- This video is a behind the scenes
on how I created my climbing film.
I'm gonna show you some cool stuff
that happened when I was up on the mountain.
And also we're gonna dig in to the Nikon Z6 Filmmaker's kit.
That is the camera and the setup that I used
to film this entire project.
Let's get after it.
(upbeat music)
Okay so you could see I am at home right now.
Now I built a little blackout scene.
It's actually quite simple, I just have the Nikon Z6.
I'm recording using the Ninja V monitor.
I have couple lights set up.
And I just have a plank behind me.
And I built this set
to basically create this black background.
So two lights, one key, one hair light
and that's how I create this look.
I'm using the Nikon with the 35 millimeter 1.8
to get that really shallow depth of field.
And with the Ninja V, I can get 10 bit
so that footage looks fantastic.
(upbeat music)
So I just got back from three days of climbing in Canada.
Before we can show you some more behind the scenes,
what I wanted to do is just explain the gear that I'm using
so for this entire film
and for this entire behind the scenes,
I'm using the Nikon Z6 Filmmaker's Kit.
That is the only gear that I brought with me up to Canada.
So this is the Nikon Z6 Filmmaker's kit.
You've got the MOZA Air 2.
You've got the Rode VideoMic Pro+.
This is one of my favorite mics.
It's the one I've been using for a very long time.
You get an arm so you can attach the Ninja V to the Gimbal.
You have your Ninja V which I'm recording on right now.
You've got the Nikon Z6, obviously,
and then you got the 24 to 70 which is
the perfect kind of all around lens,
and it's great just to have on your camera at all times.
There's a lot of times during this climb
where I would just keep the 24 to 70 on my camera
because I knew I'd have a range of focal lengths
and I was able to get some pretty awesome footage.
Now for this climb specifically, I added on
a few more pieces of gear.
I have the Nikkor 50 millimeter 1.8,
the 35 millimeter 1.8, which I'm shooting on right now.
And just a bunch of extra batteries.
So for this behind the scenes, and for my climbing video,
I shot it entirely using the Nikon Z6.
No other cameras were used when I was making these videos.
And the reason for that is that I really wanna show
the power of the Nikon Z6.
This camera is packed into a small body
which allows me to take it up on the mountain
and get some of these shots that you can't get
with bigger setups.
Now I also brought along the entire kit
on some of the days on climbing and you'll see
when we had more freedom and flexibility
to be able to bring gear with us, I was able
to pack the entire kit.
But when it came to the summit day, when we're really
stripping down our packs, I only brought
the Nikon Z6 and I just handheld it,
and I was still able to get some pretty excellent footage,
even though I was just running gunning with the camera,
I had the 24 to 70 on most of the day,
and I only brought the 50 millimeter
to get some specific shots when I was up there.
So very stripped down kit for that last day.
(upbeat music)
What's up guys?
- What's up man?
- What up!
- C'mon.
(upbeat music)
So this is day one.
I just arrived into the Canadian Rockies.
We're in a hotel room obviously.
This isn't on the side of a mountain
but I have a script of things that I wanna shoot.
I have kind of the story structure.
I have it all written out.
I have some voice over.
Some moments that I wanna capture.
It's loose though because a lot of things
are gonna be fluctuating once we actually
get up to the mountain because we'd never been here.
We have a guide service who obviously knows the mountain.
We trust them, that's why we hired them
so they can navigate us through the glacier,
and give us the flexibility to be able to shoot the film.
But I need to know what I'm shooting.
So let's talk about my process for a minute.
What I do is I outline first.
So I work on my outline, I come up with the story,
what I'm gonna do.
Then from there, as I start working on
and filling in the pieces, and I create some voiceover work,
done some things that I wanna capture on camera.
But then from there, I now am breaking down my script
and my talking bits, and everything
that I've kind of come up with, my ideas, into a shot list.
When you have that plan, when you have
shot by shot by shot, gives you a structure
so you don't get out there and you're not like
how do I film this.
You have to plan things and so, my focus right now
is just working on planning.
Just coming up with the entire shot list
and then I'm gonna go over it with the guys tonight.
And then we'll meet up with the guides in the morning
and go from there.
(upbeat music)
- My name is Daire.
I'm a guide with Yamnuska Mountain Adventures in Canmore
with these guys, showing them around the area.
- My name is Tak, originally from Japan.
Ah today we are going to Athabasca Glacier
and find a nice crevasse, you know,
try to ice climbing crevasse rescue stuff.
- Then tomorrow we're gonna do a peak,
which is just beyond these hills here.
So we're gonna do an eleven-thousander.
It's a big day, Alpinestars 12 hour day,
with lots of terrain and complex glacier travel to Crocks.
- I'm so psyched climbing with you guys.
(upbeat music)
- Okay so I just got lowered into a crevasse.
I've got an ice screw.
That's basically holding me up right now.
We're gonna do some ice climbing down here
and I'm gonna film from below.
