You'd be forgiven for thinking that when Visa Canada needed to fake a snowbound Torino for its Winter Olympics campaign, it wouldn't need to look any further than Calgary, host city of the 1988 games. But even in Canada the white stuff can't always be guaranteed in November.

With insufficient snow in Calgary, other former Olympic venues were also considered: Lillehammer (no snow at the time) and Albertville in France. But Munich, ideally situated for expeditions to the ski slopes of the Alpine glaciers, and with access to a full range of outdoor arenas, held the draw card. So Germany and Austria provided the perfect setting for both "Flame" and "First Day" (Leo Burnett, Canada), which show a variety of winter athletes training in seclusion, accompanied only by glowing flames of passion emitting from their backs.

"The mountains out west in Canada just didn't compare to the landscape in Germany and Austria," says agency producer Dena Thompson, noting that a sense of isolation and focus was vital. "We were aiming to recapture what it would look like while the athletes were training outside competition." "First Day" is set on the day after the Olympics have finished. "The athletes have left the village, no one is around, not even any spectators, and the athletes have gone back to training."

Eva Preger, executive producer at Toronto-based production company Soft Citizen, says as soon as she saw the scripts, she realized that "magical" locations were called for. "Sure, we have everything in Calgary, but the stadia are in urban areas, plus there's a very small crew base there; the prices would have skyrocketed because we would have had to fly them in."

In the end, it came down to numbers. Even with the additional travel and logistics, the cost for a six-day shoot in the Alps was comparable to doing it at home.

The previous experience of London-based director Jess Hall, who's also been a DP for 10 years, had some influence. He'd worked in Germany and knew what to expect in terms of crew, equipment and a level of technical expertise. The key to shooting in the Alps, he says, lies in the location scouting and the planning. Daylight is at a premium in November, and details and schedules have to be nailed down in advance with contingencies for weather.

"Working fast at 3,000 meters is difficult," Hall says. "And in winter, the sun is so low. When you're in the mountains, specific areas get sunlight at specific times - perhaps for just 15 minutes." Hall and his crew made good use of sun tracking software so they could always know where the sun would be.

There was an extra catch in terms of lighting: both spots use inferno extensively, and the references for the flames had to be shot so they would look right against the various surfaces when Spin's VFX artists set to work back in Toronto.

Up on the Kaunertal Glacier in Austria, where much of the skiing was shot, two days of scheduled shooting were threatened by massive snowfall. "It was a white-out," says Hall. "Three feet fell and visibility was down to 20 feet. But the next day, we had a perfect covering for shooting!"

Hall, who also has previous experience shooting athletes, says it's challenging because "they're moving so fast". "You have to find ways of framing them and moving the camera whilst getting that feeling of speed."

One of those shots, says Hall, was shot by mounting a camera on a snowmobile, which proved slightly treacherous. "You've only got room for the focus puller and the driver. We were lucky - we had an ex-European champion driver with us, because potentially it's very dangerous." Coordinating equipment, snowmobiles and the availability of the 'deserted' locations - in reality very much in use by training athletes and ice skating classes - fell to producer Tobias Seifert at Munich service company Add Pictures.

With his insider's knowledge of the location, Seifert could convince the crew to go higher, where the snow covering would be better. "By the time we were up on the glacier, we really managed to make the client feel that we actually had control of the sun."

Even with such perceived control, the shoot was a challenge, he says. You have to warn people that working at 3,000 meters is different and slower to anything else they might have experienced. ("It doesn't leave much oxygen for thinking," agrees Thompson.) "But we really managed well with a small crew - about 25 people - because we were well prepared for the project," Seifert says.

Not entirely, perhaps. Thompson says the creative team was convinced their hotel was haunted. Luckily, the schedule was so intense they didn't have to spend a lot of time there. In the end, as she points out, the most important thing was that "the avalanches co-operated with us."

GOOD TO KNOW

SMALL BUT MIGHTY: Small teams work well in Germany, according to Add Pictures' Tobias Seifert. Without unions, attitudes are more flexible. If the sun shines despite a bad forecast, people will happily forego the weather day that was called the night before.
CREW CONSIDERATIONS: On paper, he says, German crew wages and daily fees aren't the cheapest. But if you go to Prague or Bucharest, you soon find that every single lamp comes with its own operator and you end up with a crew of 100.
LOVE THE NIGHTLIFE: After days spent skiing, snowboarding and snowmobiling from shot to shot, the crew was ready to appreciate the warming reputation of good German beer and Gluwein. But pancake soup was a delicacy too far for some.
DINNER, ANYONE?: German mountain restaurants are no place for the committed vegetarian. Says Thompson: "If you didn't like schnitzel, you probably lost 10-15 pounds."