Finally: A Mainstream Film That Doesn’t Mangle Climbing

Mainstream movies that feature climbing usually botch it. From Cliffhanger and Vertical Limit, to The Ledge and that one episode of Seinfeld, Hollywood does not know what’s up (or down) when it comes to our sport.

So when I heard that a horror indie climbing film called The Sound would be coming out in June, I immediately wondered just how wrong they would get it. Would it be completely cringe and unwatchable? Might it be so bad that it’s actually hilariously entertaining, à la the cult classic The Room or Vertical Limit?

But when I heard that Alex Honnold, Brette Harrington, Hazel Findlay, and Adrian Ballinger appeared in the film, I wondered how these accomplished athletes could be complicit in a misrepresentation of climbing. The answer? They weren’t.

When director Brendan Devane decided he wanted to make a horror film about climbing, he knew it needed to be authentic. That meant involving climbers in the film and production as consultants, riggers, producers, and cameo characters.

Devane, who lives in Vegas, seems to be developing a specialty of indie horror flicks set in the recreational adventure world. His last film, The Canyonlands, followed five friends on a rafting trip that takes a fatal turn. In the climbing-focused movie The Sound, Devane draws upon his own ice climbing experience during his time living in Telluride, Colorado. The story he creates imbues the sport of climbing with a supernatural sort of terror—not the well-founded variety of terror that runs rampant in climbing, from fear of falling, to dread of rockfall. The film skirts all the many fears inherent in the sport to explore an evil sound emanating from the top of the “Forbidden Wall” in British Columbia.

Beyond the pro climber cameos, Devane says that to authentically represent climbing he aimed “to cast actors who had climbing experience—and not just hanging out in a gym once every six months.” Inspired by one of his favorite movies, Point Break, Devane sought out actors who climbed or climbers who could be taught to act. He also pulled in Mike Negri—a Reel Rock alum who produced The Alpinist—as the climbing producer. And he brought on Reel Rock cinematographer Brett Lowell to serve as director of photography for the climbing scenes. And, spoiler alert: In addition to playing the lead character’s grandpa who falls to his death on the “Forbidden Wall,” Ballinger also served as a climbing consultant on the film, ensuring a mostly realistic portrayal of the sport.

Read our review of The Sound here 

Of course, a few questionable climbing gaffes exist in the film. One example is the way haul bags are carried while climbing rather than hauled up a tag line. And then there’s the odd premise of having three separate teams ascend a wall simultaneously (more on that below). But generally speaking, Devane blew it out of the park, at least compared to past attempts at climbing cinema.

“So often in the media people get climbing wrong,” says Hazel Findlay, who was excited about the opportunity to work with the film industry for the project. “They misrepresent it in ridiculous ways.”

On set, Findlay says it was clear that Devane wanted to “get it right.” Everyone on set—from the actors to the climbers—were committed to an authentic representation of climbing. One example? Instead of renting out a “posh van” to appear in the film, Devane had Findlay use the dirty van she’d been living out of for two months during her time climbing around the United States.

Ultimately, Findlay feels that Devane’s efforts paid off, calling The Sound as accurate as a feature film that includes climbing can possibly be. “It does a really good job of portraying climbing accurately,” she says. “The only thing that’s not accurate are the parts that were filmed on set on fake rock faces. As a climber you can always tell what’s real rock and what’s not.” But she acknowledges that filming all the scenes on the wall would have been challenging and dangerous.

The Sound premieres in select theaters nationwide and will be available for streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple TV+ on June 27.

Stories from The Sound set: Behind-the-scenes with Filmmaker Brendan Devane 

We caught up with Devane to discuss why they shot the climbing scenes on Liberty Bell, just how good of an actor Honnold proved to be, and how the film will support Access Fund. Devane shared the following anecdotes with us:

On finding actors who climb—and climbers who act

I thought it would be too hard to teach actors how to pretend to be a world-class rock climber. So we looked for people that had climbing backgrounds. A couple of them didn’t. Nick, who plays Colton, is a very athletic guy, but not too much into climbing. We sent him to climbing school in upstate New York.

But Christina Kirkman is a great climber. Michael Shannon is a great climber. The lead, Marc Hills, actually won a YouTube competition this past summer—one of those Mr. Beast things where they put 100 athletes together. He was representing rock climbers and he won the grand prize of $50,000, whatever it was. Jolene, who plays Kerrie, the woman who controls stuff on the ground, is actually a really good climber in her own right. When I found that out, I actually changed the scripts for her to be able to climb.

