K2 With a Drone

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K2 with a Drone is a documentary following Petr Jan Juracka, a scientific photographer’s trip to K2 with Klara Kolouchova with two drones. He performed extensive testing before setting off on the trip. He flew the drone in a hyperbaric chamber to see how it would react. He flew it in freezing conditions to check that the batteries would cope and then he flew in other places.

He had already flown his drone in a multitude of countries and Pakistan was the latest challenge. We see the journey to base camp. We see images of the snow and ice, of rivers, of challenging roads and more. The documentary mixes fixed camera footage and drone footage in a pleasant to watch manner.

Thanks to God, to a lot of work of professional kindergarten teachers, great support of my parents and a lot of eye-training I see. And I see perfectly! Since the times my vision went good I enjoy every detail, every color and I admire any type of light. – Petr Jan Jura?ka

For some of the cold weather testing:

As I watched this documentary one question I wanted to have answered is how he powers his drone and other devices. Apparently he has a set of solar panels that he can deploy outside his tent. When acclimating at base camp solar panels would be ideal. There is no need to carry a heavy generator and fuel. You just bring a few weatherproof panels, deploy them on the side of the tent and wait for various batteries to charge. In that shot we see that the weather is overcast.

Overall this is an interesting documentary that I would expect to see at events  such as the Alpine Film Festival in Les Diablerets or the Montagne en Scène events. Combined with more footage of the climb of K2 it could provide for a more complete documentary.