Since 1992, Jim Surette’s career as an adventure cameraman has led him to shoot television programs for all the major networks, as well as feature documentaries, commercials, and action sports. He has worked with a diverse portfolio of clients that includes National Geographic, Warren Miller Entertainment, Discovery, MTV, The North Face, Patagonia, Eddie Bauer, Peter Jennings Productions and others.
From Mount Everest to Antarctica, 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 allows 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; NBC’s Great Trango: A Mile High in Pakistan; and Matchstick Production’s Claim, filming extreme skiing in the Alps. In 2010, Jim partnered with pro-skier Chris Davenport to produce the independent adventure film Australis: An Antarctic Ski Odyssey.
Jim’s experience encompasses a wide variety of cameras, disciplines, and formats, including HD, super 16, beta, and many of the latest models. 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 many of the major players in the aerial-camera industry, including Sky Cam, Cable Cam, and Fly Cam.
Ultimately, a good story is the most important ingredient in entertainment. Jim’s talents lie in capturing scenes on camera while letting the action play out naturally. He knows how to get all of the shots that are needed to complete a story line.
Since getting started in the industry by 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, Baffin Island, Patagonia and Peru, and pioneered new, hard routes throughout New England and the Rocky Mountains.
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 film about women skiers in the arctic.