SHOOT STORY | FREE SOLO
The CN7x17 is a compact lens in the context of a zoom covering super-35mm sensors, but is still considerably bulkier than lenses often used for action sports and was, as Jimmy puts it, “hell to climb with. Huge packs. And the other thing is, it’s very hard to build out your system on the wall, so we had to have these giant packs that could fit the camera system pre-built. After two years we were all in very good shape.” Operating, he remembers, is “all handheld... you’re bracing it against yourself. At the end of all the takes you can hear the cameraman breathing heavily because they’re holding their breath. In the edit room you’d watch the shot finish and then you’d see the shot heaving up and down as the cameraman was breathing.” GRADE The film was graded by Stefan Sonnenfeld, alumnus of a huge variety of prominent feature films, at Company 3’s facility in New York. Jimmy’s preference was for a minimally affected image, with “everything looking as straight and realistic as possible,” emphasising the reality of the situation. “We’d shot a lot of different camera formats,” he says. “The C300s, 1D x, 5D Mark IV, the Alexa Mini, Red...” Jimmy is even willing to admit to a single GoPro shot in the film, though he would have preferred to avoid it. “100% no. We wanted cinema... we killed ourselves to carry those cameras up there.” “The other thing you don’t see through the trailer was our vérité film crew. We had a high-angle team and we had a cinema vérité team that was shooting all the things on the ground. It was important to us that we had a vérité film. The reason the film stands up is that it’s not a climbing film. It really dives into the emotional content around Alex’s decision, meeting this girl and falling in love, it brings up a lot more questions. That is really what rounds the film out... it was really important not to make just a sports documentary. It had to have a lot of layers and guts to it.” As for how you should see the film, Jimmy has a view on that, too. “You have to see it on the big screen,” he finishes. “As big a screen as possible.” FREE SOLO WON THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD AT THE TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL AND IS RELEASED ON SEPTEMBER 28 IN THE UNITED STATES.
“After trusting his skill and endurance over hundreds of handholds and footholds and controlling his fear for just under four hours, Honnold pulled his body over the last ledges. Chin along with his assistant Sam Crossley and cameraman Cheyne Lempe had rappelled down with their cameras from the top to follow Honnold as he climbed the upper half of the wall. Even using jumars – a type of mechanical winch – to hoist themselves up, the two had struggled to keep up with him.” Source: National Geographic’s Mark Synnott NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON HONNOLD
36 DEF I N I T ION | OCTOBER 20 1 8
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