National Geographic: Cameramen Who Dared (1988) Movie Script
Behind every exciting
film image is a cameraman.
Behind his camera he is unseen
and forgotten
by viewers
but dangerously exposed
to his subjects:
animals the could
easily maul or kill him,
cataclysms of nature
that could swallow him up
tumultuous human combat
pulling him
closer and closer
to the epicenter
of violence.
Sometime with
only the camera
between himself
and mortal danger,
other times separated
from danger
by the flimsiest
of protection,
but always driven to
shed protection,
to get out of the cage
and push even closer.
Stretching the limits,
pioneering in places where
the limits are unknown,
stretching luck
and boldness
until limits are found
and exceeded.
The cameraman
is David Breashears,
shooting a climb on
an ice face in New Hampshire.
Action.
Just watch your left leg
on my
To do it right,
Breashears must climb
as well or better
than the climber.
Keep going.
While the climber
thinks about climbing,
Breashears thinks about
climbing and shooting
about camera position,
angles,
focus and changing light.
About storytelling,
lenses, equipment.
He thinks ahead and
climbs ahead.
Breashears is one of
the top
mountaineering cameramen.
He's been on six Mt.
Everest climbs,
twice getting to
the summit with his camera.
The job is never over.
You don't crawl into
your sleeping bag at night
and just go to sleep.
There's always some
fooling around with equipment,
loading a magazine for
the next day,
being more prepared than the
other people have to be,
and also getting up earlier
to get that extra shot,
to be in position
when they begin their ascent
or when they leave camp.
It doesn't matter
if you're cold;
it doesn't matter
if you're tired;
It doesn't matter
if you're hungry;
you just do it.
By the 1920s,
cameraman were traveling
to exotic and faraway places
to film wildlife
and adventure,
and one of the most
spectacular locations
was Africa.
Americans at home had never
seen such images as these.
They were thrilled by them.
This was the golden age of
photographic exploration.
Carl Akeley
as an extraordinary
figure of the times:
an American taxidermist
who went to Africa
to collect his own specimens.
Trying to shoot a leopard,
he only wounded it;
it counter-attacked,
and he managed to kill it
with his bare hands.
Akeley's insistence on
recording accurate details
for his taxidermy led him
to photography,
and his frustration in filming
fast-moving African scenes
led him to invent
a better camera for
action photography.
The distinctive
rounded Akeley camera
revolutionized
nature photography
and was also used to film
newsreels,
combat in World War I
and Hollywood movies.
In Africa Akeley joined
forces at times
with the celebrity
filmmaking couple
Martin and Osa Johnson.
As filmmaker the Johnsons
were less interested
in documentation
than sensational entertainment.
They raced about Africa
elaborate photo safaris,
seeking thrills and
narrow escapes,
heightening their adventures
when necessary with deceptive
film editing or staging,
Occasionally lapsing
into antics that,
seen today, seem like satire
of a very bygone era.
The Johnsons were
a glamorous pair.
Martin was an all-American guy
from a small town in Kansas
who started out as a cook
for Jack London.
Osa was a singer who'd never
been anywhere
until Martin carried her off
to a life
summed up
in the title
of her autobiography,
'I Married Adventure'.
In the water, crocodiles
are especially wicked.
They would pounce upon
the unfortunate
victims of a capsized boat
like a pack of wolves.
If a person were to fall into
the water here,
he would not last one minute.
We begin to feel uneasy lest
one might charge the boat
and this surly monster does,
almost upsetting us!
For all their showmanship,
the Johnsons are recognized
today as
intrepid and
talented filmmakers.
They developed film
in the field and
overcame a vast array
of logistical difficulties
and personal hardships.
Their movies,
even with moments
that now seem silly,
were remarkable achievements.
It must have been
incredible to go there
with primitive cameras,
Primitive transportation,
and how they actually
got any material out of it,
out of Africa at all,
was a miracle.
Wolfgang Bayer,
who's photographed wildlife
in all sorts of conditions,
all over the world.
Of all the animal
that I filmed,
I must say the primates
are probably
the most enjoying
enjoyable ones
They are so much like us.
Like the orangutans:
we had to climb 15ft.
tall trees in Borneo
in order to go up
in their environment.
Everything else before has
been filmed from the ground up.
We wanted to go back and we
brought mountain-climbing gear,
and we went up into the trees
and all of a sudden we were
face to face with orangutans.
then they came over and they
climbed up and down our rope.
They were right above us;
they peed on us, you know.
I'm looking up there,
and what are you gonna do?
You hang,
you're totally helpless
and some orangutan decides
to pee on you.
All you can do is
just keep your head low
and hope he doesn't do it
too long.
And we'll be hanging up
which actually
came up over our branch
and we would tie the rope
off down at the bottom
on a different tree,
And we'll be filming up there
And we looked down all
of a sudden
there's an orangutan
trying to untie
our rope on the very bottom,
and it's not a very good
feeling.
We of course had to try to
shout and throw things down
and then get down as fast as
we can to chase 'em away.
Looking through a camera
when filming wildlife or anything
that could be potentially
dangerous,
It puts a barrier between you.
It's almost like
watching television,
and you don't realize
that danger could be
just feet away from you.
I was filming and I got
in the middle of a fight
and I just was an innocent
bystander.
But a female came by at
full speed
and she just grabbed
my hand and bit me.
And drew quite a lot of blood.
The only weapon
I had along was my camera,
Which is a, you know,
$50,000 piece of equipment.
But in a case like this
I used it
and started on hit the chimps
over the head with my camera
and get out back in the water
where I was supposed to be.
Chasing animals over the years
I've been bitten, scratched,
attacked and uh,
other-wise mutilated by coyotes,
cougars, leopards, jaguars,
baboons, chimpanzees,
and of course numerous
little creatures.
Lucking
nothing really poisonous.
Nature and the animals give me
so much enjoyment that,
what the hell, a few bites
and a few diseases
and a few injuries here and
there are not gonna kill me.
You go out on these films
and you're with very professional
people who really
stay out of trouble,
and of course part of the fun
for an audience is too see
how people handle trouble.
Filming an Alaska's
Yukon River,
Jim Lipscomb came up against
a conflict familiar
to action cameramen:
things were too safe.
The Yukon raftsmen navigated
smoothly post all perils,
and Lipscomb was filming
an uneventful trip.
But then they came to
Five Fingers Rapids,
and suddenly they were
losing control.
It was sort of a funny,
perverse pleasure as I realized as
the raft was swinging out,
swinging out...
I could line up the shore
behind it
and I could see they weren't,
they weren't gonna miss it.
Looking pretty bad, boy.
So I realized, oh boy,
these guys are into it at last.
They've really got themselves
in trouble and I'm so glad.
And then I thought,
but I'm with 'em!
And the 10-ton raft stopped
with the loudest noise
I think I've ever hard
in my life.
And we knew we had it
and we had it
with three cameras going.
So it made a marvelous
scene in the film.
Jim Lipscomb has made films
about people and about animals.
He says people are
more treacherous.
But it was the animals
he photographed
for "Polar Bear Alert"
that taught him a
personal lesson about fear.
It began with his own brave
insistence on getting
closer to the bears.