So it was very important to have actors who were at least comfortable in the vertical world. Adrian Ballinger was on set the whole time helping people out with some of the climbing stuff.

How The Sound lured in its pro climber cameos

We’re a Las Vegas production. It made sense to ask Alex [Honnold], who lives here. Brette [Harrington] moved to Vegas in the middle of filming. And when I reached out to Mike Negri, who had just left Sender [Films] and asked him to be the climbing producer on our Rainbow Wall and Liberty Bell shoots, he mentioned Brette would be into it.

Then it became a scheduling issue between Brette and Alex for that dialogue scene that happens after the climb near Red Rocks. Both of them go around the world on National Geographic shoots and stuff like that. So I couldn’t get them lined up to shoot that scene. When I finally got Alex locked in, Brette was somewhere in the Mediterranean.

That’s when I reached out to Hazel, who actually was climbing in Yosemite at the time and was headed towards Vegas. She was like, “Yeah, I’m coming there next week, that’ll be great.”

For Brette, I had to change some of the dialogue because you see Brette climbing on the Rainbow Wall, and then I didn’t want to swap to Hazel in the dialogue. So Angus Kille [Hazel’s husband] supplied the footage of her climbing to separate Brette and Hazel so the audience would know that they were two different people.

On the acting skills of Honnold and Findlay 

They were very easy to work with. We had a really good time. When Marc says that his grandfather—who’s Adrian Ballinger—passed away, we took like five takes of that and in almost every single one, there was no reaction from Alex. He actually does not work like that. We got one take where he shows a little bit of sympathy or something like that. That’s the one that’s in the film. But Alex is hilarious. I don’t think people realize how funny he is.

On the Rainbow Wall, I’m down there with Mike [Negri], but they [Alex and Brette] were mic’ed, and the whole time Alex was just making fun of Brette, like “You’re going to fall. You’re going to die.” I look at Mike and I’m like, “Is this normal for climbers?” He’s like, “Absolutely not. This is just him.”

Who broke three ribs on the Rainbow Wall shoot? 

The Rainbow Wall was not that easy to get to. It’s back there in Juniper Creek Canyon. I went along thinking I’m still 25 years old and I can climb up there, no problem. You know, I was the only non-world-class athlete in the group, so I was a little behind.

Finally, I get up to the base of the wall and we’re watching the shoot. It’s like 5:00 in the afternoon and we’re wrapping up and Alex needs to get back home for child care. He’s kind of anxious, and I’m going, “I should just probably head on out now.”

So I start going down. I wear glasses that are actually progressive. Underneath, it helps me see down. My sunglasses do not have progressive lenses. The sun was gone—it was light out, but it was all dark. I’m trying to climb down through the talus and I can’t see. I went to put my foot down on a lower rock, and I had no depth perception. So I missed—it was further away than I thought.

I fell a good seven feet straight down on my ribs, on a giant granite rock, and then fell off of that another four feet to the ground. I was stunned.

This is not a place where you can get a helicopter back down. It’s a problem if you get hurt up there. Luckily, I was with some of the only people on earth who could probably get somebody out of there. I could still hear everybody as they were preparing to leave. I was trying not to let people know that I was hurt.

So I got myself up and was just slowly going down. Finally I was just like, “You guys go ahead. I’ll try and get back to the car myself.” Once I got off the rock face, Scott Bennett was there rigging with Dave Allfrey, a Black Diamond athlete. They had prepared the wall for Brette and Alex to hero pose on it.

Scott was nice enough to go, “I’ll just walk out with you, make sure you get out okay.” Still, nobody knew that I’d fallen because nobody saw it. He could tell I was having problems. And finally I just told him, “Dude, I fell, I think I got broken ribs.”

There’s the character in this film, Justin, who’s like the senior climber, and I hadn’t cast it yet. I hadn’t found anybody who had that vibe who could also rock climb. I was walking next to Scott and I was like, “This is exactly the vibe I’m looking for.” So that’s how I broke my ribs on the Rainbow Wall and how Scott got cast in the film.

Why Alex Honnold didn’t free solo in the film 

Independent filmmaking can be a little bit Wild, Wild West when it comes to safety. And the incident with Rust everybody had just heard about—the director of photography getting killed by a gun. That’s how my safety meeting started off: We will not be Rust. Safety is number one.

