I’m currently in the USA directing season one of THE WAYFINDERS, an American TV show billed as “STRANGER THINGS meets LORD OF THE RINGS”. Not quite at that budget level, but with lavish sets and fast moving action sequences. It’s a funny, family-friendly show with a gang of teenagers as the heroes and a playful, optimistic, characterful tone that really puts me in mind of the epic 80s adventure-fantasy movies I was weaned on.
We shot the first three quarters in the West of Ireland, near Limerick, and the final quarter in the dry heat of a Utah Summer — it’s currently 37 degrees centigrade outside (close to 100 degrees fahrenheit for our American friends).
Utah is an incredible place full of epic landscapes on a grand scale. They shot BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID here, a fantastic seventies Western with two stars at the peak of their powers. John Ford directed STAGECOACH, the famous black and white John Wayne western, in Monument Valley, a stunning, other-wordly landscape I associate with cowboy movies.
What I’ve realised is that Utah… is high. High up. High altitude. Salt Lake City (where I’m staying) sits at 4,327 feet above sea level and the tallest mountain in the UK (Ben Nevis in Scotland) is 4,413 feet high.
Last weekend I travelled 9,529 feet above sea level, hiking up to a lake at the top of a huge canyon. My body, which has lived by the beach for going on two decades, was NOT prepared for the altitude… I’m fit for my age — but I huffed and puffed like a steam train all the way up, unable to get anything like enough oxygen into my lungs. The scenery was strikingly beautiful, and well worth the climb, but the whole experience left me wondering if I belong a bit closer to sea level. Apparently your ability to cope with high altitude is genetic and down to whether your ancestors lived in the mountains or not.
I’m guessing mine didn’t… ;-)
