Is the film location real Everest?
Or in studio?
I really want to know. It seems so real.
Never mind. I found the answer on Internet. The film was mostly shot at Cinecitta Studios in Rome and Pinewood Studios in the UK. They did visit the base camp in Everest although the permit is very short term. The mountain view was shot in Iceland.
shareI found your question hilarious!! Avid climbers DIE on Everest, and filmmakers and crew and ESPECIALLY cast are marshmallows. They would die on Day 1 of shoot and this would have been a documentary!
They were originally going to get real camera footage of the Hillary Step, the South Col and other sites high up, and hired an experienced high-altitude cameraman to film it, but the tragedy of the Khumbu Icefall in 2014, which closed the mountain for the season, made that impossible (though the cameraman did get footage of the trek into base camp and shots of the Khumbu Icefall itself).
They also used some earlier footage of the mountain - it may have been shot by David Breashears, who did some high altitude filming for a projected film back a few years ago - maybe it was for this one. Breashears was a consultant to their construction of the replicas of the Hillary Step and the South Col at Pinewood. He has made 6 or so summits of Everest and was also there during the 1996 tragedy, filming the IMAX Everest film, and assisted in Beck Weathers' rescue.
Yes: there were some big-view shots of what was clearly the real Everest. I think there may have been some real, less panoramic shots of the Khumbu icefall and lower climes. Obviously, anything with real actors in it wasn't filmed anywhere close to the higher Everest camps.
I think they also CGIed in backgrounds of the real Everest at points, behind studio or other-location outdoor shots. For example, the distinctive banding of the Lhotse face appears in the background of some shots.
https://plus.google.com/+Adventureconsultants scroll down this page there will be a post where they leave a video about the VFX breakdown and shows what was real and what was animated.
shareThanks.
'Ne cherchez plus mon coeur, les bĂȘtes l'ont mangĂ©.' Baudelaire