The surf filmmaker behind a $128 million IMAX film on Everest

Greg MacGillivray is an American documentary director who began with surf films and went on to make the giant-screen documentaries shown in science museums. IMAX is a giant-screen film format, and his company, MacGillivray Freeman Films, made some of the best-known films in it. Relay has 4 of his films, and 3 of them are recent: Humpback Whales from 2015, National Parks Adventure from 2016 and Dream Big: Engineering Our World from 2017.

He produced and co-directed the 1998 mountaineering film Everest with the climber and cameraman David Breashears. It grossed about $128 million worldwide, including $87.2 million in the United States. Documentary magazine quotes MacGillivray saying he hired "the five best Sherpas in Nepal" for a ten-person film crew.

How did a teenager with a camera end up in IMAX?

Documentary magazine reports that MacGillivray grew up in Corona del Mar, California, and at 13 made 8mm beach films with friends. He charged five cents admission to garage screenings. With his partner Jim Freeman, an aerial cameraman and surf filmmaker, he went on to make 22 documentaries, from their base in Laguna Beach.

In 1976 they made To Fly! for the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. It premiered on 1 July as part of the museum's opening celebration. Freeman died in a helicopter crash days before the premiere, and MacGillivray kept his name on the company.

The film was scheduled to run for a year during the Bicentennial. Public demand kept it on, and it is still shown daily at the museum. The Washington Times reported that it became the first IMAX film selected for the Library of Congress's National Film Registry, a list of American films chosen for preservation.

His company also did the helicopter photography for the opening of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, the shots of a car climbing a mountain road in Glacier National Park. Accounts differ on whether MacGillivray or the aerial cameraman Jeff Blyth held the camera. MacGillivray was nominated for an Academy Award for The Living Sea in 1995 and for Dolphins in 2000. He has recalled Kubrick's advice to him: "Don't make the same film twice; challenge yourself."

What does he make now?

MacGillivray says his films play in museums, which he calls trusted sources because experts vet their facts. His three newest films on Relay use that formula on three different subjects.

National Parks Adventure (2016)

Robert Redford, the Oscar-winning actor, narrates a 3D tour of the American parks. It follows Conrad Anker, a mountaineer and national parks ambassador, Max Lowe, an adventure photographer, and Rachel Pohl, an artist, through places including Yellowstone, the Everglades, the Redwoods and Arches.

The studio said it grossed more than $22.8 million worldwide, the most of any documentary in 2016, though The Numbers lists a far lower figure. The camera crew carried gear of about 350 pounds by hand cart, up to a mile into the wilderness. MacGillivray told DNAinfo Chicago the hardest shot was a helicopter circling climbers on the Three Penguins, a 500-foot cliff in Arches National Park in Utah. He said you can get killed very easily by a helicopter, the way Freeman was. He judged the risk worth it because the film is the closest some viewers will get to many of the parks.

Documentary

Dream Big: Engineering Our World (2017)

Jeff Bridges, the Oscar-winning actor, narrates this tour of what engineers build, from the world's tallest bridge and the Great Wall of China to solar cars and smart, sustainable cities. One story follows Avery Bang, CEO of Bridges to Prosperity, which builds footbridges over dangerous rivers for poor communities in countries such as Haiti.

The film was made with the American Society of Civil Engineers and presented by Bechtel Corporation, and a theatre release describes it as the first giant-screen project of its kind to promote STEM education, the teaching of science, technology, engineering and maths. The studio says it won Best Film of the Year at the 2017 Giant Screen Cinema Association Achievement Awards.

Documentary

Humpback Whales (2015)

Ewan McGregor, the Scottish actor, narrates a documentary shot in the waters around Tonga, Hawaii and Alaska, with the underwater photography director Howard Hall. The marine biologist Jim Darling joined MacGillivray when he filmed humpbacks off Maui. Screen Daily says it shows bubble-net feeding, males competing for a female and the rescue of a whale tangled in fishing gear, and notes that humpbacks were driven close to extinction about 50 years before the film.

The studio says it won 4 Giant Screen Cinema Association awards in 2015, including Best Cinematography, and was shown in a US Department of State ocean film showcase in more than 20 countries.

Documentary

Coral Reef Adventure (2003)

The one older film on Relay is narrated by Liam Neeson, the Irish actor. Howard Hall and his wife Michele, underwater photographers, dive reefs across the South Pacific, including the Great Barrier Reef and a village in Fiji. The film argues that reefs are damaged by global warming, overfishing and silt from rainforest logging.

What to watch first

Start with National Parks Adventure for the biggest scenery and the story behind its helicopter shot. Choose Humpback Whales for the sea, and Dream Big for a film about the people who build things.