31 Mar Looking Back – Passenger

Two years. That’s the amount of time David Peacock and myself have put in to this last project with Legs of Steel & Red Bull Media House. It’s been two years of blood, sweat, and tears. Focusing nearly every moment of every day for 700+ days. That might sound a little dramatic, but as a small crew, everyone involved with this project had to give it all to see it come to fruition.

This was my 4th consecutive film for Legs of Steel and I wanted to do something different. I wanted to raise the bar from past projects and make something that people would hopefully remember. I couldn’t do this alone so I partnered up with my good friend David Peacock to co-direct PASSENGER. Bringing David on board full time was definitely the right decision. A master wordsmith, David wrote the script and narration for the film and helped bring our vision to a reality.

So much has happened over these past two years, it’s hard to put the process of creating this film in to words. New friends were made, adventures were had, and patience was tested. We travelled all over the European Alps, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and Alaska. Hiking through mountains, driving snowmobiles, hanging our feet and cameras out of helicopters, and skiing through chest deep powder snow. There were many smiles, and many less than perfect moments.

Along with all the hours spent traveling the world and playing in the mountains, an equal amount of time was spent in the office in front of the computer meticulously piecing the movie together. A new process for David and Myself, was handing over our final version of the film to the folks at Red Bull Media House and supervising the whole sound design and colour correction process. It was great opportunity to work alongside Alex Haslinger (sound), and Odise Rexaj (colour), to see masters of their respective fields do their thing, while learning new workflows and techniques along the way.

Of course none of this would have been possible without the guys at Legs of Steel. Paddy Graham, Tobi Reindl, Bene Mayr, and Thomas Hlawitschka, always gave us their full support and were 100% willing to stand behind our vision. Working with these guys for the last 5 years has been a pleasure and I hope to continue doing projects with them in the future.

We also couldn’t have pulled this thing off without the help of cameramen Michael Haunschmidt, Liam Mullany, the Drone Boss himself, Christoph Thoresen.

It may have been a long road to bring PASSENGER to the finish line, but it was one hell of a journey.