Preparation

I've always had a knack for extreme and adventure Sports. And besides the athletic feats it was often about demonstrating the many amazing places that Nature has to offer. 

During the research phase I gathered up incredible examples like Alex Hannolds „Free Solo“ or Sony's „Moonshot“.

Having been a Skateboarder my self for 10 years, the concept more often than not was to choose a destination that is known to be full of remarkable scenes, go there with a dedicated Film Crew and to just capture the shenanigans along the way. 

I am also enticed by travel videos on YouTube. While I know that most of them are not great, showing a side of life that is expansive and full of pretentiousness, there are also some gems out there, that inspire one to seek new grounds. 

Having been to the Elb Sandstone Mountains before I always wanted to return. I thought it was just about right to get this itch scratched.

The „athletes“, or protagonists of our story would be James and Me. And our sport would be one of endurance and discovery. Our intention was to go deep into the mountains, towards the touristy areas first and later into the rather uncharted territory of the Check republic. 

As we discover later, it never went deep at all.

Equipment

I knew that this environment deserved nothing but the best quality of documentation and so I took all my best equipment with me. 

I also knew though, that it will not only be about getting great shots, but to document in tight and difficult scenarios, where heavy gear is not able to be operated.

In total, I used 5 cameras.

A Cam: Panasonic GH5 

Drone: DJI Mavic 2 Pro

Action Cam: DJI Osmo Action

360 Cam: Garmin VIRB 360

Z Cam: Phone

Accesories: Batteries, Lenses, Speedboosters, ND Filters, Gimbal

The Trip

What started out like a disaster would soon turn into one. In terms of camping, hiking and camera equipment, we were actually really good prepared. We had everything needed within a super compact package and two solid bikes. But the execution was pretty rusty. 

We left James flat in Berlin a little late, so that we had to seriously hurry to the Hauptbahnhof with our bikes and all our stuff to still get the Train. This taxed us with a lot of energy from the start, which is never good when you try to play the long game over next next couple of days. 

We still made It in time to the train and had a moment of rest in there. 

We drove all the way to Dresden to then take a long and beautiful bike ride to the area. But, as shown in the video, we heavily miscalculated the timing of everything and did not find a proper place to sleep up until it was already pitch black. And the place we found was also everything else than proper. 

The next day started only a few hours later and without much sleep and with a full day of biking behind, it was a bad start you to have. 

But we went on, into the first evident mountain range, the Schrammsteine. Here everything seemed to work out perfectly fine. We found a great spot to sleep and refill our energy tanks. 

But, it started to rain.. and storm.. and thunder. It was the strongest storm I ever witnessed in person and it took everything apart within seconds as seen in the Video. We knew that It was about to „rain“, as we checked the weather report many days in advance, but at this point the project was already coming late and we had to get the footage. Apparently we underestimated the severity. 

So all gears went into full survival mode. It might have been summer, but the storm was ice cold. We gathered all our stuff and while I protected the entirety of our Equipment (which is worth more then 5000$ and heavily susceptible to water damage) and my self with a tarp, James went around the area with only a boxer shorts and a headlamp on to find something to survive in. 

It was a little cave full of massive forrest ants that would be this spot. 

So here we brought everything and „slept“.

This is where the trip ended the next day. We would have actually stayed if there would've been a couple hours of sunlight to dry everything off, which never occurred. 

I was incredibly bummed. The trip was as much of a disaster as possible and I was just getting a taste of this amazing area. 

But, the damage was done and avoiding more was likely the smartest option.

Post Processing

Even with all the things happening, I recorded where I could and was left with hundreds of gigabytes of footage to edit. 

No problem, because this would be the easiest part, right?

Not quite, because I wanted to apply some real magic to the edit. 

First and foremost, I wanted to make a render in Google Earth Studio for the film. Having never used this Software before, I got stuck at would would turn out to be a 10 seconds clip for days. The frustration I encountered was just so massive, that I many times considered not finishing it. 

I used the program since a couple of times and have to actually say that it is actually incredibly difficult and buggy to use properly. The worst thing that happened many times was that the rendered file (which took many hours to complete) turned out different (and unusable) then how the animation looked like in the editor. 

It all works with keyframes and while I consider my self adept in using them, I struggled incredibly hard. 

Oh and the render should not only look good, but should cut over into one EXACT position that I captured with the drone. It sounds impossible and it very well would have been, but I somehow made it happen.

Next up was reframing the 360 cam footage. Also something I never did before. So this took ages as well. 

But then there was the part where all hell started to break loose in the thunderstorm. I obviously had to somehow include the part in the story and decided to just animate it with photoshop's timeline feature. 

Unfortunately I did not have a pen to draw nor a tablet so had to do it all with a mouse, which, you guessed it, was tedious work. 

But at this point I was so over all the frustration that I just did how I was ordered. Obviously not in time though, because at this point I missed the date, where the project had to be handed in. 

But I had a Trailer prepared, that was very satisfying to watch and my professor was okey with me handing only that in at first. 

So my journey went on and I knuckled through. It really did not get better at any point in the process though. Because the project file got bigger and heavier. 

Till this day it is the biggest project I ever did and it was slowing my computer down into the Stone Age. It also started to get super buggy with all the different effects and keyframes applied to the clips so that some things I wanted to include just did not work at all. 

And editing in Premiere Pro, I obviously experienced countless crashes.

Reflection

In the end I made it all happen. Looking back on it I actually wonder how,  though. 

To be fully honest, I am extremely happy with the result. It is one of my favourite videos I ever made happen that never gets old to watch. Everybody I showed the video loved it and always gets massive amounts of positive feedback and respect for the struggle we went through. 

Still, I would change a some things about the whole project.

First and foremost, the video is a little bit to long, there are some parts that stretch the viewers attention a little bit too much and I'd try to cut the whole video at least 1-2 minutes shorter. 

Also, I would change just about everything about the trip it self. Not that I regret anything, but it all is just a portrait of stupidity and bad luck. It is funny and intriguing for what it is, but I would not tackle another adventure the same way that I did here.