Jackie describes the “The Observers”:

The land and sky of Mt. Washington, New Hampshire form a frame for a meteorologist as she goes about the solitary and steadfast work of measuring and recording the weather.   Inspired by the Nathaniel Hawthorne story  “The Great Carbuncle,” this film features the extreme and varying beauty of the windiest mountain in the world.

Shot on 16mm film over the course of a year, “The Observers” is based on the actual work of the crew of the Mount Washington Weather Observatory — one of the oldest weather stations in North America where staff members have taken hourly readings of the wind speed, visibility, barometric pressure, and temperature since May 1932.  In 1934, the staff measured a wind gust of 231 mph, which remains a world record for a surface station.

I’ve been privileged to be part of the production of “The Observers” along with Jesse Cain, Dani Leventhal, and Katya Gorker. I posted here, here, here and here about our experiences shooting at the top of beautiful Mt. Washington, NH. Since then I’ve composed music for the film, assisted Jackie with recording foley and worked on sound design. This has been a great project!

“The Observers” screened on the closing night of the Crossroads Festival in San Francisco, and will be shown again in early June at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. I’ll post details when I get them.

Here's all of my audio gear packed up and ready to go.

January 9: We all gathered at Jackie’s house, threw our gear in the van and drove to New Hampshire. Jacqueline Goss was the leader of the crew: video artist, writer, director, producer. Jesse Cain: cinematographer. Dani Leventhal: talent. (She hates that word, but after spending the better part of a week together I think it fits just fine.) We spent the first night enjoying the comforts of the Appalachian Mountain Club Joe Dodge Lodge. Jesse unpacked and assembled the camera so we could begin shooting first thing in the morning.

Jessie and Dani checking out the focal length on the 135mm lens

January 10: First thing in the morning we met our ride up the mountain (snow tractor!) at the Auto Road and took a minute to shoot a few establishing shots.

Mt. Washington (the summit is obscured here--it's just behind the peak on the right)

On the way to the summit we stopped just above the treeline to shoot a few more scenes. I loved seeing the stunted krumholtz trees that are just visible in the lower left corner of this photo.

Jackie and Jesse on the Auto Road

Late morning, we arrived at the summit and quickly unloaded our equipment. Visibility was good, and since we didn’t know whether we’d get clear skies again Jackie and Jesse and Dani peeled off to shoot some scenes that didn’t require sync sound while I took a look around the observatory and organized our gear.

Summit Weather:

• High temp: 1 F
• Low temp: -5 F
• Average Wind Speed: 45 mph gusting to 62 mph

Here’s an excerpt from the first day of recording; a scene where Dani knocks the rime ice off a sign. These sounds are indicative of winter weather on the mountain: wind envelopes everything, so even rather violent actions produce only faint tinkles of ice.

knocking_rime_off_sign.mp3