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He was standing in the bucket of a cherry picker several yards away from me with the DP, Director of Photography, Joel Wilson.
“There’s only so much I can do,” I insisted, wondering why the hell he couldn’t fix some of this in postproduction. There would be simple ways to edit these scenes to make it look like I was going the speed he wanted.
Joel said, “I’d rather him place fewer anchors. It would look less secure and increase the tension.”
“It wouldn’t just look less secure,” I insisted. “It would be less secure.”
Joel ignored me. “Let’s get a shot of him falling back so one of the anchors has to catch him.”
Nerves jangled in my stomach. I was hot and thirsty now, and the sun that had been lovely and warm was beginning to make me irritable and itchy.
While they discussed it, I triple-checked the anchors in reach. If I was going to test them, they had damned sure better work. The most solid cam in reach could still fail if the momentum from my fall placed enough force on it to crumble the rock around it. These weren’t meant for deliberate falls. They were oh-shit-last-chance fail-safes.
I moved down and added another nut near the cam below my chosen one and quickly created a “sliding X” anchor with some ropes to self-equalize or spread the weight and risk between two set points. The lower cam and the newly placed nut together would be more secure as a backup in case the main cam failed. I quickly climbed back up to the main cam and waited for the decision I knew was coming.
“Let’s do the anchor fall,” Nolan called. “Joel is right. We can use it in post to make up for the lack of tension in the pace of the climb.”
Joel called out some direction, and we proceeded to shoot my “fall” for three takes. Thankfully, the main cam held for all three falls. By the time I’d pulled myself back onto the rock after the third take, my muscles were screaming and my body was bruised.
“Okay, climb the rest of the way up and let’s get to the next part of the scene,” Nolan called. I couldn’t help but laugh. He made it sound so easy.
I would have asked for a ride in the cherry picker, but it didn’t go that high, and it would have taken me longer to unclip than it did to climb to the top of the ridge.
Once I was there, I quickly tightened the ropes and created my second tyrolean anchor. Thankfully, we had a hidden bolt in the rock, so I only had to make it look like I was using a sketchy boulder as an anchor. As soon as the ropes were ready, I prepared to clip in and pull myself across the high traverse to the other side.
And that’s when everything went to shit.
The wind picked up, and the ropes began swinging. The helicopter got too close and made it worse. Trying to pull myself along the ropes was hard enough in perfect conditions, but trying to do it with the ropes swinging in the wind was damned near impossible. I advised them to stop the shoot due to the worsening conditions but got an immediate no. Nolan and Joel looked positively orgasmic at the resulting film and told me to take off my helmet again. I’d known there would be times on the climb I’d have to remove my helmet since my character lost his in one of the falls, but with the conditions like this, it was a stupid risk.
I was angry and bitter at the situation I’d gotten myself into. I felt guilty for not looking out for myself better in the contract, and I vowed to fire Iris for allowing this to happen, too. No one should be out here without a helmet on rope work that hadn’t even been installed by climbing experts. Production should have brought in a replacement for Kramer to oversee this shoot. Moreover, no one should be on ropes in these conditions at all.
But all of that was pointless to worry about. The more time I hung there suspended over a deep rocky ravine arguing about the conditions, the more at risk I was for an accident.
I pulled off my helmet and lowered it to the cherry picker on one of the ropes I had dangling from my rigging. They’d use it to send the helmet back up to me after getting the shot.
After running my fingers through my hair to get rid of helmet head, made moot with the next gust of wind, I called out for them that I was ready. When I heard the call to start, I grabbed the rope and pulled hand over hand with as much muscle as I could, gritting my teeth and fighting the wind to get to the other side. I focused on nailing the shot in one take. Thankfully, I did it. As soon as Joel yelled, “Cut,” I grabbed for the ropes one of the production assistants tossed me to clip in for some extra protection before climbing up onto the ridge and detaching from the tyrol.
