This Mountain from Evan Mann / OWP Denver on Vimeo.
When Evan Mann’s friend, Kira, encouraged him to apply for the Samsung 4K Challenge, he took the advice—and became a top ten finalist. What did that mean?
“Samsung overnighted me the NX500 camera and told me I had two weeks to create a 5 minute film with it,” Evan explained. “Bad news was that it was the busiest two weeks of the year, and writing, directing and producing a film would be impossible, so I decided to document a week or so of my life. Composed of people, places, experiences, and events, this film is a behind the scenes glance of time as seen from my perspective.”
Evan is an artist and a filmmaker; and as “This Mountain” reveals, a climber and daredevil; a chef; a runner; a father; a dropper of beats; a beer drinker; and a traverser of many terrains.
“The result of this project is to me both personal and contrived. Every time I hit the record button, I questioned my intentions and authenticity of the moment. While editing, I was able to skew context, and time, rework sound and disembody sequences of actual events in my life,” he said.
But he added why that mattered. “With the content being so personal, this made me somewhat uncomfortable, but this is the job of a filmmaker: we manipulate time, light, sound and sequence to make it what we want. I walk away from this project with a better understanding of my roles in life, as a husband, father, friend, pilgrim, adventurer, artist and filmmaker. Also, time is fleeting.”
What is important about “This Mountain” is how it reveals all the parts of life. We all claim a particular trait or craft or role as our identity; but humans are made up of many complicated parts. We are delightfully complex.
Commissioned by Samsung and PDN Magazine; music is courtesy of the Music Bed.