director/cinematographer
Outside the Arena circa 1976. I'd left NFL Films to become a freelance filmmaker and I got a grant from PBS based on my experience in sports and the sports fitness boom whose epicenter was right here in Boulder, Colorado. Kenneth Cooper was the Father of Aerobics was a pioneer who influenced many of us in our approach to healthy living. With my experience with the destructive game of football behind me, I wanted to let America know that there were many life-long sports to play that were distinctly Outside the Arena. This was a place where athletes could participate and were the opposite of sedentary spectators. Life-long sports, in other words, is what I was extolling I hoped to use this film to gather support for a series of the same name but alas, it was 1976 and this concept was about 10 years ahead of the curve. Nevertheless, we got some great climbers in Roger Briggs and Kevin Donald to climb the Diamond on Longs Peak and the Spivy family from Boulder to hike up the mountain following the standard north face - Key Hole route. They would be accompanied by a sixty-five-year-old Paul Petzloldt, who was truly a legendary climber in his day having been the youngest climber of his day to climb the Grand and for his exploits on the 1938 expedition to K2. Paul also started The National Outdoor Leadership School or NOLS, which my daughter Annie attended. The idea was that three generations of people could experience the mountain on their own levels and really enjoy it. I hired Roger Brown to shoot the Spivy family's ascent and then me, Greg Lowe, and a strong team of riggers would climb and shoot using our ACL French 16mm Camera from various aspects of the Diamond Face to convey extreme rock climbing. This film is one of the first films in 16mm to employ sync sound using miniature Nagra recorders that you see dangling from the climber's harnesses. We spent about six weeks on the mountain and got some dramatic footage. I was great working with Paul who passed away in 1999. Bill Roos, Paul Sibley, Mike Weiss were some of the very good riggers on our crew. Jim Emerson did sound for Roger who's son Michael Brown became a great filmmaker as well. His HD film of Everest was a digital capture achievement. We pushed the envelope of production on this film which led to commercial and feature assignments using the same rigging techniques during the next two decades.
