Nepal VIsion Quest

Here is an in depth look into the filmmaking process for the "Into The Mind" film. Filmmaking is a team sport and this really shows the collaboration aspect and a lot of the method behind the madness for bringing abstract concepts to reality. Thanks for checking it out! ~renan

Nepal Vision Quest (INTO THE MIND behind the scenes) from Sherpas Cinema on Vimeo.

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UNEARTHED short videos

The sand was everywhere. Red, silty and windblown into every crevice of everything. But as gritty as it felt against our dry dusted skin, we were psyched to be there. Matt, Alex and myself have spent many years cutting our teeth climbing parallel cracked cliffs and towers surrounding the Canyonlands of Utah. Even though we were exploring new parts of Canyonlands by floating down the Green River, tapping into the endless first ascent potential, it felt like home. Daniel, on the other hand, was a fish out of water in this dry alien landscape. For him, standing at the base of a 500 foot 'splitter' crack was like being on the surface of mars. Although Daniel is one of the strongest competition and boulder climbers in the world, this type of 'trad' climbing was a completely different, contour-intuitive and painful type of the climbing to learn. But he had the best of teachers. Alex and Matt have certainly put their time, passions, and energy into the most difficult cracks in the desert. I knew it was going to be a great trip the minute I got the call from Honnold. We woke up everyday in the shimmering riverside light, filtered the mud out of river water, and cooked up oatmeal or bacon before heading up to the buttresses, intent on squeezing out every drop of daylight. Each day Alex's energy was unwavering, pushing the team forward to the next untouched piece of stone. Rest days were not in the vocabulary, even on day 10 when the rain came in Alex pushed for one more line, one more tower. If Daniel's courage could have been measured, the day he led his first trad route, it would have been counted by the beads of sweat collecting on his and all of our brows, the nausea of pushing past the pain threshold, the look of wide-eyed wonder, fear and enthusiasm that intensified in the corners of his eyes every time Alex said, "Don't worry dude. You'll be fine.” But it was Alex’s mentorship, his genuine enthusiasm for Daniel and giant persistent smile, that made this trip the most memorable for me. It was the times that Daniel, and all of us really, would try and fail and try again that reminded us that climbing is a journey you never quite arrive at. This was certainly one of those unique trips that so seamlessly combined the old and new. Back to our roots in this red desert, we discovered new climbs and joined Daniel on an all-time learning and mentoring experience. I enjoyed the motivation that came with being a climber on the team, as well as a shooter and storyteller. It had me up before dawn each morning, looking for the perfect light, and wandering the riverbanks long after dark shooting images of the stars. This trip was an opportunity in rare form, a chance to bring a story to life that combined the power of this landscape, one that has given me so much over years, with the human emotion of my teammates. It was the moments when the ferocious sand-pelting wind died down, the sun dipping below the horizon and we found ourselves stumbling back into camp that I’ll remember. It was the teamwork, the contagious nature of wanting to help each other all push further. We were glowing from shared climbs, shared fear, shared success, and endorphins kicking. Now that the dust has finally settled on this adventure, those are the emotions I most hope to share. An honest look into each of our characters and the special way of the life that is desert climbing… UNEARTHED is the revealing of these things. Thanks for following! ~renan Read more...

'UNEARTHED' a close to home story

Not every expedition has to be an epic around the world journey of suffering and cold snowy mountains. It was great to go back to our roots and tell a lighter story of friendship, community and new growth. Stay tuned for more and thanks for watching. Cheers, ~renan Read more...

New Camp 4 Collective Reel

So honored to share our new camp 4 collective reel! Its been a wild ride working with so many talented people. The Whole is greater than the sum of its parts.... As always thanks for tuning in! ~renan

CAMP4 COLLECTIVE 2013 REEL from Camp 4 Collective on Vimeo.

