Peak Perspective: A film by Ian Smith

MHT are delighted to share this short film by Ian Smith. Peak Perspective was produced in Ian’s final week of employment at the Department of Communication Studies, Sheffield City Polytechnic in 1987. The video features notable climbers Martin Veale and Andy Pollitt climbing some Peak classics on the grit and limestone.

I had been working for Sheffield City Polytechnic since around 1978 but had decided in June of 1987 to leave and become a freelance photographer/journalist and also Deputy Editor of High magazine. At this point, I was working in the Department of Communication Studies in a team of technicians running the department’s two TV studios. I had spent a lot of time supporting students to make videos, both in the studios and outdoors, in various locations. In my final week of employment, which was being taken as holiday, I was given permission to use the equipment to make a short video about climbing. I chose to focus on the Peak District and cover three different styles of climbing: soloing and bouldering on natural gritstone; climbing on quarried gritstone; and limestone climbing, particularly the new style of sport climbing.

I had three days to film and two days to edit, so I recruited a few friends to lend a hand and two climbers, both good friends, Martin Veale, to do the grit soloing and bouldering section on Stanage, and Andy Pollitt for the quarried grit (London Wall on Millstone) and limestone sections (Boot Boys at Raven Tor). The equipment was basic; I had a good camera for the time, which was linked via a cable to a Sony U-matic cassette tape recorder and a selection of microphones. Having to link the camera to the cassette tape recorder, both very heavy, by cable made life rather difficult while filming from abseil ropes, but we worked out ways of doing it. We were very lucky with the weather; it stayed dry for all three days, and we got the footage.

Back in the studio, I had two days on the edit bench, which, by modern standards, was incredibly basic. The only means of changing shots was by ‘cuts’; there was no option to ‘mix’ or ‘fade’ shots. I also had to be careful not to infringe copyright with the use of music, but I found a tape of ‘copyright-free’ music which I used. The image quality, again by modern standards, is not the best (37 years old in June 2024), but it features two very fine and talented climbers, one sadly no longer with us, showing Peak climbing at its best and, in the sport climbing section, showing a style of climbing then in its infancy, now the standard for most limestone climbing.

Peak Perspective, a video by Ian Smith, is now in the collection of the Mountain Heritage Trust.