Outdoor filmmaker Michael Brown was always primed for adventure. He grew up on a Montana ranch and his father earned a living making movies about skiing. He had his own horse, milked cows before sunrise and had “Clydesdales dragging us around on a sled” in winter.
“It was a pretty wild upbringing,” says Brown, 45. “I didn’t realize until later that everyone didn’t have that.”
But Brown, 45, says that ingrained appetite for adventure was whetted during his time at the University of Colorado. He initially studied physics at CU — “I wanted to be a spaceman and explore the universe” — but later decided geography would be the best way to learn about the world already beneath his feet.
“I had this geography professor, Gary Gaile, and he traveled a lot. He had great stories to tell,” says Brown, whose award-winning 2003 film, “Farther Than the Eye Can See,” documents blind climber Erik Weihenmayer’s ascent of Mount Everest.
Brown took every class Gaile taught, he says, and never forgot his wry, succinct definition of adventure: “Something that really sucks while you are doing it, but you look back on fondly.”
The pursuit of sheer, exhilarating experience has defined Brown’s life ever since. He has summited Everest five times and through his company, Serac Adventure Films, he’s made dozens of films from the highest Himalayan peaks to Antarctica. He also founded the Outside Adventure Film School, based in Boulder, Colo.
For Brown, making a living traveling to the world’s wildest, most exhilarating places is just about the perfect life. It’s also taught him the value — even the necessity — of staying present and aware of his relationship to the landscape and local culture.
“I just love the giant reality checks that come in the mountains. If you get it wrong, if you don’t know where you are, you could fail or even die,” he says.
Brown started in film by working with his father, CU grad Roger Brown, who made skiing films with the legendary Warren Miller. He got his feet wet as a producer — i.e. the guy saddled with all the hassle — in 1991, when his father, buried in two simultaneous projects, kicked one his son’s way.
“He was making a skiing film and at the same time a kayaking film in Mexico for National Geographic Explorer. The ski film was going off the rails. He called me … and said, ‘Get us permission to go into Mexico and make (the kayaking) movie,’” Brown says with a grin. “I was just left to figure it out.”
Which he did. He arranged the permits, wrangled the paddlers, flew with them to Villa Hermosa, Mexico — then battled local authorities when there was a snafu with the permits and the crew’s cameras were briefly confiscated. The stress was intense.
“But when the plane door opens, a blast of hot, wet air hits me,” he recalls. “I got three mosquito bites in 20 seconds.”
Hell? Hardly.
“It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I knew instantly that that’s what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” he says.
Those who work and study with Brown say they are the beneficiaries of those past hassles, discomforts and challenges in the field.
“The biggest thing he brings is experience,” says Peter Vertefueille, graduate of a 2010 adventure film school course who now runs his own film-production company. “All the different technical difficulties that students run into, he has run into them before, times 10. He’s got practical experience that you can’t get from reading a book.”
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