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Pause Episode #7

Pause Episode #7 (an experimental series of short video snippets) featuring some of our adventures on the Tooth Traverse last year. Thanks for tuning in! ~renan

PAUSE 7 from PAUSE on Vimeo.

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Renan 2013 Cinematography Reel

Hey All! Renan chiming in here, from the field. I've been on the move a lot this year on a number of adventures. Its been a blur and unfortunately I haven't been able to always post on VC along the way. At any rate, I'm stoked to share a few snippets from the journey and the films to come :) Thanks for following! ~reo Read more...

Winter in Boulder

Here is a short film that I shot with Keith Ladszinski and cut for BlueWater Ropes that got me inspired to buy the Sony FS700!
 Winter in Boulder Colorado, with Cedar Wright and Gus the All Terrain Pug. from BlueWater Ropes on Vimeo.

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Diamond Meditations

Welcome to an experimental piece shot over a few days camped out at the Diamond on Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. I composed the song with this piece in mind. Big thanks to Joe Mills my climbing partner for this three days in the mountains, who is always psyched for adventure.

  Most of the on climb footage was shot on my Iphone 4s, and the on ground footage and timelapses were shot on a 5d mark iii.

Poetry in Order of Reading

The Mountain, by Emily Dickinson

On Beauty, by Kahil Gibran

Excerpt from Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu

Alone Looking At The Mountain, by Li Po

This Is How Your Mind Is, by Foyan

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The Life of Cardwell

Hey Guys!  Sadly, Renan and I have been crazy busy this year with projects that haven't made it here to the blog, but I'm psyched to present this piece about John Cardwell that I cut for Five Ten.  This is my attempt at going beyond pure climbing porn and showing John's lifestyle and character, as well as some sick v13 bouldering gnar!  Hope you enjoy it!! CEDAR. 

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PROPS TO OUR HOMIES!!

So, because Renan and I have been busy with commercial projects, and climbing a lot, we haven't been able to produce any free content for the blog recently.  We love and cherish our Vertical Carnival Audience and hope to have some new stuff for you soon.  In the meantime..I thought I'd feature some videos put together by our friends.  A couple of these feature yours truly!  Below is a video put together by John Dickey for Black Diamond that gives you a peak into my world!  

Below is a video put together by a local Chilean filmmaker that features some pretty cool bouldering footage of myself Yuji, Honnold, and some local rock stars crushing! Stay tuned for a film I am working on that shows some of the other wild adventures that Honnold and I shared while down South.

Finally, This is a short Bouldering video put together by the 15 year old Stefan Lavender.  Stefan is one of my go to climbing partners, and he's been picking my brain about filmmaking and borrowing equipment when I'm not using it.  Not only is Stefan a bad ass 5.14 climber, but this is pretty cool for his first attempt at a short climbing film!!! 

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Tentbound in Devils Bay

The idea started off as a good one: To establish new trad climbs on the amazing 1,200-foot granite big-wall rocketing directly out of the ocean in Devil's Bay, Newfoundland. But for climbers Hazel Findlay, Alex Honnold, James Pearson and Mark Synnott, the great idea soon became something much different then planned.

Though Newfoundland is relatively close to Mark Synnott's home in upstate New Hampshire, in reality, it would be easier to reach some Himalayan basecamps than get to Devil's Bay. Five days of travel by car and boat into this land forgotten by modern time, the team finally arrived only to discover adverse conditions and suffering.

Expeditions are remembered for being either great successes or grand failures. But the reality is that most of the time, they are neither. For the climbers, their experience became as much an inward exploration of their own hopes, anxieties and fears as it was an exploration of the vertical walls. "Tentbound in Devil's Bay" is a portrait of the darker side of an expedition, a side that you rarely hear about.



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PRA CARAMBA

Wow was this really almost three years ago...yes it was, and this is goes back to the very roots of the vertical carnival blog that Renan and I started in south america on this trip, with the intention of only blogging for a couple months... Plans change!! The film is finally free to the public, thanks to iclimb who is giving the film away as an HD download! Pra Caramba marks the birth of my passion for filmmaking and had it's world premiere at the Boulder Adventure Film Festival! Read more...

