Breaking the 4th wall

Bjarne Salén is an award-winning action sports cinematographer and director. He’s filming the entire Fifty project and he climbs and skis every line with me. Bjarne’s an incredible human being and a special person.

Bjarne connects with the mountains in a unique way. He’s the perfect guy for this project. There are very few people in this world who can do what he does and go to the places he does with a camera—and do it with a smile on their face.

Bjarne is stamped from the same mold as Jimmy Chin. He’s doing everything alongside me—except he has a heavier pack, and often when we get to the crux, instead of worrying about that he’ll take out his camera and get an incredible shot. It’s really, really impressive.

Guys who do this don’t get enough credit. But at the same time I know Bjarne really enjoys the filmmaking side of it. He wants to be behind the camera. He wants to be the guy who has this creative freedom to create beautiful shots and to do amazing work and still accomplish the objective.

Early in the project I told him reach out and break the fourth wall—to be in front of the camera, to turn the camera on himself because people want to get to know him and I think it’s important to show that he’s not some floating camera pointing at me, but that we’re doing this together.

Obviously that’s hard to do all the time, but we’re definitely going to try to evolve that and make him as much of a character in this project as I am.

Bjarne does everything that I do, just with a camera. It’s impressive. I’m lucky to have him with me on this project, that’s for sure.

—CT

As told to Adam Howard on the Backcountry Magazine Podcast