Ron Fawcett - Rubicon Wall

Rubicon Wall (Water-cum-Jolly)
Featuring Ron Fawcett. 7 mins

In 1982 (or thereabouts) Alan Evans and I persuaded Granada TV, our employer at the time, to lend us an ENG (Electronic News Gathering) unit for a day to film some rock climbing – and Rubicon Wall is the result. It was a to be a pilot for a couple of rock climbing programmes Granada TV made featuring Ron Fawcett, one of which involved Ron soloing Darius (High Tor, Matlock, E2 5c) on live television for a series called Great Escapes presented by Shelley Rhodes. Alan and I were the camaramen, abseiling and jumaring at some distance on either side of Ron.

Ron and Gill Fawcett, Alan Evans and myself went on to form our own video company, RF Video. Our one and only production was the rock climbing video “Body Machine”, filmed in 1984 and released in 1985, with a budget of around £6,000.

Rubicon wall was digitised from a VHS copy, and re-edited in 2020 (which was mainly to repair the audio which had accumulated hum, hiss, and commercial music which couldn’t be used on YouTube). As far as I know the original video was never broadcast, and only a few copies existed.

Alan Evans, who was well known and loved in the climbing world, died in January 2019. Enjoy his camerawork from the lip of the overhang.

But above all enjoy watching Ron Fawcett climbing!

Chris Johnston 2020


Music credits:

1: Song: Guardians
Artist: Evan King Video
   • Видео  

2: Song: End Game
Artist: Per Kiilstofte
https://machinimasound.com/music/end-...
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International



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