When a group of friends and I started looking for things to inspire a Japan 2017 ski tour, it didn’t take long to stumble across DPS Cinematic, a growing collection of videos on Japan from a ski brand ushering in The Shadow Campaign. Each video takes an elemental approach, looking at the types of conditions and sentiments you can expect when taking on terrain in this corner of the skiing world.

Ben Sturgulewski of Sturgefilm is the creative mind behind the clips, carefully toeing the line between snowsports euphoria and the kind of artistic display you would willingly show to your most cultured friends.

The Weight of Winter dropped first, an attempt to come to terms with the depth and density of Hokkaido snow storms. Gore-Tex and Outdoor Research are also behind The Shadow Campaign so their threads also have to come to terms with the conditions as three wanderers Stephan Drake, Piers Solomon and Santiago Guzman go about their daily pleasure. Alexander Ebert’s Truth sets the tempo for this video, a tint of Tarantino for these three outlaws to trample to.

The Vimeo description for The Shadow Campaign’s second film, The Warmth of Winter, says it all, set to Sylvan Esso’s Coffee:

The snow flies and the wind beats against the walls, but here, in the quiet and safety of a candlelit womb, the warmth and the wood wrap around like a blanket, and the mind melts into reflections on days gone by. Put the needle on the record, sit down by the fire, have a drink, and take shelter from the storm. There is no warmth like the warmth felt in winter.

For Volume III, DPS were over to the Swiss Alps to meet the enlightening Snowflake.