When he decided
against filming
as planned from the safety
of a vehicle called
a tundra buggy
his guide stared
getting anxious.
And so I said to the guide,
"We're gonna have
to get outside of
that tundra buggy
in order to film.
And he said,
Well, I can't let you
outside the tundra buggy
if the polar bear is closer
than 60 to 80 feet,
Because they're very
unpredictable animals.
You don't know what
they're gonna do,
and they can get to
you in three bounds
and then look you over.
And by the time they get
finished looking you over,
you're gonna be dead.
And I don't want any National
Geographic photographer
dead in my tundra buggy.
So we said, okay,
we'll build a cage.
Yes, please,
lots.
I didn't think when I got out
there in the cage
that I was going to feel
any particular feel
or that I was in any risk.
And I thought I was going
to be very calm.
But then when that
big bear walkup to the cage,
Something happened
in my mind that was an
entirely different kind
of experience,
and I think it's
the first time
I've ever identified it
in my life.
I felt fear.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
I was breathing hard and I
was trying not to tremble
because I wanted to hold
that camera still.
The polar came right up
and licked the lens.
He wanted to see
what this thing tasted like.
And I felt what it must be,
an atavistic fear I think,
that there was in,
Inborn, and through centuries,
through eons of evolution
into the human species:
This is not the place to be!
You gotta get out of here!
This thing, this thing
is gonna get you.
And I, I was just atremble
with the sense of fear of that,
That thing,
knowing all the time
that I was presumably safe.
There's tremendous charge
of adrenalin and excitement
coming through to you.
And you're, yeah,
you're thrilled to be there, uh,
and to be experiencing it.
I don't know
that it's addicting,
because in retrospect after
you think about it,
you think, well,
that was a high
I maybe just don't need
anymore.
I don't need that one again,
you know.
In 1914
motion picture photography
reached into a new realm.
underwater.
John Williamson,
a cartoonist and photographer
for a Virginia newspaper,
Had a showman's ingenuity and
a father who'd built a 30-foot
flexible steel tube designed
for underwater salvage work.
Williamson climbed down
into the tube.
Through the window
of an observation
chamber he called
a "photosphere",
he took still photos in 1913
and, in the next year,
the first moving pictures
ever taken underwater.
Only one year later,
Williamson made
the first theatrical
movie produced underwater.
These scenes
are from his version of
Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea.
Audiences were fascinated
by these images.
Others were fascinated by the
Williamson
"photosphere" itself.
The eminent Alexander
Graham Bell,
inventor of the telephone,
visited in 1922
and spent a half-hour
peering through
the underwater window.
Williamson emphasized
the safety
and dryness
of the device by taking
his wife and baby daughter
below.
He filmed them gazing
at sea life
including divers hired to swim
before his cameras.
Shooting in the Bahamas,
he lured sharks
into the picture
the sharks attracted by the
scent of chunks of horsemeat
dangled in the water
over the photosphere.
What remained to be done,
of course,
was filming by a cameraman
who swam freely underwater.
An Austrian zoologist,
Dr. Hans Hass,
was among the first to try
to connect diving
and photography.
Dr. Hass experimented
with many different cameras
and housings,
some of which leaked
disastrously.
But this was true pioneering:
equipment was devised
from scratch,
Mostly hand made,
improvised with
little sophistication
in diving technology
and near-total ignorance
of undersea dangers.
How would sharks react to a
diver taking their picture?
The only way to find out
was to take the plunge.
In 1939 Dr. Hass filmed
underwater scenes
that enthralled audiences
and fired
the imagination
of future divers.
When Hass first went
in the water
with his little wind-up
sixteen
millimeter camera
and started to press,
you know, six, eight-foot,
ten-foot sharks
in the Mediterranean,
no one had ever done it before.
So he was not only using
new techniques
and worried about the bends
and an embolism,
and this and that,
but he was also the first
to ever engage those animals.
So today we know that most
of them are approachable,
but those guys,
those early people-Hass,
Cousteau hadn't clue that
that was gonna be the case.
Very bold first efforts.
Very exciting.
Al Giddings has shot countless
ocean documentaries
and the underwater
segments of features
including James Bond movies
and "The Deep".
Doing so, he's amassed a vast
library of underwater footage.
But he's best known for his
work with great white sharks,
Shooting them at first from
inside a protective cage...
later going outside the cage.
The first time in the
cages most of us dropped
to the bottom of the cage,
hands and knees and
sort of cowered for a time,
Because these 3,000-pound
eating machines were pounding
the bars and pushing
the cages around.
Today, um, I know that if
you maintain good eye contact,
you're fairly aggressive,
and on the bottom,
you can get out of the cage,
And I have, and,
and really fend a two-or three
thousand-pound
great white away.
The first time out of the cage
was certainly
a ticklish experience.
And I went out
six or eight feet
and kept the cage at my back,
and the first animal that came
near I lunged forward a bit,
not totally convinced that
he was gonna move off.
But it worked,
and I continued to move
further and further
away from the cages,
And eventually, the last time
we were in Australia,
I had five whites
circling the cages and me,
and I was thirty,
forty feet away,
with animals swimming
between me and the cages.
You always have apprehension,
but driven a bit by the hum of
that camera and the spectacle,
you take a calculated risk.
Giddings has taken his chances
not only with the ocean's
most fearsome creatures
but also with its
most formidable places:
Like the hypnotically
beautiful
but perilous waters beneath
the thick ice
at the North and South poles.
Diving the North Pole,
and for that matter,
Antarctica,
I think represents
the toughest diving
that I've done anywhere
in the world.
Surface conditions north
and south, 60, 70 below zero,
water temperature 28.5,
a canopy of ice over your head
in most cases, 8, 9 feet thick.
Antarctic diving is very, very,
very tough on the gear,
tough on the people.
You're still concerned
about bends.
You're still concerned about
all the problems of shooting
and making images but, again,
You're going through a hole
that's 30 inches in diameter,
and you've got
a limited air supply.
And you're on the bottom
perhaps 40 minutes
and you've got,
you know,
You're gonna run out of gas
and you've gotta find
that exit hole.
If you are in trouble
or you're confused
as to where you entered,
that you wanna go deeper,
if you surface under the ice
and you're trying to see the exit point
and you're just
under the canopy, of course,
You can't see anything.
So, you know, in most cases
if you have an emergency
you're off to the surface.
In this case if you have an
emergency it's usually deeper
to get a quick
vantage point on
where the exit hole is and out.
Arctic diving is also some
of the most beautiful diving
that I've done.
It's really a fairyland
of sorts.
You have to be gutsy
and you have to be motivated.
The best ones are driven.
They want to excel.
They want to come back
with images the likes of which
no one's ever seen before.
The camera goes to war!
Each day it records
the courage
and heroism of our troops
in battle.
But rarely do you see
the camera,
and the men behind it,
who risk those same dangers
to send back their stories
and pictures.
This is "Cameramen At War",
made during World War II
but with an admiring salute to
the filmmakers of World War I.
In the last war
they set up their cameras
front line.
The man in the tin hat
and bow tie is D.W. Griffith,
responsible for that
silent epic.
The Birth of a Nation.
The get-up may look
a bit odd now,
but they thrill the audiences
of their day
with the first shots
of a tank going into action.