SAM ELIAS ON RED BULL AND VODKA M11

Hey Guys! Cedar here. This is a short piece I shot for Bluewater ropes about Mixed Ninja Sam Elias! Watch one of the world's best mixed climbers, ninja his way up Red Bull and Vodka an impressive Mixed climb on Vail Pass that ventures out and endless stretch of gymnastic, tiered roof madness! The climb overhangs over fifty feet in a hundred and twenty, and finishes on the Fang, one of the most iconic ice climbs in the world.

Shortly after this was filmed, Sam Elias onsighted Direct King Cobra. Which at M11 is one of the hardest Mixed climbs in the world. Read more...

The Kyrgyzstan Project

Our good friends Matt Segal, John Dickey and Eric Decaria are working on film from their adventure to Kyrgyzstan last summer. There is some pretty insane looking rock over there, I hope you find some inspiration in this teaser! Thanks for checking it out! ~reo


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A Journey To Sustainability

An adventure to Taiwan to some of the largest factories on the planet, to help The North Face tell their sustainability story for the first time to the general public.

I think I worked harder on this project than anything else in 2011, the road to sustainability is certainly complicated and hard to communicate. After working with TNF on an athlete level for the last 6 years it was an honor to go deep behind the scenes and learn about these important initiatives in this way. As always, thanks for checking it out! ~reo


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RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE; Part Two, The Dream Climb

Hey Vertical Carnival audience!!! First of all... Thanks a lot for tuning in to our little labor of love! Over a quarter of a million of you have watched a video here... pretty amazing!!!

After managing to climb the unclimbed north Dragons's Horn, we rested for a few days and then headed up for a new route on the steeper and more impressive South Dragon's Horn. Follow Lucho and I as we establish one of the Best Climbs of Our Lives!

Big Thanks to Tanoshi Lodge for feeding us and housing us during the adventure.

If you find our adventure compelling or entertaining, please donate even just a dollar in the name of our climb to Big City Mountaineers, so that urban teens can get the chance the get out on their first wilderness adventures! GO TO SUMMIT FOR SOMEONE TO DONATE!!!!

Special thanks to The North Face who is matching dollar for dollar the first 4000 we can raise for Big City Mountaineers, and Five Ten, Blue Water Ropes, Clif Bar, Backcountry.com, and Black Diamond for their additional support.

Hopefully you are inspired to get after an adventurous dream of your own creation. Much Love for the Journey!

Cedar. Read more...

EXCLUSIVE: Tested. Proven. : Behind the Lens in the Tetons PART 2!!

As promised here is part 2 of the 'Tested. Proven." series with some gnarly storm sequences, more cineflex aerial footage and some pure climbing/skiing action high in Grand Teton National Park. Tim Kemple aka "Kempy"leads us through this part of the production process. It's cool that he was part of the original Vertical Carnival expedition (and the creation of this blog) with Cedar and Myself to South America....and now gets to make a big cameo. As we like to say, the eye of the Kempy strikes again!! Thanks for checking it out and stay tuned for part 3 next monday. Cheers, ~reo

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EXCLUSIVE: Tested. Proven. : Behind the Lens in the Tetons

Part One of a Three Part Exclusive Series

This past Spring Camp 4 embarked on one of our biggest projects to date — documenting a ski mountaineering trip deep into the Tetons Range in Wyoming, in hopes of gathering enough high quality footage to produce a :30 television commercial for The North Face. Our goal was to be ‘light and fast’ but still capture the highest quality content possible.

This video is the first of a three part Behind the Scenes series that we’ve dubbed ‘tested. proven'. Jimmy Chin Tim Kemple and myself each respectively talk about the 3 part process of production, shoot and edit...part 2 on Monday!

