On sight

Celebrated my birthday last night by going to Sheffield to the premiere of On Sight, a fantastic new climbing film from Alistair Lee of Posing Productions. It's about a very pure approach to climbing - on sight means no abseiling to check the route, no pre-placing of gear, no practising - so in a way it's a very old-fashioned way of climbing, only these guys are on-sighting E7s and E8s (i.e. really hard climbs), grades that hadn't even been invented when I started climbing. It's a fabulously well made film, with lovely photography in some of the most beautiful parts of the UK (and an excursion to Iceland), great music that complemented what was on screen, and some very real, raw, scary moments along with quite a bit of humour - often black-edged humour, but so often that's the way with people who either dice with death or deal with those who do.

One of the thrills for us was when M spotted Ron Fawcett sitting across the aisle from us - he's in the film, talking mainly, and one of his iconic routes, Strawberries at Llanberis, is featured. Ah, to watch a climbing film with a climbing hero only feet away!

It was also interesting to hear climbers talk about why they do it, and much of what they said is very close to the things M and I want to say with our film, although not the same, happily - we have ideas we want to play with that are quite different to "On Sight" because we're trying to do something a bit different ... and I typed the title of our film there but then deleted it, because it rather gives it away ... I think I want to keep something up my sleeve for a little while longer, at least until we are firmly on track to make this thing.

The "On Sight" trailer is here, if you want to get an idea of the film. We agreed over dinner that it is very much a film for climbers, or at least that's the way it felt to us, as a current and an ex climber. I'd be interested to know what non-climbers thought about it.