In World War II,
top filmmakers including
John Ford, John Huston,
William Wyler and Frank Capra
produced war documentaries
working in Hollywood
with battle footage
shot by military
and civilian cameramen.
Meet Jack Ramsen of Movietone.
His assignment is a daylight
raid over occupied Europe.
His main care is his camera.
It's carefully
and accurately fitted
to the door
of a Flying fortress.
It's covered with
an electric blanket
to prevent
the motor freezing up.
Every precaution is taken to
insure you're seeing
good pictures
If the cameraman gets back.
All set now except for his
oxygen mask
and heavy gloves
not easy to work
in but necessary at these
terrific heights
if he's to get pictures
like-Bombs gone!
Caravan's Jim Wright in
another Fortress takes up
where the bomber leader
leaves off
over an Italian cove,
pattern bombing it
for enemy submarines.
Wouldn't you think his fingers
would tremble with excitement?
The pictures are steady
as a rock!
The amphibious invasion
of the Pacific island
of Tarawa in 1943,
one of the bloodiest battles
in the history
of the U.S. Marine Corps.
A documentary film
about the battle shot
by Marine combat cameramen
later won an Academy Award.
This is the Army-Navy Screen
Magazine cutting room,
where combat film
taken by Army,
Navy and Marine cameramen
comes in from battlefronts
all over the world.
The Marine staff sergeant
with the expert medal is
from Boston, Massachusetts.
Sgt. Hatch went in
with the first wave
in the landing at Tarawa,
armed with a pistol
and a hand camera,
and brought back
a filmed record
of the fighting at that island...
you know that's the best
frame of combat film
I've ever seen.
Hey, that's okay!
And when an Army man says
that to a Marine, brother
he means it.
Oh, they're just luck.
Today, Norm Hatch has
vivid memories
of hitting the beach at Tarawa
with other Marine cameramen
who had no idea
what a fierce battle
they were walking into.
They didn't know they'd have
the extraordinary opportunity
of seeing the enemy
from so close
that both sides
in the fighting
would be shown
in the same frames of film.
They didn't know that,
despite their training,
combat photography
was something they'd have
to learn as they went along.
When we went in on Tarawa, the
only experience that anybody
had in the Marine Corps
doing a war story on film
was Guadalcanal,
and that was almost
nothing at all.
And so, consequently,
when we got ready to go,
it was sort of like
an improve situation, you know,
everybody makes it up
on his own.
My thoughts were basically
that if those guys can go out
there and fight
and do a good job fighting,
we had to go out there and do
a good job in photography.
We had the exit covered with
machine guns and rifle fire.
The Japs kept coming out
trying to knock out
the machine guns.
There's one of them.
That sniper's got a bead
on another.
There's a squad of them!
A lot of good guys from the
outfit weren't there anymore.
I'm glad I got these pictures,
because when you remember
the roaches
you've been fighting and
the things they represented,
And when you saw the flag go
up and remembered the freedom
that flag stood for, you knew
you were in on a good thing.
Vietnam a different war
and a different breed of cameraman.
Cameraman Norman Lloyd,
on assignment for CBS News,
filmed and recorded
these scenes
when Bravo Company moved
into a large Communist bunker
complex
six miles north of
the Vietnamese border.
The main enemy fore
had apparently pulled out,
but a rear guard element
was left behind
to slow down
the American advance.
Norman Lloyd, from Australia,
was a school dropout,
a kangaroo hunter,
a bar fighter, a loner.
He went to Vietnam on his own,
replaced a CBS cameraman
who was missing in action,
and stayed four years.
He won two Emmys and made
a reputation
for courage verging
on craziness.
General Westmoreland was
making a tour,
and there was a firebase
that was in deep trouble,
and, uh, and I really wanted
to get in to that firebase.
It was, but it was, they were
in terrible shape in there,
and I wanted to get in and I,
I walked up to him and I said,
"General, I want to get
into that firebase".
And I said the name of the
firebase and he said to me,
and then he said
"son, you don't want
to go there"
Then I say "Yes, I do, sir"
He said, "No you don't".
And that firebase
was overrun like,
uh, you know,
the next day or so, it, it,
but, uh, but I really,
I really wanted to
get in there but,
uh, I went as high
as I could to try.
There was a lot of competition
between the three net works
for "bang, bang" footage.
It was very important to get
"bang, bang" footage.
It was action,
it was what they really wanted.
The pressure coming
from New York,
there was a lot of pressure
on people,
On correspondent, uh, on crews,
if someone wasn't getting
the story,
and, and, and
this led to deaths,
where uh, where people would,
would so silly things because
of the pressure on them.
And they'd go out,
and they'd get killed,
and this definitely happened,
and, and
and other people were killed
with them because of
the pressure.
Norman Lloyd's countryman,
Neil Davis,
reported and filmed combat
is southeast Asia for 11 years.
He was a legend
among Vietnam cameramen
a master at covering combat.
I would always try
and go to the extreme front line,
because that's where
the best film is.
You can't get the spontaneity
of action if you're not there.
You can't get it
if you're 100 meters behind
the soldiers trying to get it
with a telephoto lens
you don't see the faces,
The expressions on their faces.
You don't see the compassion
that they may show
for their wounded comrades or
their enemy, for that matter.
I wanted to show
all those things,
and the only way to show them
was being in the front line.
The real front life.
And the idea is for
a news cameraman
to get the film
and keep it rolling,
no matter what happens.
When Saigon fell,
Neil Davis was there
filming the panicked attempt
to escape
the bloodbath expected
when the North Vietnamese
recaptured the city.
Most camera crews departed
in the helicopters lifting off
from the U.S. Embassy
helicopters that were
later dumped into the sea
to make room
on aircraft
carrier flight decks.
Neil Davis chose not to escape.
He stayed behind,
awaiting the conquering army
and making some of
the most powerful images
of the Vietnam war.
I didn't believe that there
was a great danger as long as
I survived
the first few minutes
of the Communist occupation,
Where it's always very dicey,
where there might be flare-ups
and fighting immediately.
Most people had left
the streets.
The civilian population
had gone inside their houses
and waited.
I decided the presidential
place was the place to be.
And I went there alone
and waited for them.
And, I thought, I wasn't gonna
miss this end to the story.
I had a moment's hesitation as
the tank was approaching,
and the tank column
was approaching,
because they fired
a few times
to let people know
they were about,
I think,
and crashed through that gate.
And a man with
a weapon raced toward me,
screaming in Vietnamese,
"Stop, stop, stop!"
Then I kept filming,
and he got quite close,
and I rehearsed my bit before,
which was in Vietnamese,
"Welcome to Saigon, comrade.
I've been waiting
to film the liberation".
And I had qualms about that;
I had it all right.
And he said, "You're American".
I said, "No, I'm not,
I promise I'm not.
I'm an Australian
and I've been waiting for you".
So he hesitated, and then
some troops were coming out
and surrendering from the
palace, and he hesitated,
then dismissed me and ran past.
And I was able to
then start filming again.
In 1985
Neil Davis was shooting a coup
in the streets of Bangkok
a tame event compared
to the heavy combat
he'd survived so many times.
But on this day,
an exploding tank shell
hit Davis and his crew.
His camera,
dropped on the pavement,
was still rolling
as he was dragged away.