(upbeat music)
Now let's talk about some of the issues
that I encountered when I was up there filming.
So when I'm on a mountain, their size and weight
comes into play all the time and so, usually
I have a bunch of smaller cameras.
And like I said earlier, I really focused
on just bringing the Nikon Z6 and that's it.
And one of the strengths of this camera is that
it is a full frame camera but it's so small.
So it's not really adding that much extra weight
than I typically bring on my climbs.
Now obviously the things that you encounter on mountains
is freezing weather, you have wind, you have snow,
you have a lot of water.
It's frozen but it does melt and get all over the camera.
So I was working with gloves
because it is extremely cold up there.
And with the Nikon, I was able to set up the eye menu,
which is on the back, there's this eye menu
that you can set up and you can put all the things
that you need accessible.
You can also map out a bunch of buttons.
There's a couple here on the front.
There's a few on the top, on the back.
And what I did was take the things that I needed
to have access to when I was out shooting,
and map those out on the camera super accessible
so I can hit it with my gloves and not have to worry
about stripping my hands off to be able to change settings.
So with the Nikon, I found it super easy
to be able to get the shots and be able to switch
between my slow motion and my real-time footage.
I was shooting both at 4K and also slow motion.
So I was shooting at 120 frames per second.
The majority of what I shot on was between
those two frame rates.
Now one thing that I found that I really liked
about this camera is that you also have
120 frames per second, that's not a veritable frame rate.
So veritable frame rate basically means
that it's gonna auto create the slow motion for you.
But what the Nikon had is a non-veritable frame rate,
120 frames per second, which means that
(wind blowing) it's still capturing audio.
So there are moments where I might want
something slow motion but I also wanna capture audio
and might be able to use this for real-time footage.
So that's when I put it into that mode
so that I was still capturing audio
and I could use it as my real-time footage.
We're supposed to be up at 3:00 this morning,
headed for the summit and woke up at 3:00,
pouring down rain, completely got rained out so
we had to kind of switch our plans a little bit
and we decided to sleep in and let the rain subside,
which is about 6:00, 7:00 o'clock.
Yeah today's gonna be another day where we'll do
some filming and go explore, kind of the lower levels
of the mountain and then tomorrow,
we're gonna go for the summit.
So I brought this case along with me.
This is just a simple little case that I have.
It fits like one camera in here.
And it has a few clips on it.
So what I did to make it accessible
when I was on the mountain,
is either I'd have the 24 to 70 on, the 50 or the 35.
I would just choose a lens for a period of time.
And so when you're climbing,
you basically will climb for a section.
So maybe it's an hour or a little bit longer
depending on the conditions and then you take a break.
You get off your feet, you get some food,
you get some water, you chill.
It's a great time to do a lens swap.
(wind blowing) We have like a perfect day for a climb.
So we started at 4:00 a.m., climb through the night
And sun is just peeking over the mountain now.
But (wind blowing) we've just been glacier travel
back and forth, and next stop is the peak.
So what I would do is I would have
one of the lenses on the Nikon Z6.
I would have the 24-70 and that lens would just stay on
for that period of time.
Because this is so small,
it just fits on one of these cases.
Somewhat protected, it's not
the most protected in the world.
It's still pretty thin but, I can hang this off
my climbing harness and so I'd have a carabiner
attached to this and I'd have it roped up
so it was just on my hip the entire time.
What I was able to do is just unzip this,
pull this out, pause for a second,
grab some shots of the climbers up ahead
of the conditions and where I'm at,
be able to slip this back into this case
and keep climbing.
So I'm not having to pull off my backpack.
I wasn't having to strip a bunch of stuff off
but I was able to have this camera accessible.
And then when I would stop for our breaks,
I'd pull the camera out and switch lenses
and go to another focal length.
And that's how I was able to get a variety of shots.
Now the reason that I really wanted to use
the 50 and the 35 is that 1.8.
So having a focal length of 1.8 gives you
that super shallow depth of field,
that very cinematic look.
And so the 24 to 70 is your perfect all around lens.
You can still get some shallow depth of field.
But if you really wanna get that super shallow,
the Nikor 1.8s are amazing, and they are super small.
I really like these lenses.
I'm a big fan of the 35 and the 50
and I used them for a ton of shooting on this film.
I would not have been able to shoot this film
and get all this footage that I was able to get
if I had to pack this camera in my backpack.
The only reason that I was able
to capture some of these shots was that I had it on my hip
and I was able to pull it out and grab the shots
while I was climbing.
Now there's moments where I would pause,
but there was also moments where it was a little bit safe
and I would pull it out and actually be shooting
while we were walking.
And I didn't have to stop everyone, and that's one thing
when it comes to these climbs,
if we were stopping, setting up shots,
stopping, setting up shots the entire time,
we probably wouldn't have never summited.
Instead, we were able to move quick
and keep at a steady pace because my camera
was so accessible and there was only moments
where I really had to stop and set up shots.
