On Aug. 2, Spencer Seabrooke set out across a gully from the Stawamus Chief and set a world record highline walk with no harness.
On the scene was filmmaker Levi Allen, who captured the feat with his video camera.
A short video of the event went viral, attracting more than 1.6 million views. Last month, Untethered, Allen’s documentary film that gives a more in-depth look at the event, premiered at the Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver.
Seabrooke, who was also instrumental in Squamish’s slacklining festival Hevyfest, gained international attention with the highline feat. He crossed a line over a gully of the Stawamus Chief without a safety line and beat the previous highline distance record by seven metres.
“I was just totalling captivated by him as a person,” Allen told The Squamish Chief. “Spencer is unique.”
Allen is a slackliner himself and describes the 30-minute film as a personal look into Seabrooke and others in the slacklining and highlining community in B.C.
“Everybody shares this passion for this simple, simple thing,” Seabrooke said in the film.
On the Leftcoast Collective website, Allen states that he made the film with no funding while living in a van, yet he is making the film available for free online. In another video, he explains that as a young filmmaker, he hopes to inspire his audience as well as build trust. “If you have built trust with an audience, the process to getting your story out becomes a lot easier,” he said in the video.
Much of the early part of the film focuses on other walks Seabrooke and others make as a lead-up to the record.
Allen had talked with Seabrooke previously about the possibility of the record, which he says blew his mind. “He talked about the world record, but I didn’t think it would happen,” Allen said.
While he realizes that the walk comes with danger, Seabrooke’s quest, according to Allen, is nowhere near as reckless as it might appear.
“The steps he goes through are actually very rigorous.” At the Vancouver screening, more than 300 turned out to watch the beautifully shot, vertigo-inducing film, which proved to be a surreal experience for the young filmmaker. “That was crazy. It was so cool,” he said. “The energy was so high.”
He gives a lot of credit to Zachary Moxley, who produced the video on YouTube, for helping him complete the project. “He’s one of the people that partnered with me on the film.”
Allen also works as a freelance film editor. It’s clear that Untethered is a true labour of love for him. “Every other hour of the day, I was working on this film,” he said. “The process of editing was overwhelming at first.”
For Allen, all the work is necessary to bring the kinds of stories he wants to the screen. “My big thing as a filmmaker is I want to tell stories of ordinary people who do extraordinary things.”
As to his follow-up projects, he is releasing a tutorial series and behind-the-scenes videos from Seabrooke’s walk. Untethered is available at vimeo.com/ondemand/untethered.