But he was dead,
and his soundman died
a few hours later.
Neil Davis was a guy
that really had seen it all.
And it was just a shame.
Everybody misses him,
but if it had of been
in a firefight somewhere and,
uh, you know,
he would have liked it better,
I'm sure, instead
of some dinky goddamn coup,
you know, that meant nothing.
After you see
so many people get killed,
after you see
so many civilians get killed,
after you see
so many children get killed,
you go a little insane,
and I used to drink
all the time.
I thought of suicide a lot,
uh, the, uh, the only,
the only reason that I,
I really um,
didn't, uh, do it, was uh,
I really didn't want
to hurt my mother, you know.
If I had the opportunity
to be a Vietnam cameraman again,
I would do it
because I know what effect it
had on the world.
It's taken years for me to,
to get myself back together.
But, uh, but I'd do it again
because I know that people
have got to see what war is,
and, and, what means,
and the futility of it.
Mount Everest a symbol
of towering,
irresistible challenge.
Its grandeur has always
inspired awe and noble effort,
but Everest is also a killer.
Over 80 climbers
have died on it.
Many more have come down
broken and defeated.
The summit was
first reached in 1953
and then by
a second expedition,
before an American team
tried it in 1963.
This team 19 men
had a dual objective:
to reach the summit
but also to film it,
To create a documentary
that would
become the first National
Geographic Television Special.
The climbers were punished by
Everest's devastating weather.
Temperatures 20 below zero,
winds blowing at more than
The altitude and cold induced
nausea and headaches.
Climbing was hard labor.
Thinking was hard,
operating the camera,
even remembering the camera,
was hard.
And then things got worse.
The expedition's professional
cinematographer, Dan Doody,
was stricken with
a nearly fatal blood clot.
His climb was over,
but lying in his tent
he taught a crash course
in mountain cinematography
to a pair of climbers
who now got the job
as moviemakers.
Lute Jerstad,
who till then had never worked
a film camera, remembers.
So we thought he was gonna die,
and he thought
he was gonna die.
So Doody got out scraps
of paper,
and got Barry Corbet and I by
the neck and began to diagram,
I think it was 18
different shots,
and was teaching us how to
become cin, cinematographers.
So we'd take these little
cameras without film in them
and we'd go outside and shoot
and then we'd come back in
and tell him what we did
and he'd critique it for us.
On May 1st
climber Jim Whitaker
and the Sherpa Gombu
reached the summit
planting an American flag but
taking only a few snapshots.
Lute Jerstad,
with the movie camera,
and his climbing partner,
professional still
photographer Barry bishop,
were still a long way
from the top.
Climbing is scarcely the word
for what they're doing now.
They're barely creeping.
Five breaths to a step
and then a rest
Then more steps. More breaths.
Bodies aching. Minds numb.
Even with the flow of oxygen
they can barely breathe.
They can barely move
their leaden feet.
But still they do move.
You become so single-minded,
the rest of the world
is just gone.
Nothing,
nothing matters any more.
I am going to get
there if I have to crawl.
So you just keep putting one
foot in front of the other
and breathing as well
as you can
and trying to stay as warm
as you can.
On the morning of May 22nd
they launch the final push,
as alone as two
human beings can be
on the face
of the earth.
And then, before them is
a sight to lift the heart
and bring tears to the eyes.
After three weeks
Jim Whitaker's maypole
still stands fast,
with Old Glory streaming
in the winds of space.
These are the first moving
pictures ever taken
from the summit of Everest.
Lute Jerstad has his
camera propped
on the head of his ice axe.
And the blur at the bottom
is his furry glove.
Now a blast of wind strikes.
The earth quakes:
Lute almost falls,
then steadies himself.
He completes his panorama.
They have won their victory.
They're filled with a great
surge of joy... and gratitude.
We probably spent 45 minutes
to an hour on top,
and all that was taken up
by filming, really.
And filming that long,
certainly you pay
a price for it.
And Barry's price was
that he lost parts of
both little fingers
and his fourth finger.
And then in the
bivouac that night,
as a result of that,
he lost all 10 of his toes and,
And part of his foot bone
in both feet
And we finally
were flown back to Washington
sometime at the end of July.
I guess, that year to get
medals and awards and things.
And part of this was to go
to the Geographic,
and they were gonna
show some raw footage.
And I walked into this room
not really paying a lot of
attention to it
and looking at the great
pictures that had been taken,
and all of a sudden on the
screen came my summit footage.
and I started to cry.
I couldn't believe
it had come out.
And then I remembered
what it looked like.
But I couldn't,
I hadn't remembered what it
looked like until I saw that,
and it's because of
that single-minded attitude of,
you know, get this job done,
forget everything else,
and then you can turn
around and go home.
Twenty years later
David Breashears reached
the summit and beamed
a television picture to
a satellite station
for broadcast
a week later
on an American network.
Twenty-five years later 1988
pictures from the summit
were seen live on TV
around the world.
Thus the dream
of Capt. John Noel
was fully realized
Captain Noel who carried
the first movie cameras on
Everest in the unsuccessful
British expeditions
of the early 1920s.
His film continues to amaze
mountaineering cameramen
not only for its clarity
and coverage
but also his pioneering ordeal.
He lugged heavy equipment.
He developed the film himself,
on the spot,
working in a mountainside tent,
filtering glacier water,
burning yak dung to provide
heat to warm his chemicals.
He worked on his own,
getting little cooperation
from other climbers
who resented his presence,
regarding his camera as
a vulgar intrusion
on the purity
of their sportsmanship.
And yet his film preserved
the memory of the climb
and made a legend
of its tragic climax
climbers George Mallory
and Andrew Irvine struggling
to within 600 feet
of the summit
before disappearing forever,
Noel and the others watching
through telescopes,
then waiting anxiously as a
search party led
by N.E. Odell went up.
Crossed blankets in the snow
was the visual signal
to those below that
there was no hope,
for Mallory and Irvine
were gone,
a signal first seen through
Captain Noel's long lens.
The emotion of
that moment 64 years ago
is still keenly felt
by Captain Noel.
Hi is 98 years old.
The top of the North Col
was a shelf of ice,
and Odell,
when he'd made the search
and determined after two days
and two nights
that the men were dead,
just lost, he went
and he found their tent,
and he found these pieces of
oxygen cylinder,
and he came back and he gave
a message by signal.
We had no wireless telephone
in those days;
they weren't known.
He put a signal out
of crossed blankets.
And the photograph I got,
the best photograph
I made in my life,
was a circle made by the,
this high-powered lens
at one-and-a-half-miles range
showing the crossed blankets
and showing the men
walking away.
And people asked me,
"What do you see?"
I couldn't tell;
I was overcome.
I couldn't tell them,
but you'll get the signal.
The crossed blankets meant
Mallory and Irvine were dead.
That is clearly shown.
Almost 30 years passed before
men reached the top of Everest,
almost 40 years till
Lute Jerstad fulfilled
Captain Noel's dream
of moving pictures
from the summit.
Captain Noel, filming a heroic
quest on a great mountain,
was one of the first
of his kind.
As the era of the action film
cameraman was just beginning,
he embodied explore
and adventurous spirit
and made lasting
contribution
to the tradition of cameramen
who dared.
film image is a cameraman.