A lot of it, especially on those climb days,
was run and gun style of shooting.
So I was just pulling it out, documentary-style,
grabbing some shots, putting the camera back
and moving forward.
Let's talk about something that I found is a major strength
when it comes to the Nikon Z6.
So when I was out shooting,
I couldn't always be in manual exposure.
'Cause the conditions were constantly changing,
I had gloves on, it was hard for me to
sit there and judge exposure with sunglasses.
One thing that happens when you're up climbing is
you have these super dark sunglasses
to kill all the reflection.
So their polarized, they're super dark,
so it is hard to see screens.
So what I would do just to keep things moving,
keep things easy is rely on the auto exposure
and also the auto focus.
So I've dialed into the settings to find
what works best for me but in terms of exposure,
the auto exposure is dead on, like most of the time.
I didn't really have any issues
and I'm looking back at the footage now
as I'm making the film, and I've noticed that
all the scenes that I shot where it was auto,
I'm not having any issues in terms of
messing with the exposure because it locked on
in the auto mode.
So I would do a mix.
I would do some auto, some manual
but when I was on the mountain, majority of the time,
I would set it to auto.
And I would set it to auto focus as well
because I'm not seeing the screen so I could see it
for framing purposes.
But I have the auto focus adjustment on the joystick
on the back so I could shift my auto focus box around.
I used a smaller box so that
I can really isolate what I want,
especially when I'm using these primes, where it's a 1.8
and I really need to isolate a subject.
So I would be able to use my glove
and push the joystick around
and then if you click in the center,
I set it up so that it just snaps right back to the center.
So for me that was super easy to make sure
that the focus was always locked on
to what I needed it to be locked on.
So there's a nice little
like hut they built on this campsite.
They've got some stoves, there's some chairs to hangout.
But it's actually pretty quiet in here.
It's windy outside but it's quiet in here.
And I'm gonna just record my voice over for the film.
And it's kinda got a nice sound to it.
A lot of times, I typically just use the microphone
that's on top of my camera, and I find a good spot
and record my voice overs that way.
You could just use the things that you have
and just you know, record video but you're
actually recording the voice over.
So overall, working with the Nikon Z6
has been pretty awesome.
And like I said this film was some planning
and some just shooting and seeing what I can get,
especially on this last day of climbing.
So our final day, we went for the summit of Mount Athabasca.
Started at 2:00 a.m., got up, got everything going.
And started climbing through the dark.
Now there were some scenes here
that I really wanted to capture.
I wanted to capture when it's pitch black,
we just have our headlamps on
and we're just walking through the night
because this is something a lot of people don't realize
when you're climbing.
When you're up on these mountains,
you always have to start in the middle of the night
because the conditions are the best on the mountain
when it's frozen so in the coldest part of the night
is when you wanna be climbing.
If you're climbing midday with the sun beating down on you,
that's when avalanches happen,
that's when crevasses open up.
You just don't wanna put yourself in these situations
if you don't have to.
So I really wanna capture that footage at night
where it's just us and our headlamps.
And the low light on this camera's great.
Full frame, shooting with a 1.8,
I was really able to capture the scene.
And right as the sun started to come up in the horizon,
it was still super dark out, this camera was able
to capture these scenes that I've never been able
to capture before.
Really cool looking footage as we're climbing
through the night, and you just have that little bit of sun
coming up over the horizon.
It was super cold outside, the coldest part of the night.
It never once gave me an issue.
And I was able to keep filming in all of these conditions.
So on the final climb day, I kept the camera on my hip,
on my climbing harness the entire day.
And I kept switching between the 24 to 70 and the 50.
On previous climbs, I'll bring action cameras.
I'll bring 360 cameras.
But having a full frame camera with these lenses
gives you a completely different look
and gives you that cinematic look to your film
and forcing myself to only shoot using the Nikon Z6.
I think I was able to get such a cool looking film,
something so different than ever been able to capture
up on these mountains.
And I'm super happy with all the footage
that I've been able to get out of this camera.
So guys, if you haven't checked out the climbing film yet
make sure you head over.
I'm gonna put a link down in the description.
I'm also gonna put it at the end of this video.
I highly suggest you check out that video,
especially after watching this.
Just seeing what you can create
using the Nikon Z6 Filmmaker's Kit.
And if you want any more information about this entire
Nikon Z6 Kit, I'll put a link down below in the description
so you guys can see all the pieces that come with it.
But I'm super impressed with this camera.
I had a ton of fun filming this project.
And I just wanna thank Nikon for giving me the opportunity
to shoot the film that I wanted to.
Just let me go out there and play with cameras
and just shoot something that I've been wanting
to shoot for a while.
Alright guys, let me know in the comments below
your thoughts about the project that I was able to create
using the Nikon Z6.
Let me know your thoughts about this behind the scenes.
Did you like this video?
Do you wanna see more behind the scenes videos
from creating my films?
And guys, that is it.
Make sure you head over, check out the film
and I'll see you on the next one.