if your free soloing it is about perfect
execution or certain death hello i'm
choi Vasarely I'm a documentarian
my name is Jimmy chin and I'm a National
Geographic photographer and filmmaker we
made free solo together and we are going
to talk a little bit about how we
captured the first free solisten ll
captain
the thing about L cap is that it is huge
it's 3,000 feet tall and it's almost
hard for the mind to comprehend the idea
of climbing it without a rope was just
really beyond most people's imagination
Alex shows free-rider on El Cap because
even as a professional climber if you
are to be able to climb free-rider what
we call clean which is without falling
that would be a lifetime achievement I
think alex is certainly the first person
to consider it seriously well we were
always more interested in Alex as a
character study then as a free soloist
per se I mean Alex began free soloing
because as a kid it was scarier for him
to speak to another person and ask them
to be his partner than to go out by
himself and without a partner and hence
without a rope it was very dangerous but
alex was doing we really had to trust
ourselves and how we would handle the
material and how we would handle the
story and I think Alex did trust us with
that we understood of these 3,000 feet
that there were four or five pitches
that were critical to the story the free
blast slabs which were difficult for him
psychologically as well as physically
the boulder problem which is the crux or
the hardest part of the climb and then
then dura corner so we always had the
climb covered from a long lens but our
manpower they're kind of running in
between these five places the way we
approach the film which was critically
important was building the team we
needed elite professional climbers that
were also incredible filmmakers and
cinematographers meaning there's only
about three or four people in the world
you can call each one of our cameramen
was
you know 45 pounds of equipment
sometimes 50 pounds of equipment and
they're also carrying you know 500 to a
thousand feet of rope you are moving up
filming but you're also pulling your
lines out of the frame and clipping them
off to hear yourself so as you move up
you're gaining more and more weight and
trying to manage more and more equipment
and rope you know we use very specific
equipment that allow us to let go of the
brake hand and the belay device self
locks so you can kind of let go of the
rope and not slide down the Rope any
further you know we are also doing
different moves where somebody else is
kind of lowering out the cameraman and
they're able to get kind of a moving
shot on the wall
the free blast is a notorious section on
the free rider route it's extremely
slippery and the holes are the width of
two quarters on their on their edge it's
the kind of climbing what we call
friction climbing where you don't really
have real footholds it's just the
friction of the rubber on the wall and
it's very very insecure climbing the way
that we shot it was to emphasize the
friction climbing and the footholds
because it's all about footwork there
it's very technical footwork and also it
was important to our story because it
was on the free blasts that he fell so
the free blast was like psychologically
as well as physically quite challenging
for Alex the boulder problem pitch was
one of if not the biggest concern for
Alex people start to understand you know
how choreographed all of his moves are
and I think that was something we really
wanted to get across to people and that
there was a psychological situation
there too with Alex my galaxy's thought
deeply about his own mortality but he
did not he was not interested in dying
in front of his friends and also he was
acutely aware that any camera man would
feel I mean would feel profound fear in
that moment and that there's a
reflection that happens where Alex would
feel his fear so the compromise was
remote cameras
the trick actually was that we needed to
get them firing and we weren't sure how
long the batteries would last we weren't
sure if we actually got it until we came
down downloaded everything and watched
and it was maybe one of the highlights
of the entire production when we were
sitting there waiting and waiting and
watching and then you see this person
coming up into the frame and then you
know we get to see him do the boulder
problem pitch the karate kick and
there's that moment when he looks to the
camera and smiles and we all almost fell
out of our chairs when we saw that the
derry-o Corner is an extraordinary
looking pitch and the difficulty is that
the holes are vit not very good so
they're kind of rounded the only way
that you can stay on the climb is by
pulling with your arms and pushing with
your feet it's also a very long pitch
meaning your arms get very very tired
very quickly that pitch alex climbed in
probably less than ten minutes maybe
even five minutes people often take an
hour that was a pitch that we really
wanted to cover well because of its
difficulty and because of the aesthetics
the way we covered that is I was off to
the side and then we had another
cameraman above that pitch shooting what
we called down the barrel so I had a
still camera both to the tough of my
film camera and while alex is climbing
the Enduro corner I was also taking
stills that I was filming him coming up
I couldn't see Alex because he was
around the corner probably a hundred
feet away but I knew he was moving
quickly I know that from the ground you
you all could see the valley floor and I
kept on one point I was like Alex you
cannot give Jimmy a heart attack yeah
he's trying to move so fast
alex is shooting up and we're kind of
paralleling and at a certain point the
roots intersect again and I see Alex
coming up he's got this huge smile on
his face because he's through all the
most technical difficulties and he's
coming along and I say to Alex can you
give me 60 seconds
he just looked at his phone and said I'm
about to break for hours and I knew what
that meant
he was not going to wait he's so happy
he's alive Alex lives every day of his
life with intention he's doing exactly
what he wants to do with his life but
there's also this misperception I think
where people think oh he's a free
soloist he has a death wish
that's not who he is if he was a
daredevil or a maverick we wouldn't have
been interested in making the film it
was actually his process and his
discipline it was kind of the perfect
storm for a documentary film but the
real kind of existential issues lay and
the dangers involved in his courage he
was connecting with people which i think
is one of the more moving parts of the
film