Behind his camera he is unseen
and forgotten
by viewers
but dangerously exposed
to his subjects:
animals the could
easily maul or kill him,
cataclysms of nature
that could swallow him up
tumultuous human combat
pulling him
closer and closer
to the epicenter
of violence.
Sometime with
only the camera
between himself
and mortal danger,
other times separated
from danger
by the flimsiest
of protection,
but always driven to
shed protection,
to get out of the cage
and push even closer.
Stretching the limits,
pioneering in places where
the limits are unknown,
stretching luck
and boldness
until limits are found
and exceeded.
The cameraman
is David Breashears,
shooting a climb on
an ice face in New Hampshire.
Action.
Just watch your left leg
on my
To do it right,
Breashears must climb
as well or better
than the climber.
Keep going.
While the climber
thinks about climbing,
Breashears thinks about
climbing and shooting
about camera position,
angles,
focus and changing light.
About storytelling,
lenses, equipment.
He thinks ahead and
climbs ahead.
Breashears is one of
the top
mountaineering cameramen.
He's been on six Mt.
Everest climbs,
twice getting to
the summit with his camera.
The job is never over.
You don't crawl into
your sleeping bag at night
and just go to sleep.
There's always some
fooling around with equipment,
loading a magazine for
the next day,
being more prepared than the
other people have to be,
and also getting up earlier
to get that extra shot,
to be in position
when they begin their ascent
or when they leave camp.
It doesn't matter
if you're cold;
it doesn't matter
if you're tired;
It doesn't matter
if you're hungry;
you just do it.
By the 1920s,
cameraman were traveling
to exotic and faraway places
to film wildlife
and adventure,
and one of the most
spectacular locations
was Africa.
Americans at home had never
seen such images as these.
They were thrilled by them.
This was the golden age of
photographic exploration.
Carl Akeley
as an extraordinary
figure of the times:
an American taxidermist
who went to Africa
to collect his own specimens.
Trying to shoot a leopard,
he only wounded it;
it counter-attacked,
and he managed to kill it
with his bare hands.
Akeley's insistence on
recording accurate details
for his taxidermy led him
to photography,
and his frustration in filming
fast-moving African scenes
led him to invent
a better camera for
action photography.
The distinctive
rounded Akeley camera
revolutionized
nature photography
and was also used to film
newsreels,
combat in World War I
and Hollywood movies.
In Africa Akeley joined
forces at times
with the celebrity
filmmaking couple
Martin and Osa Johnson.
As filmmaker the Johnsons
were less interested
in documentation
than sensational entertainment.
They raced about Africa
elaborate photo safaris,
seeking thrills and
narrow escapes,
heightening their adventures
when necessary with deceptive
film editing or staging,
Occasionally lapsing
into antics that,
seen today, seem like satire
of a very bygone era.
The Johnsons were
a glamorous pair.
Martin was an all-American guy
from a small town in Kansas
who started out as a cook
for Jack London.
Osa was a singer who'd never
been anywhere
until Martin carried her off
to a life
summed up
in the title
of her autobiography,
'I Married Adventure'.
In the water, crocodiles
are especially wicked.
They would pounce upon
the unfortunate
victims of a capsized boat
like a pack of wolves.
If a person were to fall into
the water here,
he would not last one minute.
We begin to feel uneasy lest
one might charge the boat
and this surly monster does,
almost upsetting us!
For all their showmanship,
the Johnsons are recognized
today as
intrepid and
talented filmmakers.
They developed film
in the field and
overcame a vast array
of logistical difficulties
and personal hardships.
Their movies,
even with moments
that now seem silly,
were remarkable achievements.
It must have been
incredible to go there
with primitive cameras,
Primitive transportation,
and how they actually
got any material out of it,
out of Africa at all,
was a miracle.
Wolfgang Bayer,
who's photographed wildlife
in all sorts of conditions,
all over the world.
Of all the animal
that I filmed,
I must say the primates
are probably
the most enjoying
enjoyable ones
They are so much like us.
Like the orangutans:
we had to climb 15ft.
tall trees in Borneo
in order to go up
in their environment.
Everything else before has
been filmed from the ground up.
We wanted to go back and we
brought mountain-climbing gear,
and we went up into the trees
and all of a sudden we were
face to face with orangutans.
then they came over and they
climbed up and down our rope.
They were right above us;
they peed on us, you know.
I'm looking up there,
and what are you gonna do?
You hang,
you're totally helpless
and some orangutan decides
to pee on you.
All you can do is
just keep your head low
and hope he doesn't do it
too long.
And we'll be hanging up
which actually
came up over our branch
and we would tie the rope
off down at the bottom
on a different tree,
And we'll be filming up there
And we looked down all
of a sudden
there's an orangutan
trying to untie
our rope on the very bottom,
and it's not a very good
feeling.
We of course had to try to
shout and throw things down
and then get down as fast as
we can to chase 'em away.
Looking through a camera
when filming wildlife or anything
that could be potentially
dangerous,
It puts a barrier between you.
It's almost like
watching television,
and you don't realize
that danger could be
just feet away from you.
I was filming and I got
in the middle of a fight
and I just was an innocent
bystander.
But a female came by at
full speed
and she just grabbed
my hand and bit me.
And drew quite a lot of blood.
The only weapon
I had along was my camera,
Which is a, you know,
$50,000 piece of equipment.
But in a case like this
I used it
and started on hit the chimps
over the head with my camera
and get out back in the water
where I was supposed to be.
Chasing animals over the years
I've been bitten, scratched,
attacked and uh,
other-wise mutilated by coyotes,
cougars, leopards, jaguars,
baboons, chimpanzees,
and of course numerous
little creatures.
Lucking
nothing really poisonous.
Nature and the animals give me
so much enjoyment that,
what the hell, a few bites
and a few diseases
and a few injuries here and
there are not gonna kill me.
You go out on these films
and you're with very professional
people who really
stay out of trouble,
and of course part of the fun
for an audience is too see
how people handle trouble.
Filming an Alaska's
Yukon River,
Jim Lipscomb came up against
a conflict familiar
to action cameramen:
things were too safe.
The Yukon raftsmen navigated
smoothly post all perils,
and Lipscomb was filming
an uneventful trip.
But then they came to
Five Fingers Rapids,
and suddenly they were
losing control.
It was sort of a funny,
perverse pleasure as I realized as
the raft was swinging out,
swinging out...
I could line up the shore
behind it
and I could see they weren't,
they weren't gonna miss it.
Looking pretty bad, boy.
So I realized, oh boy,
these guys are into it at last.
They've really got themselves
in trouble and I'm so glad.
And then I thought,
but I'm with 'em!
And the 10-ton raft stopped
with the loudest noise
I think I've ever hard
in my life.
And we knew we had it
and we had it
with three cameras going.
So it made a marvelous
scene in the film.
Jim Lipscomb has made films
about people and about animals.
He says people are
more treacherous.
But it was the animals
he photographed
for "Polar Bear Alert"
that taught him a
personal lesson about fear.
It began with his own brave
insistence on getting
closer to the bears.
When he decided
against filming
as planned from the safety
of a vehicle called
a tundra buggy
his guide stared
getting anxious.
