Adidas--Andy Maser, Director + DP

In the fall of 2013 I spent a month in the Swiss Alps with Dean Potter, his partner Jen, and their dog Whisper, who Dean had trained to wingsuit BASE jump with him in a specialized backpack.

This was a one-man-band situation, dictated primarily by the sensibilities of Dean. My job was to keep up, be quiet, be ready, and get the scenes. To do that, Dean and I would scramble up a mountain together, then he'd jump and I'd be left to figure out how to get back down to the ground on my own. Sometimes a helicopter dropped us on a snowy peak together, we’d traverse out to a sketchy spot together, Dean jumped, and I made the dangerous traverse back to the heli alone (with all the camera gear). The situations were always intimate, always on the very edge of my comfort zone. The footage is incredible.

Dean had just pulled himself back from a difficult period before I arrived. The wingsuit flying was the hook, but what I was really filming was the deeper story behind the jumps: Dean’s recovery, the time of stability, his incredible relationship with Whisper and his relationship with Jen.

The film we shot was released shortly thereafter and immediately caused a media firestorm. The idea of a man wingsuit BASE jumping with his dog elicited strong reactions. Those who were there knew that Whisper loved every second of it and wouldn’t have traded a second with Dean for anything else in the world. Dean was totally unfazed by all the criticism. That was just who he was.

The web short became a festival film, then the footage later appeared prominently in The Dark Wizard, HBO's four-part documentary on Dean's life that premiered at SXSW and is now streaming to much acclaim. Seeing that month we shared together woven into the larger portrait of who he was turned out to be more moving than I ever expected.