Meet Bob Carmichael | Director/director of photography and photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Bob Carmichael and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Bob, what role has risk played in your life or career?
I was very privileged to have had an opportunity during college to intern at KGO-TV in SF for three summers where I was allowed to observe and participate in all the components of a major city television station from spot sales to production. The year was 1967 when I started this program. I’d been a scholarship athlete at the University of Colorado and had undergone an ACL surgery which effectively ended my football career and thank god I didn’t suffer any more abuse from that sport. (But that’s another story) Each summer I was required to write a report about what I learned during these 2 months-long sessions. During high school, I was the lead sports photographer on my Piedmont High School newspaper and yearbook, so I was naturally inclined to be interested in the news/documentary production at the station. The salespeople were hotshot go-getters but I really gravitated to the more unconventional, creative types. I learned from all the departments. I learned from the salespeople about a good pitch and how to present. I learned from the production people about lighting and the basic principles of coverage. It was literally an eye-opening experience. While I was commuting to the city each day, I also become aware of the homeless people who were living in the street. Being from the rich suburbs, it was my first exposure to poverty and inequity. Influenced by the film “Blow Up!” a London fashion and street photographer, I started a portfolio of images on poverty in the city and created a catalog of images that became my very first visual chronicle of a story. My mother helped me put it together and at 18 I began to think of myself as a storyteller.

After my football identity crisis, I fell in with the counter culture Boulder, CO climbing community, and my path was then literally straight up, literally. By the end of my college years, I was climbing at a very high level and because I was so fortunate to have had exposure to the entertainment business, I decided to make a film about rock climbing. I sold my red pickup truck and hired a local sports cinematographer to shoot and edit one of the first adventure sports films. You can see this 1972 film on my Carmichael Productions, Inc Vimeo page. It is called “Break on Through” (thanks to the Doors!) It launched my career into filmmaking. I literally hitchhiked with the reel from Boulder to NYC and sold it to CBS Sports where it became something of cult film for the nascent rock climbing community. Obviously, the takeaway risk/management wise was: if you are passionate about your work you are must be willing to risk a lot to get it out there. Follow your heart.

The Risk management part of climbing and filmmaking embodied several skill sets. Number 1 was being genuinely skilled enough with the craft of climbing to conceptualize how we could safely film in a vertical world. I hired some of the best climbers in Boulder and little did we know it but we were creating a whole new profession, which was camera rigging on vertical terrain. Many of that crew went on to 40-year careers in the motion picture business. I climbed the route using rope solo techniques and then spent one night and two days taking notes about precisely where and when I wanted the camera placed along the 7 pitch, 900-foot long route. Then the rigging crew went up and placed fixed ropes so we could ascend the rope rapidly for each day’s filming. What would appear to the average person as wildly dangerous, to us very experienced climbers, it was simply a function of high competency and vigilance. The line: when “Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation” applies here, as does, “gravity never sleeps” Bottom line: safety and success depend on good planning and team communication and anticipating hazards. That film started my career and I build on the lessons from that short film to embark on a directing/cameraperson career in feature 2nd units, documentaries, and commercial production. see bobcarmichael.com

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My work can be seen at bobcarmichael.com – I am a member of the Directors Guild of America and the International Cinematographers Guild. I started my career in the early 1970s as I was an early pioneer of the adventure sports film genre. I knew how to climb big walls and I was also very experienced in Marine environments ie surfing and sailing. My success with my first film enabled me to get a staff job at NFL Films where I truly learned from masters about the creation of sports films. I took a lot of that knowledge and won both an Academy Award nomination for a groundbreaking film on Extreme Skiiing and a National Emmy Award for my expose on American football entitled “Football in America.” After my three-year “graduate school in filmmaking” at NFL FIlms I moved to LA to break into the film business. I initially worked on episodic action TV series and also pursued documentary filmmaking through 20/20 and 60 Minutes and National Geographic. I was put under contract by a number of large production companies and created commercials for brands like Cadillac, Ford, Merrill Lynch, and Reebok. In the mid 90’s I made a special venue film on the Daytona 500 for the Speedway and they build a theater to showcase the 7omm film. After 30 years in LA, I moved back to Boulder, where I now primarily work out of my custom portrait/product shot studio and after 4o years I’m still behind the viewfinder and telling stories about people and their aspirations. Visit bobcarmichael.com/portraits.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Go hike up to the base of the 3rd Flatiron. Visit McGuckin Hardware … one of the best businesses in Boulder
Walk along Boulder Creek.
Eat Pizzeria Locale
Eat at Blue Moon
Eat at The Kitchen
Visit Eldorado Canyon

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My shoutout is to Empower Our Future – https://empowerourfuture.org/ and PLAN-Boulder – https://planboulder.org/ two Boulder organizations that are dedicated to preserving our environments and communicating with the citizen/voters of Boulders to keep them informed and progressive!

Website: bobcamichael.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobcarmichaelthedirector/

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/carmichael-productions-boulder

Other: https://vimeo.com/carmichaelproductions

Image Credits
Carmichael Productions, Inc.