The filmmaker transferred his entire cache of HD footage to DVCAM and imported it to Final Cut Pro on his Power Mac. (The high cost of HD decks and video cards kept him from working directly in HD.) “It was really easy to learn Final Cut Pro,” he says. “It’s so much more intuitive than Avid. And all the things I was frustrated with in Avid, Final Cut Pro had the answers to. Editing is so fast and easy now.”

No Resistance to Creativity

Brown ticks off the practical and creative draws of Final Cut Pro. “First, it’s a system I could afford. When I’m making a film I don’t have tons of money floating around, so it was great to find a system that’s so much better than Avid, and costs so much less. This thing is shaking up the industry.”

Brown appreciates the ease of editing audio in Final Cut Pro. “In Avid you have to go through different stages to change audio levels in a clip,” he says, “but in Final Cut Pro it’s right there — you can adjust levels on the fly, and they stay there, or you can automate them.” And, he adds, “I really like being able to toggle back and forth among video and audio tracks.”

Too, Brown notes, the software helps him deal with masses of footage. “The most important thing in editing long-form pictures is staying organized. Final Cut Pro has a lot of useful tools for logging and in the browser and bin configuration.” The program is responsive, Brown says, to the real-world demands of film editing. “It’s so easy to change both the sequence of shots and their duration,” he says. “When I have a client with me, it’s fun to make edits at blinding speed — they suggest something, and I can have it done before they even finish saying it.”

Best of all, the filmmaker feels free to create at his own pace. “I like Final Cut Pro because I can afford to have it in my own house and work on scenes for as long as I need to, without having to pay for studio time.” Brown concludes, “The time-consuming part of filmmaking is the human creative process. With Final Cut Pro, the machine provides no resistance to your creativity — it just happens.”

Working in HD

As the format of choice for a film about the world’s tallest peak, HD exacted demands both practical and artistic. “It would have been a lot easier to use DVCAM,” admits Brown. First, he had to figure out how to work with a 35-pound HD camera and tripod — vs. his usual eight-pound DVCAM. “The biggest challenge with HD is that the camera is very large and heavy,” he says. “You’re on steep mountainsides, so anything you set up has to be anchored — and there aren’t many places to put down the camera.”

“The biggest challenge with HD is that the camera is very large and heavy. You’re on steep mountainsides, so anything you set up has to be anchored — and there aren’t many places to put down the camera.”

The cumbersome camera affected Brown’s spontaneity as a storyteller. “Small cameras are nice because whenever something happens you can shoot it instantly,” he says. “But with a full-sized HD camera, we had to anticipate when we would get good moments for the story and plan all the shots.” Brown describes one such scene, when Weihenmayer reaches a particular ridge, collapses in his tent, and says, “I can’t believe I made it to Camp III — 23,500 feet is the highest I’ve ever been!” To capture the shot, says the filmmaker, “I had to climb up to his tent before him with the camera, unzip the back of the tent, and be ready with the lens sticking through when Erik came in.”

Not that Brown for a moment regrets the extra burdens of working in HD. “I did the actual editing in a lower-resolution format,” he recounts, “so I didn’t see the HD version until the end. The first time I watched it on the big screen I was blown away. You could see these tiny, mind-blowing details, so different from what you’re using to seeing in a film — every crevasse sharp and clear… other climbers trekking miles in the distance… individual crystals of frost on our down suits. When I was shooting,” continues Brown, “I was just getting the film, like with any other project. I had no idea HD would be so good.”

Weihenmayer didn’t either, of course. “Erik finds it ironic,” says Brown with a laugh, “that the film has received so much recognition for all the pretty pictures in it, when it’s about a blind guy.”

The (Dis?)advantages of Blindness

Surprisingly, Brown downplays what would seem to be the single greatest test of the expedition: helping a blind man attain what climbers call the roof of the world. He does relate a few added hurdles. “Especially at first,” he says, “we were slower because of Erik. But that gave us more time to get the camera out of the pack, set up the shot, and so on. And by the end he was almost as fast as the sighted climbers.”

More taxing to the filmmaker than speed was communication. “It was a challenge to make him understand what I was trying to do,” he explains. Weihenmayer does have memory of sight, having lost his completely at age 13. “It’s useful that he has a visual reference to the world,” continues Brown. “But every time I set up a shot, I had to explain to him why I was interested in shooting right now. He’d be tired, and of course it wasn’t obvious to him. With a sighted person you’d just point and say, ‘Look at that!’”

Next page: Sharing the Climb