Free Solo

Before shooting, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi worked through the question under the project: what it means to film someone who may die on camera. The crew gathered 700 hours of footage on 12 cameras, placed so as not to distract Alex Honnold. The line is Freerider, put up by Alexander Huber in 1998. Honnold names two places, the Teflon Corner for the slick inside angle and the Boulder Problem, finished with a jump or a wide karate kick. A scan of his brain shows little amygdala activity in response to intense stimuli. In the autumn of 2016 he sprained an ankle on the Freeblast slab, and the first attempt was abandoned after that same section; Chin worried the filming added pressure. On 3 June 2017 he finished it in 3 hours and 56 minutes. The opening weekend took $300,804 from 4 theatres, a per venue average of $75,201, the highest a documentary had reached. The awards run past one; among them the Academy Award for best documentary feature, the BAFTA for documentary, and 7 wins from 7 nominations at the 71st Creative Arts Emmys. A good fit if you want the preparation, the rehearsal laps and the crew’s own decisions more than the climb. Not for anyone afraid of heights; the wall shots set that off directly.