Filmmaker Michael Brown has literally climbed mountains to get the right shot. The three-time Emmy winner has traveled to the tops of some of the highest peaks in the world — including four trips to the summit of Mount Everest — as part of his adventure filmmaking business. His work has been picked up by National Geographic, NBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN, OLN, the BBC and the Discovery Channel, but his film Farther Than the Eye Can See was full of milestones. It documents blind climber Erik Weihenmayer's ascent to the summit of Mount Everest, but also marks the first time an HD camera was brought to the peak. Below, Hulu asked Brown about this project and Weihenmayer's incredible journey. — Rebecca Harper, Hulu.com

Hulu: Can you tell us a little bit about Erik, the climber who is the focus of your film?

Brown: Yeah, he’s somebody that I obviously admire a lot and has been a good friend ever since. As you know, he’s blind and has been since he was 13. His approach to life, what I think I admire the most, is that he doesn’t let things get in his way. He never complains and doesn’t allow his blindness to be an excuse to not be a great part of any team.  In fact, he tries to make up for it rather than complaining about it. It’s sort of a unique thing, because you’d think he’d want special treatment, when in fact he wants kind of the opposite. As you can imagine, he’s incredibly courageous to make an attempt to climb Mount Everest.

How did you get involved in filming this expedition?

I’d climbed Mount Everest the year before, and they were looking for someone to make a film about this climb, but were having some trouble finding someone to commit, because people didn’t trust that it was going to work out. I was super impressed with the courage it took to try it, so I signed up. And it was the best decision I ever made, I think.

Can you talk us through the process of Erik’s preparation for the climb?

The most important thing I think Erik had to do was to surround himself with a team of people that he could truly trust, because he was going to be putting his life in their hands. You really can’t afford to make a little mistake up on the mountain. So really the most important thing for Erik was the trust factor.

Beyond that, as far as getting ready, we did a lot of hiking and things like that, and trying to just get used to this crazy terrain that you have to go over. There were a few surprises about the training as well, because we thought the ladders would be the really difficult part of the climb — and indeed, they were at the beginning — because they’re obviously suspended in the air over these giant, gaping holes in the ice. It’s intimidating. But after a while, it became the easiest part of the climb for Erik because the ladders were consistent. The rungs were a predictable distance apart, so he could just get on a ladder and cross it once he’d done, you know, 15 or 20 ladders. The first one in the film, it’s shot so that we stay with him for the entire crossing of the first ladder and the tension is just, like, so intense, because you can see it, you can just feel it, this kind of fear coming through. That was one of the more interesting aspects of his training and getting used to it.

One of the things that people say about Erik is “Well, I wouldn’t even try to climb Mount Everest and I’m not blind.” In a way, that’s sort of ironic because Erik is a very qualified Everest climber. He’s very fit and he has a really good head on his shoulders; he’s got everything going for him in terms of what it takes to climb Mount Everest, so in a way he’s more qualified than most people, sighted or blind, because of his attitude and his approach to life.

There were some other firsts on this journey, with a father and son team making the ascent, and the dad being the oldest man to reach the summit.

Yeah, for a little while. Somebody else older than him climbed it a little while later. His son came up there with him. For [Sherman Bull, who was the oldest man to make it to the summit at the time], he wasn’t intending it to be that way; he just kept trying for so long, he ended up being the oldest guy. Those are minor firsts, the first American father and son, but I think the more significant first the fact that we got the largest number of members of one team to be on the summit at the same time, and I think that record maybe even still holds. What I find to be really intriguing about that milestone is that everybody on the team put aside their own self-serving need to get to the top to get behind Erik’s summit. And when that team was able to get behind a singular vision, we were all about to get to the top. So we had this huge success as a team because we were able to put aside our individual needs. Most of the time on Everest, it’s every man or woman for himself, saying “I want to be on top.” Everybody wants to be on the top, so they’re not being encouraging and supportive and really wanting the expedition to work. They’re more just concerned about “Well, am I going to reach my goals?” and stuff like that. Our team had a loftier goal, to get behind Erik and make sure he was able to safely get to the top and back down. As a result of that, everybody on the team was able to get to the top.

What were some of the more tense and stressful moments of the climb for you as the filmmaker?

One of the worst moments for me was when we arrived at the South Summit. I had just exerted myself as hard as I possibly could to I could get ahead enough to get a shot looking down with this beautiful panorama of the Himalayas behind as Erik and his team came up the ridge. But when I got there, I had just pushed myself to my absolute limit. When they started to come up, I didn’t realize that I’d allowed the climbing rope to go around my back. They had their safety devices on the rope and they were pulling on it a little bit, so it was pulling me back and forth as I took the shot with the camera on my shoulder, making it shaky. And I had them stop so I could get on the other side of the rope, but I didn’t realize that a cable from my camera had wrapped around the rope, so when they started again it started pulling on me. It was an incredibly frustrating moment, because twice I had to ask them to stop and take a few steps backward — which is a lot to ask at 28,700 feet. It was a lot to ask them to turn around and go down, and they actually did. I think that says something about the team, as well. By that time we’d been together for over two months and we’d become such good friends that all of them were also really behind having a success for the film. They were willing to stop and even take a few steps back on the summit of Mount Everest to make sure that I could get a shot.

It’s a beautiful film. You did some great work up there. And this was part of the crapshoot as well, wasn’t it? Weren’t you were the first to bring the HDTV camera up to that altitude?

No one had done it before. We’d thought NHK of Japan had done it because they’re such innovators in anything HD, so we didn’t even bother to say anything about it until several months after the expedition. Then were talking to someone from NHK and they said, “No, no. We didn’t make it.” They’d made it up to the South Col, but then their expedition wasn’t able to take that big camera to the top, so we were like “Oh, great, we’ll take it.” It turns out, without even knowing it, we’d taken the first HD camera to the summit.

By doing that, how much extra weight were you carrying?

I was carrying tape and batteries, so my extra weight was not more than about 15 pounds or so. But the Sherpas who carried it, they’re the ones that do the superhuman effort, the guys that deserve the real kudos for doing that. There’s tons more stories about that, but two Sherpas on our team were kind of the camera team on that day. It’s funny because I’ve taken another full-size camera to the summit since then. I got both the first and the second [summits with an HD camera] because no one else is really willing to take big, giant cameras to the summit. I mean, IMAX, but we might do that again next year.

Erik had a goal of climbing the highest summits on the seven continents. Has he completed that goal?

Well, he completed the goal of climbing to the top of the seven summits, but he still loves to climb and still does climb. He hasn’t stopped doing that; it’s a passion of his. He did reach the goal of climbing to the highest point of each of the seven continents. We did that together, actually; we went to the top of Kosciuszko in Australia, I think that was 2003 or so. I’ve stayed close with Erik; we’ve done a lot of trips since then.

And what are you working on currently? You were just in Europe, right?

I was working for the BBC on something called The Human Planet, and I’m also co-directing and shooting a sequel to the Everest IMAX movie, called Return to Everest. That’s why I took another HD camera up there and keep doing it. [Laughs.] I’m involved in all kinds of stuff. I’m just about to go with some school teachers to do some inspirational stuff on Mount Kilimanjaro, and then I have film school [Serac Adventure Film School], which is the most fun thing we do. We do an intensive, one- or two-week-long course and teach students all the ins and outs of adventure filmmaking. The best part of it is they make a film of their own in that short time. They finish it all the way and get it either on Vimeo or YouTube. They’re pretty good films — they’re winning festivals.

© Hulu, LLC.