Ladies Behind the Lens

Ladies behind the lens is the passion project of Hannah Marshall. Hand selecting a group of five creative ladies to develop the skills to produce their own mini film, with the aim to inspire and encourage more females to get behind the lens in the adventure, ski and snowboard filmmaking industry.

Working for the Cardrona and Treble Cone marketing team, Hannah is constantly in the snow space. Watching a lot of snow content and films, whilst attending a women’s pre winter film night one year she noticed that there were lots of inspiring stories of amazing women doing amazing things, all told by men. Watching the credits she noticed how underrepresented women were in roles behind the camera and wondered, ‘why is that?’

With an interest in storytelling, Hannah wanted to learn film making but didn’t see a clear pathway and didn’t think she could hold herself accountable to do it by herself. Finding herself with extra downtime last year after rupturing her Achilles tendon, Hannah started pondering the idea mid-winter and started networking with some local women in the industry, deciding to set up a mentorship structure. Putting out an application this year, the difficult task of shortlisting the 80 + applicants down to herself and 4 others followed.

Supported by The North Face, with the help of the mentors, a group of five super creative and talented women, all with different ideas and skill sets, women passionate about photography and film, all bringing their own flair to the group and learning from each other were chosen.

Being very hands on, it was ideal for applicants to be in the wider Queenstown/Wanaka area. We’re meeting every second week leading up to winter, and during winter we’ll be together every week shooting in the mountains. The idea was to have five women snow videographer mentors which was definitely a challenge because there aren’t that many, the whole reason for starting this project. But looking further afield Hannah found other women in the wider adventure industry, all bringing something different to the table. The finest females in filmmaking.

“It’s been a lot of work to get it up and running, but it’s been super rewarding and we’re hoping to do a good job of putting something pretty cool together,” says Hannah.

The idea with this project is for it to be continued with a new group of five women producing a different adventure film. “I’m excited to see how the project can continue to evolve with new creative women with awesome ideas.” Hannah tells me.