As extreme film shoots go, Beyond the Edge takes the Kendal mint cake. A crew is hanging off the Lhotse Face of the world’s highest mountain, filming a 3D thriller re-creating Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s 1953 ascent of Mount Everest.
The 3D team, which shot Avatar, is on location on Everest for eight weeks, until June. The crew has had to deal with extremes of cold, frozen cameras, weather “changing on a dime” and the harsh light that comes with shooting at high altitude.
The new footage will be merged with film and photographs of the 1953 expedition taken by George Lowe. That old footage will be cleaned up and retro-fitted into 3D so the films merge “seamlessly” using the same technique used by James Cameron to convert his film Titanic.
Mr Metcalfe said: “There is something about the purity of these adventure stories. There’s something about these guys and the feeling they were the ‘real deal’. They didn’t do it for money or fame. They did it because it was there. They did these things simply because they wanted to improve themselves and improve what humans could do.”
The rest of the article at Independent .co.uk.