And so I said to the guide,
"We're gonna have
to get outside of
that tundra buggy
in order to film.
And he said,
Well, I can't let you
outside the tundra buggy
if the polar bear is closer
than 60 to 80 feet,
Because they're very
unpredictable animals.
You don't know what
they're gonna do,
and they can get to
you in three bounds
and then look you over.
And by the time they get
finished looking you over,
you're gonna be dead.
And I don't want any National
Geographic photographer
dead in my tundra buggy.
So we said, okay,
we'll build a cage.
Yes, please,
lots.
I didn't think when I got out
there in the cage
that I was going to feel
any particular feel
or that I was in any risk.
And I thought I was going
to be very calm.
But then when that
big bear walkup to the cage,
Something happened
in my mind that was an
entirely different kind
of experience,
and I think it's
the first time
I've ever identified it
in my life.
I felt fear.
Oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
I was breathing hard and I
was trying not to tremble
because I wanted to hold
that camera still.
The polar came right up
and licked the lens.
He wanted to see
what this thing tasted like.
And I felt what it must be,
an atavistic fear I think,
that there was in,
Inborn, and through centuries,
through eons of evolution
into the human species:
This is not the place to be!
You gotta get out of here!
This thing, this thing
is gonna get you.
And I, I was just atremble
with the sense of fear of that,
That thing,
knowing all the time
that I was presumably safe.
There's tremendous charge
of adrenalin and excitement
coming through to you.
And you're, yeah,
you're thrilled to be there, uh,
and to be experiencing it.
I don't know
that it's addicting,
because in retrospect after
you think about it,
you think, well,
that was a high
I maybe just don't need
anymore.
I don't need that one again,
you know.
In 1914
motion picture photography
reached into a new realm.
underwater.
John Williamson,
a cartoonist and photographer
for a Virginia newspaper,
Had a showman's ingenuity and
a father who'd built a 30-foot
flexible steel tube designed
for underwater salvage work.
Williamson climbed down
into the tube.
Through the window
of an observation
chamber he called
a "photosphere",
he took still photos in 1913
and, in the next year,
the first moving pictures
ever taken underwater.
Only one year later,
Williamson made
the first theatrical
movie produced underwater.
These scenes
are from his version of
Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea.
Audiences were fascinated
by these images.
Others were fascinated by the
Williamson
"photosphere" itself.
The eminent Alexander
Graham Bell,
inventor of the telephone,
visited in 1922
and spent a half-hour
peering through
the underwater window.
Williamson emphasized
the safety
and dryness
of the device by taking
his wife and baby daughter
below.
He filmed them gazing
at sea life
including divers hired to swim
before his cameras.
Shooting in the Bahamas,
he lured sharks
into the picture
the sharks attracted by the
scent of chunks of horsemeat
dangled in the water
over the photosphere.
What remained to be done,
of course,
was filming by a cameraman
who swam freely underwater.
An Austrian zoologist,
Dr. Hans Hass,
was among the first to try
to connect diving
and photography.
Dr. Hass experimented
with many different cameras
and housings,
some of which leaked
disastrously.
But this was true pioneering:
equipment was devised
from scratch,
Mostly hand made,
improvised with
little sophistication
in diving technology
and near-total ignorance
of undersea dangers.
How would sharks react to a
diver taking their picture?
The only way to find out
was to take the plunge.
In 1939 Dr. Hass filmed
underwater scenes
that enthralled audiences
and fired
the imagination
of future divers.
When Hass first went
in the water
with his little wind-up
sixteen
millimeter camera
and started to press,
you know, six, eight-foot,
ten-foot sharks
in the Mediterranean,
no one had ever done it before.
So he was not only using
new techniques
and worried about the bends
and an embolism,
and this and that,
but he was also the first
to ever engage those animals.
So today we know that most
of them are approachable,
but those guys,
those early people-Hass,
Cousteau hadn't clue that
that was gonna be the case.
Very bold first efforts.
Very exciting.
Al Giddings has shot countless
ocean documentaries
and the underwater
segments of features
including James Bond movies
and "The Deep".
Doing so, he's amassed a vast
library of underwater footage.
But he's best known for his
work with great white sharks,
Shooting them at first from
inside a protective cage...
later going outside the cage.
The first time in the
cages most of us dropped
to the bottom of the cage,
hands and knees and
sort of cowered for a time,
Because these 3,000-pound
eating machines were pounding
the bars and pushing
the cages around.
Today, um, I know that if
you maintain good eye contact,
you're fairly aggressive,
and on the bottom,
you can get out of the cage,
And I have, and,
and really fend a two-or three
thousand-pound
great white away.
The first time out of the cage
was certainly
a ticklish experience.
And I went out
six or eight feet
and kept the cage at my back,
and the first animal that came
near I lunged forward a bit,
not totally convinced that
he was gonna move off.
But it worked,
and I continued to move
further and further
away from the cages,
And eventually, the last time
we were in Australia,
I had five whites
circling the cages and me,
and I was thirty,
forty feet away,
with animals swimming
between me and the cages.
You always have apprehension,
but driven a bit by the hum of
that camera and the spectacle,
you take a calculated risk.
Giddings has taken his chances
not only with the ocean's
most fearsome creatures
but also with its
most formidable places:
Like the hypnotically
beautiful
but perilous waters beneath
the thick ice
at the North and South poles.
Diving the North Pole,
and for that matter,
Antarctica,
I think represents
the toughest diving
that I've done anywhere
in the world.
Surface conditions north
and south, 60, 70 below zero,
water temperature 28.5,
a canopy of ice over your head
in most cases, 8, 9 feet thick.
Antarctic diving is very, very,
very tough on the gear,
tough on the people.
You're still concerned
about bends.
You're still concerned about
all the problems of shooting
and making images but, again,
You're going through a hole
that's 30 inches in diameter,
and you've got
a limited air supply.
And you're on the bottom
perhaps 40 minutes
and you've got,
you know,
You're gonna run out of gas
and you've gotta find
that exit hole.
If you are in trouble
or you're confused
as to where you entered,
that you wanna go deeper,
if you surface under the ice
and you're trying to see the exit point
and you're just
under the canopy, of course,
You can't see anything.
So, you know, in most cases
if you have an emergency
you're off to the surface.
In this case if you have an
emergency it's usually deeper
to get a quick
vantage point on
where the exit hole is and out.
Arctic diving is also some
of the most beautiful diving
that I've done.
It's really a fairyland
of sorts.
You have to be gutsy
and you have to be motivated.
The best ones are driven.
They want to excel.
They want to come back
with images the likes of which
no one's ever seen before.
The camera goes to war!
Each day it records
the courage
and heroism of our troops
in battle.
But rarely do you see
the camera,
and the men behind it,
who risk those same dangers
to send back their stories
and pictures.
This is "Cameramen At War",
made during World War II
but with an admiring salute to
the filmmakers of World War I.
In the last war
they set up their cameras
front line.
The man in the tin hat
and bow tie is D.W. Griffith,
responsible for that
silent epic.
The Birth of a Nation.
The get-up may look
a bit odd now,
but they thrill the audiences
of their day
with the first shots
of a tank going into action.
