Mile…Mile & a Half
“The JMT is said to be one of the most beautiful hikes in the world. There are of course longer trails, such as the Colorado Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail, but for those trails you would need 4-5 months to hike them!”
“A lot of people do hike the JMT so it doesn’t necessarily come with any sort of prestige. But as a life experience, it is as good as any of the very best trails in America; and besides, we could do this trail in only 25 days!”
“Although we recorded our journey everyday, none of us ever thought that it would eventually become a feature film. What we thought would happen, is that we would put this short scenic thing together on Vimeo. In the end, it turned out to be this much bigger piece.”
“Once we decided to make a film about our time together, it was our decision to accurately show the good, the bad, the silliness and all of the fun we had together as friends.”
“Fortunately, there was no major drama on this trip, so the course of our film is more about our positive experiences. Because the film remains so positive throughout, I think this resonates with a lot of people. This is probably why the film was received so well, because it was a positive film that doesn’t take itself too seriously.”
“None of us are professional athletes, so what we did here, was attainable for most people. People seeing this film could really imagine themselves in this place, which I think partly explains the film’s initial success.”
“A lot of adventure films out there are all about hardship. I mean, there has to be some kind of enjoyment or greater thing about doing these trails than purely the hardship? Whereas hiking for us, is all about enjoying the moment whether you are doing it with friends or on your own.”
“Where our film was about a group of fit hikers, but not elite athletes, who went out and hiked a trail! Ours was more like a lifestyle film, such as a surfing safari film than the typical adventure film. I think in a way, ‘Mile…Mile & a Half’ had the opportunity to reach an audience beyond the outdoor community.”
“Our film is about how you remember those big moments in life. It’s similar to how you re-write in your mind, only the positive parts to an experience like this. The way you only remember the good and amazing parts. All of the hardship still happened, but they almost become jokes because you’re collectively focusing on that happy sweet feeling you get from the experience overall.”
“That’s what I feel we captured with this film. ‘Mile…Mile & a Half’ shows how ‘the good’ in an experience outweighs the bad, because we all felt so lucky to be doing something like the JMT in the first place!”
“A lot of planning went into this trip, such as organizing everyone’s schedules, the food drops and getting the ‘all important’ park permits. Jason did a major part of the initial preparations getting all of our supplies to the necessary food drops up on the trail, so we could last the full 25 days!“
‘Mile…Mile & a Half’ shows how ‘the good’ in an experience outweighs the bad, because we all felt so lucky to be doing something like the JMT in the first place!”
“It was necessary to work out the food for the entire group so that each person wasn’t bringing their own personal provisions; which would have added to the weight and trash we carried on the trial. We needed to reduce the amount of food each person was carrying, in order for us to have enough room for our camera and sound gear. So a big part of the planning was making sure we had enough food, while still being able to take all of the camera gear with us.”
“Getting all of the food for a 25 day hike up into the wilderness was no easy task. For example, the weekend before we were due to start the JMT, three of us planned to hike-in and leave one of our food drops in the wilderness at Kearsarge Pass, which is 11,000 feet up on the Sierra Crest.”
“Two of us drove up the night before and then camped at about 9,000 feet, where we soon acclimatized to the altitude. Durand, our sound guy, drove up the very same morning we planned to hike up to Kearsarge Pass. Just as we were on the last pitch heading towards the peak, Durand became seriously sick from the altitude.”
“We were almost at the top where we were to drop our food, when all of a sudden the priority was to get Durand urgently off the mountain. We had packs full of seven days worth of food for five people, so you can imagine how super heavy those packs were.”
“Having almost lugged all that food to the top, we now had to turn around and go back down the same mountain we had just climbed up. And, all the way down poor Durand was just sick as a dog.”
“Based upon that experience, we were really worried about whether he would be OK to do the trail a week later. Durand got hit really hard by altitude sickness at the beginning and then he just turned magically into this red-headed mountain goat for the rest of the trip. In the end, he was the only one able to just prance up and down every mountain. After his initial sickness, he was certainly the strongest for the rest of the 25 days.”
“Unlike our trail planning, the film idea was very organic and spontaneous in the way it happened. We never actually intended this to be a feature, we were just goofing around having fun, not ever thinking that anyone would ever see this other than our family.”
“Once we finally decided to make our journey into a feature length film, It was like taking on a second full-time job for a year and half, and then another year of having a part-time job, that you don’t really get paid for. ‘Mile…Mile & a Half’ was a huge time consumer for us all.”
“There were so many good things that came out of it, but it certainly demanded a substantial time commitment from everyone. That’s not to say that we regret making this experience into a feature, it’s just very tiring doing something this size.”
“I think for the near future, we will try to do shorter projects that are equally as wonderful and fun. We all want to do another feature like this one down the road, but next time we would need more resources going into it than we had with ‘Mile… Mile & a Half’”.
To see the full length movie, simply go to https://milemileandahalf.vhx.tv/products/mile-mile-a-half-feature‑film
