Making a climbing movie is traditionally about technique and the endurance of making it to the top. For non-climbing folk these films can be, quite frankly, boring as sometimes these ascents take hours. How then to make a documentary that would appeal to non-climbers while keeping the purists happy?
Like any sport climbing has it’s own language and the term On Sight refers to climbing a face for the first time at the first attempt and without checking it beforehand – this is pure climbing and its very dangerous although you do have one rope that you are attaching as you climb. When you watch the film you’ll realise how necessary this rope is.
The film that Alastair Lee has made doesn’t necessarily rely on showing the intricacies of technique but follows the drama and the intensity of the climb.
Alastair Lee “On Sight is probably the fifth climbing DVD that I’ve made, I do about one a year. Production wise it’s the best thing that I’ve done. There was a very significant film made in 1997 called Hard Grit which was very much based on the style of climbing where you pre-practice the route first, so you do it on a safety rope before you try. That film set the style for climbing films for the next ten years. There has hardly been any On Sight climbing films just these pre-practise ones.
“There are several good reasons for that, the climbs are much faster because people know the route and know the moves. They’re not having to think to work anything out. Some of these short routes can be over in two or three minutes. It’s also much easier to arrange, they go out practising, they get better and better and feel more confident. It’s also much more of an arranged day, so you can get your camera crew there and your photographer.
“So pretty much all climbing films have been done this way from the half dozen companies who make this kind of thing. Hard Grip also captured the kind of characters who were knocking around then, it had a kind of ‘Brit pop’ feel to it.
“I’d kind of reach a point where I had seen enough really. It was all getting a bit predictable and no way near the kind of scary films climbing films should be. So that’s why I set off to make a film about On Sight climbing.”
Ironically On Sight has done what Hard Grit did ten years ago and has become the climbing film of the moment and one which has had an influential effect on climbers and non-climbers alike.
Budgets and friends
Alastair readily admits that his budgets for these films are very low so he has to, by default, adapt a guerrilla mindset to his filming. Ultimately that means shooting much of the footage himself but at the same time trying to consistently present a high production value.
The guerrilla’s philosophy says that you can make use of your friends but try not to kill them! With that in mind Alastair asked cameraman Ian Burton to help him film. This was to be on a favour basis when Ian was in between paying jobs. Inevitably Ian was drawn in to the subject matter and filmed more than he thought he would.
“I was the camera operator mostly for the wide shots where Alastair would be dangling on the ropes in the climber’s face. Working with Alastair is great because being a cameraman himself he knows what he wants and tells you clearly what he is after.”
If Ian wasn’t available it was up to Alastair to prepare the three cameras that they usually used for shooting. He might have help with someone who could press a record button but that was all. Here is a tape versus tapeless scenario that most shooters will recognise. Alastair’s main camera was a Sony EX1 which records to SxS flash media, the other cameras were HDV Canon cameras. On one shoot the nightmare scenario did happen when he didn’t have enough time left on his cards and had to start wiping scenes from the cards to free up some memory. Worse than that he only had time to look at the thumbnails while deciding which ones to delete. With a tape based camcorder just pop another in!
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