Alex Honnold, Freerider, El Capitan: what if he falls?

"We had this ethical question: is he more likely to fall when we were there because we can be a distraction, than if he is by himself?" And "I’m aware that a camera changes the dynamic in some small way. And when the margins of success and failure are very very thin, you just don’t know what it’s going to be that might tip the scale."

These are just some of the questions that arose between Jimmy Chin and his wife Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi as they filmed and directed Free Solo, the award-winning documentary that follows Alex Honnold and his extraordinary climb without ropes of Freerider on El Capitan in June 2017.

The New York Times has bis published the following short film that, according to Chin "delves into the challenges of shooting the film and how we approached some of the ethical questions around filming something as dangerous as climbing El Capitan without a rope." Furthermore, there is some previously unreleased footage from the production.