus the Skype calls had to be live. What you don't see above is the tech team working to maintain an uninterupted T1 connection in order to stream live video and audio. In addition the feeds were being captured in real time through the devices themselves. I can't say we didn't have our surprises but we managed to get through them all.
XGames legend Sage Kotsenburg "cold called" some lucky fans for a surprise chat on Skype. Check out their reactions when they came face to face to the man himself.
We got close and personal with freestyle skier Gus Kenworthy in an intimate interview with his fans on Skype. See what he likes to talk about in bed.