In World War II,
top filmmakers including
John Ford, John Huston,
William Wyler and Frank Capra
produced war documentaries
working in Hollywood
with battle footage
shot by military
and civilian cameramen.
Meet Jack Ramsen of Movietone.
His assignment is a daylight
raid over occupied Europe.
His main care is his camera.
It's carefully
and accurately fitted
to the door
of a Flying fortress.
It's covered with
an electric blanket
to prevent
the motor freezing up.
Every precaution is taken to
insure you're seeing
good pictures
If the cameraman gets back.
All set now except for his
oxygen mask
and heavy gloves
not easy to work
in but necessary at these
terrific heights
if he's to get pictures
like-Bombs gone!
Caravan's Jim Wright in
another Fortress takes up
where the bomber leader
leaves off
over an Italian cove,
pattern bombing it
for enemy submarines.
Wouldn't you think his fingers
would tremble with excitement?
The pictures are steady
as a rock!
The amphibious invasion
of the Pacific island
of Tarawa in 1943,
one of the bloodiest battles
in the history
of the U.S. Marine Corps.
A documentary film
about the battle shot
by Marine combat cameramen
later won an Academy Award.
This is the Army-Navy Screen
Magazine cutting room,
where combat film
taken by Army,
Navy and Marine cameramen
comes in from battlefronts
all over the world.
The Marine staff sergeant
with the expert medal is
from Boston, Massachusetts.
Sgt. Hatch went in
with the first wave
in the landing at Tarawa,
armed with a pistol
and a hand camera,
and brought back
a filmed record
of the fighting at that island...
you know that's the best
frame of combat film
I've ever seen.
Hey, that's okay!
And when an Army man says
that to a Marine, brother
he means it.
Oh, they're just luck.
Today, Norm Hatch has
vivid memories
of hitting the beach at Tarawa
with other Marine cameramen
who had no idea
what a fierce battle
they were walking into.
They didn't know they'd have
the extraordinary opportunity
of seeing the enemy
from so close
that both sides
in the fighting
would be shown
in the same frames of film.
They didn't know that,
despite their training,
combat photography
was something they'd have
to learn as they went along.
When we went in on Tarawa, the
only experience that anybody
had in the Marine Corps
doing a war story on film
was Guadalcanal,
and that was almost
nothing at all.
And so, consequently,
when we got ready to go,
it was sort of like
an improve situation, you know,
everybody makes it up
on his own.
My thoughts were basically
that if those guys can go out
there and fight
and do a good job fighting,
we had to go out there and do
a good job in photography.
We had the exit covered with
machine guns and rifle fire.
The Japs kept coming out
trying to knock out
the machine guns.
There's one of them.
That sniper's got a bead
on another.
There's a squad of them!
A lot of good guys from the
outfit weren't there anymore.
I'm glad I got these pictures,
because when you remember
the roaches
you've been fighting and
the things they represented,
And when you saw the flag go
up and remembered the freedom
that flag stood for, you knew
you were in on a good thing.
Vietnam a different war
and a different breed of cameraman.
Cameraman Norman Lloyd,
on assignment for CBS News,
filmed and recorded
these scenes
when Bravo Company moved
into a large Communist bunker
complex
six miles north of
the Vietnamese border.
The main enemy fore
had apparently pulled out,
but a rear guard element
was left behind
to slow down
the American advance.
Norman Lloyd, from Australia,
was a school dropout,
a kangaroo hunter,
a bar fighter, a loner.
He went to Vietnam on his own,
replaced a CBS cameraman
who was missing in action,
and stayed four years.
He won two Emmys and made
a reputation
for courage verging
on craziness.
General Westmoreland was
making a tour,
and there was a firebase
that was in deep trouble,
and, uh, and I really wanted
to get in to that firebase.
It was, but it was, they were
in terrible shape in there,
and I wanted to get in and I,
I walked up to him and I said,
"General, I want to get
into that firebase".
And I said the name of the
firebase and he said to me,
and then he said
"son, you don't want
to go there"
Then I say "Yes, I do, sir"
He said, "No you don't".
And that firebase
was overrun like,
uh, you know,
the next day or so, it, it,
but, uh, but I really,
I really wanted to
get in there but,
uh, I went as high
as I could to try.
There was a lot of competition
between the three net works
for "bang, bang" footage.
It was very important to get
"bang, bang" footage.
It was action,
it was what they really wanted.
The pressure coming
from New York,
there was a lot of pressure
on people,
On correspondent, uh, on crews,
if someone wasn't getting
the story,
and, and, and
this led to deaths,
where uh, where people would,
would so silly things because
of the pressure on them.
And they'd go out,
and they'd get killed,
and this definitely happened,
and, and
and other people were killed
with them because of
the pressure.
Norman Lloyd's countryman,
Neil Davis,
reported and filmed combat
is southeast Asia for 11 years.
He was a legend
among Vietnam cameramen
a master at covering combat.
I would always try
and go to the extreme front line,
because that's where
the best film is.
You can't get the spontaneity
of action if you're not there.
You can't get it
if you're 100 meters behind
the soldiers trying to get it
with a telephoto lens
you don't see the faces,
The expressions on their faces.
You don't see the compassion
that they may show
for their wounded comrades or
their enemy, for that matter.
I wanted to show
all those things,
and the only way to show them
was being in the front line.
The real front life.
And the idea is for
a news cameraman
to get the film
and keep it rolling,
no matter what happens.
When Saigon fell,
Neil Davis was there
filming the panicked attempt
to escape
the bloodbath expected
when the North Vietnamese
recaptured the city.
Most camera crews departed
in the helicopters lifting off
from the U.S. Embassy
helicopters that were
later dumped into the sea
to make room
on aircraft
carrier flight decks.
Neil Davis chose not to escape.
He stayed behind,
awaiting the conquering army
and making some of
the most powerful images
of the Vietnam war.
I didn't believe that there
was a great danger as long as
I survived
the first few minutes
of the Communist occupation,
Where it's always very dicey,
where there might be flare-ups
and fighting immediately.
Most people had left
the streets.
The civilian population
had gone inside their houses
and waited.
I decided the presidential
place was the place to be.
And I went there alone
and waited for them.
And, I thought, I wasn't gonna
miss this end to the story.
I had a moment's hesitation as
the tank was approaching,
and the tank column
was approaching,
because they fired
a few times
to let people know
they were about,
I think,
and crashed through that gate.
And a man with
a weapon raced toward me,
screaming in Vietnamese,
"Stop, stop, stop!"
Then I kept filming,
and he got quite close,
and I rehearsed my bit before,
which was in Vietnamese,
"Welcome to Saigon, comrade.
I've been waiting
to film the liberation".
And I had qualms about that;
I had it all right.
And he said, "You're American".
I said, "No, I'm not,
I promise I'm not.
I'm an Australian
and I've been waiting for you".
So he hesitated, and then
some troops were coming out
and surrendering from the
palace, and he hesitated,
then dismissed me and ran past.
And I was able to
then start filming again.
In 1985
Neil Davis was shooting a coup
in the streets of Bangkok
a tame event compared
to the heavy combat
he'd survived so many times.
But on this day,
an exploding tank shell
hit Davis and his crew.
His camera,
dropped on the pavement,
was still rolling
as he was dragged away.
