North Wales Filming

Gear sorting in North Wales

We're back in the office for a few hours between filming trips. The last 8 days have been spent in The Peak District and North Wales. There’s a lot to write about and plenty of photos, so I’ve broken it down into two further blog posts below.

The trip started in The Peak where we had a few pick ups to shoot as well as a complex photo sequence for some special effects to go in the new movie. More of that later.

We don’t normally get time to climb when we are away filming. But the first few days were pretty relaxed and we headed to Stanage on a scorching afternoon.

Dave and Diff on The Pebble

Emma attempting Green Traverse

We then headed to Llanberis and had a spare day before the climbing talent arrived so we met up with some friends and spent a day working out how to climb on slate.

Slate Wierdness, a F7a+ at Bus Stop Quarry

With the focus back to filming the next 5 days were to be amongst the most complex and challenging that we have ever done. With 3 climbers lined up to be filmed on various hard routes all in different locations it was going to be a scheduling nightmare.

When climbers have objectives at their personal limits then they can’t hang around waiting for a camera crew. Everything needs to be right; weather and climbing conditions, skin, preparation. The next few days were to be a whirlwind of reconaissance and rigging, filming and de-rigging.

Many thanks to Emma Sutton who gave up a week's holiday to be camera assistant for us. Invaluable and good fun too.

So below is a report in two parts: