The secret weapon
- 26 Oct 07, 02:49 PM
Posted from:Mismi
After a couple of days walking and acclimatizing we got to the source yesterday. After reaching 5,200 metres we filmed our first shots of Bruce walking through the dramatic high Andes landscape and describing the start of his journey.
The style of this series is realism, so we're shooting on the move, which involved Zubin and I matching Bruce's brisk pace, but walking backwards and carrying our shooting kit! We both went for it and wheezed at the end of each shot. In the fourth take Zubin walked backwards into a hole and crashed onto the dusty floor. Luckily he laughed - in a wheezy out-of-breath fashion.
Finally we approached the source. It's a dramatic place marked with a cross, which was left by a previous scientific expedition. I followed Bruce as he climbed over the rock landscape approaching the bottom of the cliff face. Bruce edged around a narrow ledge with a 20ft drop below and I went for it and did the same with the camera.
Setting up the crane at the source
Looking back it was not the wisest thing to do but the shot worked well as I was then able to capture Bruce coming across the water gushing from tiny cracks in the rock. After a few more shots of Bruce talking about the source we took a break and got the chance to have a drink from this purest of waters. Our Peruvian guide David is very emotional about this place and gave us each a few coca leaves to put into the water as a blessing.
We then took out our secret weapon, the crane. It's a 20ft moving platform that allows the High Definition camera to fly through the air and enables us to get great shots which would be unachievable by hand held camera or tripod shooting. This particular crane is designed for documentary shooting and made out of lightweight aircraft aluminum. Despite this it still took a few keen porters to help carry it over the terrain and suddenly a mad circus of excited Peruvian helpers, all keen to be involved, hit the source of the Amazon in the high Andes.
Bruce at the source, mulling over the journey ahead
Despite feeling dizzy and about to throw up I managed to oversee the setting-up of the crane with exaggerated pointing and we shot some footage without either crashing the camera into the cliff face or taking someone's head off as it swung around. We then packed up but in the excitement one of the porters started taking the crane apart and dropped several vital pins and screws into a crack in the rocks. After a fruitless search, we went back to the vehicles and drove down to meet a family of llama herders who live slightly down the valley.
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