FINDING MICHAEL PRODUCTION.
angles, and he would sometimes do more intimate filming with Spencer.” Hoare used a Sound Devices 833 recorder, Zaxcom radio mics with Sanken CS-M1 mics and Sennheiser MKH 8060 boom mics. For the trek in, he mounted the recorder in a bespoke rack mount backpack for quick use without having The aerial filming helicopter, which was equipped with a Red Dragon in a Shotover rig, provided incredible vistas of the Himalayas, but could only take the team so high due to the thin air. Brodie Hood, who performed duties as high-altitude camera operator on the documentary, was charged with taking drones up to where helicopters couldn’t go. “The team wasn’t sure if the drones would fly at 8000m, because it hadn’t been done before,” Hood recalls. “With the thin air, we wondered how long they would fly – if at all. But they were fine. The game of risk was how long they would stay up there. They weren’t that far off being as good as they are at sea level; we got around half an hour out of the battery, rather than 45 minutes.” He did come across bodies during filming, but being a rescue expert, he’s used to such unpleasant sightings. to open and close flight cases. REACHING NEW HEIGHTS
“You’re there to do a job,” he asserts. “One of the hardest parts of filming was having an idea of scale, with regards to what the body would be to the mountain. You might be flying the drone two metres off the ground, but it can look like it’s much further away. You don’t know if you’re too close or too far away.” In searching for closure for Matthews and family, the hope is that one of them belongs to Michael. Finding Michael is available on Disney+
TALE OF TWO TEAMS The main crew set up in base camp (below) while the search and rescue team made expeditions up the mountain with smaller cameras
13. MAY 2023
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