But he was dead,
and his soundman died
a few hours later.
Neil Davis was a guy
that really had seen it all.
And it was just a shame.
Everybody misses him,
but if it had of been
in a firefight somewhere and,
uh, you know,
he would have liked it better,
I'm sure, instead
of some dinky goddamn coup,
you know, that meant nothing.
After you see
so many people get killed,
after you see
so many civilians get killed,
after you see
so many children get killed,
you go a little insane,
and I used to drink
all the time.
I thought of suicide a lot,
uh, the, uh, the only,
the only reason that I,
I really um,
didn't, uh, do it, was uh,
I really didn't want
to hurt my mother, you know.
If I had the opportunity
to be a Vietnam cameraman again,
I would do it
because I know what effect it
had on the world.
It's taken years for me to,
to get myself back together.
But, uh, but I'd do it again
because I know that people
have got to see what war is,
and, and, what means,
and the futility of it.
Mount Everest a symbol
of towering,
irresistible challenge.
Its grandeur has always
inspired awe and noble effort,
but Everest is also a killer.
Over 80 climbers
have died on it.
Many more have come down
broken and defeated.
The summit was
first reached in 1953
and then by
a second expedition,
before an American team
tried it in 1963.
This team 19 men
had a dual objective:
to reach the summit
but also to film it,
To create a documentary
that would
become the first National
Geographic Television Special.
The climbers were punished by
Everest's devastating weather.
Temperatures 20 below zero,
winds blowing at more than
The altitude and cold induced
nausea and headaches.
Climbing was hard labor.
Thinking was hard,
operating the camera,
even remembering the camera,
was hard.
And then things got worse.
The expedition's professional
cinematographer, Dan Doody,
was stricken with
a nearly fatal blood clot.
His climb was over,
but lying in his tent
he taught a crash course
in mountain cinematography
to a pair of climbers
who now got the job
as moviemakers.
Lute Jerstad,
who till then had never worked
a film camera, remembers.
So we thought he was gonna die,
and he thought
he was gonna die.
So Doody got out scraps
of paper,
and got Barry Corbet and I by
the neck and began to diagram,
I think it was 18
different shots,
and was teaching us how to
become cin, cinematographers.
So we'd take these little
cameras without film in them
and we'd go outside and shoot
and then we'd come back in
and tell him what we did
and he'd critique it for us.
On May 1st
climber Jim Whitaker
and the Sherpa Gombu
reached the summit
planting an American flag but
taking only a few snapshots.
Lute Jerstad,
with the movie camera,
and his climbing partner,
professional still
photographer Barry bishop,
were still a long way
from the top.
Climbing is scarcely the word
for what they're doing now.
They're barely creeping.
Five breaths to a step
and then a rest
Then more steps. More breaths.
Bodies aching. Minds numb.
Even with the flow of oxygen
they can barely breathe.
They can barely move
their leaden feet.
But still they do move.
You become so single-minded,
the rest of the world
is just gone.
Nothing,
nothing matters any more.
I am going to get
there if I have to crawl.
So you just keep putting one
foot in front of the other
and breathing as well
as you can
and trying to stay as warm
as you can.
On the morning of May 22nd
they launch the final push,
as alone as two
human beings can be
on the face
of the earth.
And then, before them is
a sight to lift the heart
and bring tears to the eyes.
After three weeks
Jim Whitaker's maypole
still stands fast,
with Old Glory streaming
in the winds of space.
These are the first moving
pictures ever taken
from the summit of Everest.
Lute Jerstad has his
camera propped
on the head of his ice axe.
And the blur at the bottom
is his furry glove.
Now a blast of wind strikes.
The earth quakes:
Lute almost falls,
then steadies himself.
He completes his panorama.
They have won their victory.
They're filled with a great
surge of joy... and gratitude.
We probably spent 45 minutes
to an hour on top,
and all that was taken up
by filming, really.
And filming that long,
certainly you pay
a price for it.
And Barry's price was
that he lost parts of
both little fingers
and his fourth finger.
And then in the
bivouac that night,
as a result of that,
he lost all 10 of his toes and,
And part of his foot bone
in both feet
And we finally
were flown back to Washington
sometime at the end of July.
I guess, that year to get
medals and awards and things.
And part of this was to go
to the Geographic,
and they were gonna
show some raw footage.
And I walked into this room
not really paying a lot of
attention to it
and looking at the great
pictures that had been taken,
and all of a sudden on the
screen came my summit footage.
and I started to cry.
I couldn't believe
it had come out.
And then I remembered
what it looked like.
But I couldn't,
I hadn't remembered what it
looked like until I saw that,
and it's because of
that single-minded attitude of,
you know, get this job done,
forget everything else,
and then you can turn
around and go home.
Twenty years later
David Breashears reached
the summit and beamed
a television picture to
a satellite station
for broadcast
a week later
on an American network.
Twenty-five years later 1988
pictures from the summit
were seen live on TV
around the world.
Thus the dream
of Capt. John Noel
was fully realized
Captain Noel who carried
the first movie cameras on
Everest in the unsuccessful
British expeditions
of the early 1920s.
His film continues to amaze
mountaineering cameramen
not only for its clarity
and coverage
but also his pioneering ordeal.
He lugged heavy equipment.
He developed the film himself,
on the spot,
working in a mountainside tent,
filtering glacier water,
burning yak dung to provide
heat to warm his chemicals.
He worked on his own,
getting little cooperation
from other climbers
who resented his presence,
regarding his camera as
a vulgar intrusion
on the purity
of their sportsmanship.
And yet his film preserved
the memory of the climb
and made a legend
of its tragic climax
climbers George Mallory
and Andrew Irvine struggling
to within 600 feet
of the summit
before disappearing forever,
Noel and the others watching
through telescopes,
then waiting anxiously as a
search party led
by N.E. Odell went up.
Crossed blankets in the snow
was the visual signal
to those below that
there was no hope,
for Mallory and Irvine
were gone,
a signal first seen through
Captain Noel's long lens.
The emotion of
that moment 64 years ago
is still keenly felt
by Captain Noel.
Hi is 98 years old.
The top of the North Col
was a shelf of ice,
and Odell,
when he'd made the search
and determined after two days
and two nights
that the men were dead,
just lost, he went
and he found their tent,
and he found these pieces of
oxygen cylinder,
and he came back and he gave
a message by signal.
We had no wireless telephone
in those days;
they weren't known.
He put a signal out
of crossed blankets.
And the photograph I got,
the best photograph
I made in my life,
was a circle made by the,
this high-powered lens
at one-and-a-half-miles range
showing the crossed blankets
and showing the men
walking away.
And people asked me,
"What do you see?"
I couldn't tell;
I was overcome.
I couldn't tell them,
but you'll get the signal.
The crossed blankets meant
Mallory and Irvine were dead.
That is clearly shown.
Almost 30 years passed before
men reached the top of Everest,
almost 40 years till
Lute Jerstad fulfilled
Captain Noel's dream
of moving pictures
from the summit.
Captain Noel, filming a heroic
quest on a great mountain,
was one of the first
of his kind.
As the era of the action film
cameraman was just beginning,
he embodied explore
and adventurous spirit
and made lasting
contribution
to the tradition of cameramen
who dared.