my interview and words written for RED
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The life and death rescue of a group of boys and two adults set against the ticking clock of a single frayed cable is the subject of a hair-raising feature documentary premiering at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
Hanging by a Wire is the edge-of-the-seat account of a true-life incident from 2023 beginning when the teenagers began their routine journey to school by cable car across a mountain pass in northwestern Pakistan. When two of the system’s cables snapped, the passengers were left in mortal danger nearly one mile above the ground and with time running out before their lifeline of a third cable would give way.
Multi-Emmy-nominated Pakistani filmmaker Mo Naqvi (The Accused: Damned or Devoted; Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror) and producer Bilal Sami (David Blaine – Do Not Attempt) conceived Hanging by a Wire as a real-time thriller built from footage shot moment-by-moment as it unfolded. The hours and hours of growing tension and multiple failed rescue attempts were captured from inside the cable car on the boys’ phones, from drones, a military helicopter, and from the crowd below.
“I was immediately hooked by Mo’s vision,” recalls cinematographer Brendan McGinty (Secrets of the Neanderthals; Welcome to Earth) who was invited by Naqvi to shoot the film. “The archive footage of the event was mind-blowing, a group of schoolboys hanging a mile high from a damaged cable car in the remote mountain region of Battagram in Pakistan. We all understood from the get-go that we needed to hold true to the inherent drama of this real situation, and that we wanted to meet this documentary reality with all of the cinematic flair of a Hollywood action thriller.”
Their visual approach was based in part on their cinematic aspirations for the film, largely founded on the incredible archive footage of the event, but also on the wealth of rich recce material of the region and of the real-life key protagonists. There followed two shoots in 2025, one more documentary-focused at the start of the year and a second more dramatic-focused towards the end.
“The daytime sequences come almost entirely from what people filmed on their phones,” McGinty explains. “Our own shooting focused on interviews and observational material—traditional documentary work—used to understand the characters and their relationships.
“But the most extraordinary part of the rescue happens at night, and there is almost no footage of it. Phones stop working. There is no light. Yet the rescue unfolds over many terrifying stages, nearly failing multiple times, with lives repeatedly at risk. The challenge then becomes an ethical one: how do you tell this story truthfully without inventing anything?”
The solution they arrived at was to involve the real protagonists in the retelling. The boys in the cable car and the rescuers shared authorship of their own story. They physically reenacted what happened, placing themselves in a replica of the cable car (all under studio-safe conditions) guiding the filmmakers through each moment.
“Nothing was scripted. They weren’t performing lines; they were remembering. That level of truth made the work extraordinarily difficult but also incredibly powerful. As a cinematographer, shooting drama under those constraints—where reality is the benchmark and ethics are paramount—is far harder than shooting fiction. You are constantly checking yourself against the truth of what happened.”
From inception, an IMAX presentation was part of the discussion. It was one of several reasons why McGinty selected RED V-RAPTOR for the production.
“To be honest, I don't think there was any other choice for me. The documentaries I’ve seen in IMAX have been wonderful immersive experiences and our story would be perfect for this. The minute those discussions began I'm thinking about protecting the resolution.”
Importance of Optical Low-Pass Filters
He elaborates, “Shooting more resolution than you actually need is always the way I would want to go. Shooting 8K on the V-RAPTOR for a 4K finish means you could reframe and push in to the image but because the resolution is so high you don't need false detail.
“A lot of lower-end cameras which barely reach 4K employ automatic sharpening techniques so the picture bristles with more detail than is actually there. It's false detail. When you're shooting 8K you really don't need any of that. Shooting 8K with RED feels very much like how my eye sees the world. It's a very soft, naturalistic rendition of texture.”
Texture is important to McGinty who shot this film in very high contrast environments. “There are brittle trees and bushes in hard light and shadows. You end up with footage that really tests the fine detail. If your camera doesn’t have Optical Low-Pass Filters (OLPFs) it can produce false, high-frequency detail, which is actually a bit of a nightmare to manage in post. You can end up with these very shimmering images where you’re not looking at real detail but at a computer's version of what detail might look like.”
