BIO

       From Mount Everest to Borneo, Jim has operated cameras in the world’s most extreme environments, keeping up with world-class athletes and adventurers to get his shot. Jim’s experience as an expert climber and skier allow him an inside perspective on the places and personalities he captures on film. Jim’s mountain skills enable him to single-handedly rig his own shots without the need of a large crew. He has worked as a camera operator for Discovery Channel’s hit show, The Deadliest Catch; National Geographic Explorer’s Surviving Everest; and Sony Pictures Classics' feature documentary Steep.

       Jim’s experience encompasses a wide variety of cameras, disciplines, and formats, including super 16, digital, beta, and high definition. Most recently, Jim has operated the Sky Cam for ESPN, filming Major League Baseball and NBA games live via remote aerial cameras. He’s navigated motion-control cable cameras from the top of helicopter-accessed mountains for the skiing feature, Steep, and rigged aerial cameras through stadiums and ski resorts for the X Games. Jim has worked for nearly all of the major players in the aerial-camera industry, including Sky Cam, Cable Cam and Fly Cam.

       In the 16 years since walking onto the feature film Aspen Extreme as a grip, Jim has worked with some of the industry’s most accomplished filmmakers and cinematographers. Jim has partnered with fellow climber and snowboarding filmmaker Mike Hatchet, shooting the cult-classic climbing series, Masters of Stone, and four of the Totally Board snowboarding films. Jim has also worked extensively with Los Angeles-based cinematographer Mike Graber. Operating as a team, Jim and Graber covered Alaska’s Iditarod race, Wild California in IMAX, the Baja 1000 off-road vehicle race, and long-distance adventure races in New Zealand, Morocco and Patagonia.

       Jim is a native of the Mount Washington Valley, New Hampshire, where he learned an appreciation for the mountains at an early age. Jim was on skis by the age of 4, and climbing waterfall ice by 14. While still a teenager, Jim established what was then the hardest technical rock climb in New England, with his historic first-ascent of Cathedral Ledge’s Liquid Sky. His exploits on rock have been documented in feature articles in Climbing and Rock and Ice magazines, as well as the films Master’s of Stone II and Uncommon Ground. He has ventured to the top of remote peaks in Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Patagonia and Peru, and pioneered new routes throughout New England and the Rocky Mountains.

QUOTES

“The footage we see in Steep is positively breathtaking... Some of the climbing sequences that are in the early parts of the film were shot by Jim Surette, who is a consummate climber. He would climb into places (where) you couldn't really get a bigger camera and felt so confident in his climbing abilities that he was able to get some really wonderful footage, particularly of Doug Coombs.” —Mark Obenhaus, director of Steep, quoted in the Dec. 12, 2007 issue of The Hollywood Reporter

“Your scene on the Epic Couloir is the climax of the film. It’s amazing what you were able to capture up there.” —Roman Gackowski, producer of Shelter From The Storm, The North Face and Rush HD’s documentary about women skiers in the arctic.

• Download a PDF version of Jim Surette's bio and credits.

• View Jim Surette's climbing resume.