Thanks for checking it out!! ~reo

You can view the finished commercial currently airing on national television here




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RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE, Part One: The Unclimbed Horn

Hey Vertical Carnivalites! Cedar Here! As you may or may not not I was just in Malaysia for October and had great climbing trip!

After a whirlwind three day travel sequence Lucho and I found ourselves on Tioman Island staring up at the mythical "Dragon's Horns." It was hard to believe that only one of the huge jungle spires had been climbed...until we started the approach...then it made more sense. But after some epic jungle bushwhacking which culminated with me being attacked by giant hummingbird sized wasps, we somehow managed to find our way to the base, and miraculously summited the unclimbed Dragon's Horn on our first full day on the island. The route "Tanoshi Buttress" was a classic 5.10x adventurefest!!! We topped out at night and endured a shiver bivy until about two a.m. when an an impending lightning storm encouraged us to rappel at night. I hope this short video captures some of the magic of our Experience.

We are raising money in the name of our climb for Big City Mountaineers, an awesome program that gets under resourced teens into the wilderness. Programs like these are close to mine and Lucho's hearts and we'd really appreciate even a couple dollars donated in our names.... find out more at SUMMIT FOR SOMEONE

Special Thanks to the folks at Tanoshi Lodge for making our stay a stylish one.

MAJOR PROPS to The North Face for matching the first four grand that Lucho and I can raise for Big City Mountaineers!

Also huge love to Five Ten, BlueWater Ropes, Clif Bar, BackCountry.com, and Black Diamond who helped to make this trip a reality!

We brought two cameras up the climb with us, a tm900 and a gh2, and I shot some of the timelapses with my 5dii. Hopefully you like my edit and original music. Read more...

The Denali Experiment

As promised here is the complete 15 edit: Free-ride skier Sage Cattabriga-Alosa and big mountain snowboarder Lucas Debari step out of their elements and make an attempt to climb, ski and snowboard Denali. Sage and Lucas get a helping hand from a huge cast of seasoned and professional climbers and ski mountaineers from the North Face Athlete Team, including Hilaree O’Neill, Conrad Anker, Ingrid Backstrom, Jim Zellers, Emilio Previtali and Giulia Monego, as the two embark on the hardest expedition of their lives.

Although I was still injured during this expedition, it was an honor to get a chance to tell the story and live vicariously through the footy during my recovery. With eight characters and lots of possible story-lines it was one the most challenging pieces I have worked on to date!

We are lucky to be able to share it this way, it's true 'experiment' for in terms of how how many people will have the attention span to watch the whole thing online :) Hopefully it does well, so we can keep it coming! Thanks for watching, ~renan



a CAMP 4 COLLECTIVE production
Director : Jimmy Chin
Cinematographers : Jimmy Chin, Matt Irving, Adam Clark
Editor: Renan Ozturk
Motion Graphics: Barry Thompson, Eric Bucy, Mary Blumen
Additional Media: Teton Gravity Research, Absinthe Films, Colby Coombs, Renan Ozturk
Color: Anson Fogel

music in order of appearance:

Philip Sheppard
Song: Night Vision
PhilipSheppard.com

Yppah
Song: Never Mess With Sunday
Myspace.com/Yppah

Sun Wukong Project
Song: Clear Puzzles in Mjet
TheSunWukong.com

Ammoncontact
Song: Like Waves Of The Sea
NinjaTune.net/Artist/Ammoncontact

Philip Sheppard
Song: The Valley
PhilipSheppard.com

The Damn Sons
Song: Who Wants More
DamnSons.com

CatacombKid
Song: Digital Cliffs
CatacombKid.com

CatacombKid
Song: Water
CatacombKid.com

Amon Tobin
Song: Bloodstone
AmonTobin.com

Ape School
My Intention (Yppah Remix Instrumental)
NinjaTune.net/Artist/Ape-School

Fink
Song: Yesterday Was Hard On All Of Us
FinkWorld.co.uk

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