How To Make Adventure Films - Part 2/3 - The Filming

Filming the Adventure…

Getting Started

This is part two of a three part series about how to make an adventure film so let’s dive into what I believe to be the most fun part. The production. If you’ve read the last section here you’ve learned how to choose your adventure, choose your team, prepare for distribution and how to start training.

Now that it’s time to break out the cameras, board the plane and hit the trailhead so I’ll walk you through my process of shooting an adventure film…

Keep your cameras accessible

When you pack your bags and begin the video production process make sure you have your camera in a location that gives you a chance to capture those off the cusp moments. Regardless of if you’re hiking, climbing, surfing, or biking you may find some amazing moments along the way so it’s important to have a camera nearby ready to capture it till the moment doesn’t go to waste.

When it comes to filming an adventure you often don’t know what’s going to happen. You may have planned a rough story arc and have a general idea of where your film is heading but what makes adventure film making great is that sometimes things don’t go to plan. So, if you’re camera is deep inside your bag and you miss the moments you’re not able to make the best film possible.

How to “Shoot for Coverage”

There is classic saying in filmmaking - “shoot for the edit”

What that is telling you is to capture no more or no less than what you anticipate will make it into the final video. However, if you don’t know what the final video is all about because of the unexpected nature of adventure films, it’s important to ignore that statement and instead… you need to “shoot for coverage”.

You need to cover every scene with enough variety of shots to create an interesting edit. When I’m in the field I think of this very simply. Every film has three scenes - a beginning, middle, and end. The beginning, middle and end scene also has a beginning, middle and end. For every beginning section I need at least one wide shot, medium shot, and close-up shot. For every middle and the end scene I need the same. This allows each moment to be captured well enough to be able to be shared in a cohesive way.

What Do You Need to Tell the Story?

That may be a bit confusing so this may look in practice is as follows…

I’m currently making a film about a mother and daughter team tackling the Iron Man World Championship in Kona, Hawaii in the fall of 2022. After a car accident that left the daughter (Liza) paralyzed, her mom (Beth) pushes her for the run, and pulls her for the bike and swim. This short documentary film will have three scenes - a beginning, middle and end.

Beginning: The beginning of this film is about introducing the characters at their home in Crested Butte.

Middle: For the middle of the film we’ll show them competing in the Boulder Half IronMan competition and provide deeper background on their training process.

End: The final section of the film will showcase their competition at the World cChampionship.

For the beginning section of the entire piece, I will be at the families home in Crested Butte and need to film the beginning, middle, and end section of their character introduction.  I will open with the mom and the daughter living their normal lives, perhaps making breakfast before going out on a training run.

Boom. The beginning scene of the beginning part of the film is set. For that section I will make sure I get a wide shot of the house, a medium shot of the mom making breakfast and a close-up of the daughter in the wheelchair or an extra close-up of the food they making for breakfast. Then, as the story progresses throughout the day I will keep in mind getting a wide, medium and tight shot of every action so it can be pieced together for a comprehensive edit.

Practice Getting your Camera Settings dialed

There’s a lot of different cameras out there - Sony, Canon, Nikon, RED, ARRI, iPhone, GoPro, etc. The one thing they all have in common is that they’re responsible for capturing an image. To get the best image out of whatever you’re using, making sure you’re using the correct settings to maximize its potential. Ensuring that your camera is properly exposed (i.e. not too bright or dark) is a pretty basic skill but when you’re hanging off a side of a mountain or skiing down a mountain at 20mph on skis it becomes a little trickier. If you know how to change your camera settings on the fly, it’ll prevent you from capturing some amazing moments that happen when you’re out in the field.

Bonus Tip: Camera Settings Exercise

When I was bought my first camera I would keep it right next to my bed. When I went to bed I would mess up all the camera settings so when I woke up I had a challenge. Immediately after waking up I would grab it, get the shutter speed, aperture and iso set as quick as possible and take a video of my room. This taught me to do it quicker and more efficiently, even in my most groggy mental state and is amazing practice for knowing your camera. When you’re in the high alpine environments or underwater, sometimes oxygen or stress can limit your mental functioning so being groggy and making it happen a part of your daily morning routine can be great practice!

Get Creative!

My final tip is much of a tip at all but more of a reminder. When it comes to adventure filmmaking, there’s a lot of room to get creative. We’re living in the golden age of storytelling, especially in the adventure video industry so get out and go make stuff. Shoot a time-lapse of the stars, incorporate “in the moment” interviews of the people you’re with, experiment with capturing high quality audio of the climber’s breathing, make a video with a whole section without audio, crash drones, film through cracked UV filters or carefully craft every frame of video by staging each shot. There’s not a whole lot of rules and there’s flexibility to make something awesome. So, go make it!

Stay Tuned for part 3/3 on how to make an adventure film…

In the final section of this three part series on how to make an adventure film I’ll walk you through where the story really gets told - the edit. There are a few things that are crucial to know when it comes to making the best adventure film possible! So stick around for more to come :)

Connect with Roo!

Roo is a commercial/documentary filmmaker and photographer based in Boulder, Colorado but travels all around the world for his filmmaking career.

He has produced films for Outside Magazine in Ireland, camera operated for Netflix in the Rocky Mountain West, photographed among indigenous communities in Peru and Ecuador, directed videos with professional climbers in Mexico and has received notable recognition in his hometown of Orcas Island in Washington State for his work telling uplifting stories in the outdoor space.