Protecting the digital negative
McGinty began his career nearly 30 years ago shooting shorts and independent features on film which is why he prefers to shoot raw. “It’s very important to me that I protect the digital negative. Raw is the only way to shoot digital and among high-end cine cameras RED owns compressed raw.”
However, shooting uncompressed raw for docu-style footage is hardly practical, especially at 8K and in a remote region. “You would record terabytes and terabytes of data,” he says. “The files are too big for field work. So, one of the real geniuses of RED from the beginning is REDCODE RAW. I want a raw image to go back to which always protects and holds highlights and where I know there's more in the shadows. So, shooting on location in high contrast situations and in low light with R3D was a big deal for me.”
McGinty shot a lot of handheld and appreciates the ergonomics of the camera. “V-RAPTOR does everything I need it to do in a very simple way. It has very high frame rates if I need them. It has a very simple interface which is ideal for documentary work. You don't want a camera with infinite complexity and menus. You just want something to help you be responsive to a situation.”
Majesty of Vista Vision
The final reason behind his choice was V-RAPTOR’s VV sensor which frames for an aspect ratio of 17:9. “We’re in this exquisite mountainous region of North Pakistan, a mountain climbing Mecca, so I knew that to capture some of that monumentality and majesty I wanted to be shooting VistaVision. Also, in terms of telling our story I felt the absolute heroism of everyone concerned. These are real heroes, people who will step into danger to save the lives of others. I thought an appropriate canvas for us to work on would be large format VistaVision. The RAPTOR just ticked all those boxes for me.”
He paired the V-RAPTOR with Angenieux EZ zooms 22-60mm and 45-135mm occasionally dipping into some macro and fast aperture prime options. “I particularly like the close focus on the EZs and at the 135mm end of the lens this produces very intimate moments and details. With these on the V-RAPTOR we could move from the wide-angle majesty of the rugged Pakistani mountain landscapes to the close-up detail of an eye, without losing the moment to a lens change.”
For stabilized work, McGinty used the DJI Ronin 4D 8K, specifically because it includes an OLPF. This was fitted with a cine-vised set of Nikon Nikkor AIS primes. They also used GoPros, drones and some Sony cameras, including FX3s and FX6s, mostly for second-unit work.
He was aided by AC and long-time collaborator Charlie Perera and Taseer Ali who operated B-camera on the first shoot.
Pushing the picture in post
McGinty’s camera choice was further vindicated in post at Molinare, London working with colorist Jake Davies where he found he was able to push the RED raw files further than he thought possible.
“I would happily shoot 2000 ISO on V-RAPTOR, maybe 3200, and know that I'm still going to have a comfortable picture with not too much noise but what was interesting in the grade is how much noise there was in both the 4D footage and a lot of the Sony footage.
“Jake and I found we were able to regularly push the RED to higher ISOs than I was getting on the Sony and the 4D with—importantly—less noise. The moment we began to push the pictures to try to lift the 4D footage we couldn't. It was pretty maxed out on that. I was shooting 3200 ISO to ProRes raw on the 4D on some of the night stuff but the picture fell apart quite rapidly. There wasn't anywhere near as much there as there was in the R3D files.
“What shooting RED raw means when you’re shooting in low light is the lack of noise in highlights and shadows and the ability to push the picture way beyond my exposure on the day while still not falling apart. Our ability to grade the R3D footage was head and shoulders above any of the other camera formats that were in there.”
He and Davies explored film emulation and lens emulation ideas as a way to tie the footage together. “There is a vast archive at the heart of the film, along with second-unit work and extensive RED material. A unifying aesthetic, such as film emulation, offers an effective way to bring it all together.”
Editor William Grayburn meticulously reconstructed the timeline from multilingual interviews, archive, and new footage. That process revealed gaps in the visual storytelling, which guided the second production shoot. “Without that editorial clarity, the film simply wouldn’t exist in its current form,” McGinty says.
“Hand on heart, this is a phenomenal film. It’s gripping, emotionally honest, and visually powerful. It has the pull of a thriller but the integrity of a documentary. I’m incredibly proud to have been part of it.”
The documentary is produced by Naqvi alongside EverWonder Studio and Mindhouse Productions and premieres in Park City, Utah, on January 22.
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