Tim Boelter

Back in January when I first decided to embark on this journey, I had to make a very difficult decision about another project. I was asked to go to Mount Everest as a cameraman to film an expedition’s climb of the mountain. This job offer was a reasonable deal in that it provided a paycheck and all expenses paid. What made it lucrative was the fact that I had the opportunity to return to Everest and give it a second honest try.

Although high altitude climbing is a passion of mine, I realized that if I wanted to grow as a filmmaker and experience more of what the world had to offer outside of the climbing scene I would have to pass up this opportunity and take a chance on the Silk Road. Everest to me is a mountain worth filming simply because the story of adventure and risk is something people enjoy reading about or watching. But at the same time I feel the challenge of Everest has become too commercial and that the true adventure needs to be about more than just climbing with commercial guides. There are other stories much more compelling to a wider audience base and I hope to find them -- stories about culture and history, stories that reveal a little more about where we came from or expose another viewpoint about the world in which we live. Adventure can come in many forms, and for me this trip, following the Silk Road, offered a very unique adventure that I think others would find exciting.

So instead of heading off to climb Everest and actually getting paid to do it, I made the decision to not only partially finance the Silk Road trip, but to make a fairly large capital investment to upgrade all my production gear to include the new Panasonic HVX-200 camera and supporting hardware to shoot using the P2 card in the HD format.

Cheers,
Tim

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