Alex had offered to free solo instead of climb with a rope. No one needs to get hurt or potentially get into something worse just for the sake of a feature film. So I put a kaibosh on anything too risky, because in my opinion, it’s just not worth it. We weren’t making Free Solo, right?

Why the climbers tackled the Forbidden Wall in three separate groups

You have to make some compromises when you’re dealing with a fictional feature film. And if we just had one team on there, it’s a little boring, especially for the plot of the film.

Not that this movie is a straight horror movie—it’s kind of a blend of action, adventure, suspense, thriller. I rationalized it a little bit that they had zero information about this plan. No one had tried to climb it [the Forbidden Wall] in 60 years. They couldn’t even get close to scout it out. And so you can make a somewhat plausible idea that you’re trying different routes because maybe one was a 5.14, and maybe one was a 5.11. That all kind of met on the crux. But yes, ultimately it’s just it’s just a plot device to put more people on the wall.

The story behind the Indigenous themes and characters

I had worked with Wayne Charles Baker before on my previous film that was shot in Moab. He is a Raven clan chief from Squamish. Now I’m a big Irish white guy from upstate New York, right? I don’t want to get into the details of Indigenous filmmaking—I think that’s for Indigenous people. But I talked with Wayne about developing the plot. We couldn’t set it in the U.S. because otherwise, why wouldn’t the U.S. government just come in and take it [the Forbidden Wall] over?

Basically it got moved to British Columbia so that we could still have a U.S. government kind of plotline. Who were some of the only people that can restrict access to land? It’s Native Americans, whether it’s in Canada or in Mexico, really.

So we started to build the Indigenous storyline, and that’s when I brought Wayne in and I was like, “What do you think about this?” He loved the idea, and I just let him go with it. His name is his own ancestral name. He used his own tribe. His wardrobe is his own. His wife, Marlena, a Mohawk, handmade the costumes for the two braves at the top. And both Pat and Leonard are Native American stunt people from Canada. So basically, I just consulted with Wayne about the story and made sure he was comfortable. I really wanted to make sure that it was done well, represented well, and done by Indigenous people.

How The Incredible Hulk got swapped for Liberty Bell 

We were set to film on The Hulk. It looks so badass because it is badass, right? It almost looks evil from some angles. We approached the Forest Service, because it’s in the Hoover Wilderness area, and they said, “You’re good to go.” We had arranged our teams to be less than five people. Two weeks before we were supposed to go, the Forest Service cancelled our permit. That was a super bummer, because everything that we shot with the actors has the Hulk in the background. The lighting is all about the Hulk because we have to build those things months in advance.

It was a five-alarm fire.

Scott and Honnold had actually climbed Liberty Bell and all the other spires previously that summer and they said, “Hey, if you’re looking for a spire, [Liberty Bell’s] pretty good. Why not?” Fortunately, it’s not in a wilderness area. It’s not too far off of Highway 20. And [the Forest Service] were like, “Cool.” So we pivoted at the last moment. It’s a bummer because the set wall was made to look like the Hulk and our lighting was off, but it’s nothing we can do anything about at that point.

We obviously first asked to shoot on El Cap, knowing full well they would say no, which they did. But I was pleasantly surprised that Yosemite National Park authorized us to shoot on the Rostrum, which is highly unusual, to be able to be a feature shooting in there, but it just didn’t work. It’s below treeline. It’s kind of narrow. It just didn’t work.

How The Sound supports Access Fund

The Access Fund obviously does a lot of awesome work for the climbing community, and I’m always trying to look at ways to give a little back. We’re obviously going to ask the climber community to support the film. And it helps if people know they’re going to spend $7 on this film, but some of it’s going to go to a cause that I can get behind.

When I lived in Telluride, I was really into ice climbing. I did do some rock climbing in Cracked Canyon and on the Ophir Wall, and sometimes went down to Indian Creek in the off season. But we ran into access problems. Bridal Veil Falls, which is now open, was closed when I lived there. There are several other places around Telluride where access was an issue. That cause resonates with me because I’ve been personally affected by it and I think it’s really important.

So 5% of the net proceeds gets donated to Access Fund. It doesn’t matter if the film is profitable or not. Access Fund will get 5% of whatever our production company gets. We’re hoping that it’ll be one of the largest donations the Access Fund has ever seen.

What’s next in the horror outdoor adventure genre

I have a very strong ski background. My next outdoor film may have to involve skiing in some way.

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