In the past decade, I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time at adventure film festivals, watching beautiful and inspiring movies on the big screens at Banff, Mountainfilm, Five Point, Kendal, and others. I even got to direct and produce a few short films that showed in those places, and I got to rub elbows with talented directors, cinematographers, and storytellers there. It was a true joy.
But lately, I’ve been getting inspired by the films I’ve seen on YouTube by people like the Australian adventurer Beau Miles, my friend Ryan Van Duzer, and other people, who sometimes have a whole bunch of people involved in the making of their films, and sometimes just do it all themselves.
So when I started thinking about making a little film about the adventure I call “The Seven Summits of My Neighborhood,” I wanted to see if I could pull something together with only the equipment I could carry in a running vest: A GoPro on a small GorillaPod and my iPhone. I did hire a friend to do some drone shots, another friend to make some fun music, and one more friend to polish up my editing (and more importantly, cut footage I couldn’t bring myself to cut). But that’s it.
I don’t think anyone’s going to recreate this adventure exactly (nor would I recommend it), but I hope it might encourage people to make up their own contrived thing to do with a day or a week’s worth of days. I love this kind of stuff.
