On the frigid, filthy bathroom floor there was a steaming bucket of scalding water. It was boiled up in a Nepalese guesthouse because my two-dollar room included a helping of hot water that I was instructed to mix with the naturally freezing tap water to wash off the sweat of an all day Himalayan hike. We were at 12,500 feet and I was doubled over with altitude sickness; the nausea, diarrhea, and shoot-me headache dulling the splendor of one of the world’s great panoramas. 

 Such was the reality of my around-the-world trip that this set of facts also meant I was obliged to pull out my camera, tripod, and microphone to capture both the beauty and misery of the moment. When I set out to make a documentary about traveling around the world it meant I’d have to hit ‘Record’ during the most joyful and agonizing moments of an emotional year.

But when I’m asked-as I often am-if documenting the trip got in the way of enjoying it, I answer honestly that it didn’t. With only a few exceptions (like that terrible time in Muktinath, Nepal) I worked when I felt like it and almost never because I felt I needed to.

I shot almost 100 hours of video on my 50-week trip, that’s about 15 minutes per day. I cut those 100 hours down to 90 minutes for the version that played film festivals last year, and down to about 42 minutes for MTV. That’s barely 7 seconds of film for every day of my trip.

I mention those numbers to point out that the movie and my trip were very different things and many of the memories that mean the most happened during those 23 hours and 45 minutes each day that I wasn’t filming.

That said, the project was a big thing for me and I thought I’d write a bit about it:

Most of my co-workers were pretty shocked when I quit my job to go traveling. I had been a very career-focused guy since early in high school and it had paid off with a job that was highly coveted and well paid. For me, making a documentary was a way to feel like I wasn’t totally throwing that away.

I knew the advantage I had was time: Most TV shows have tight schedules and budgets that require them to shoot minutes of usable material every day they’re on the clock but I could dig around for a week looking for a certain story, or go on a day-long hike to get one great five-second shot. The relaxed schedule also meant I could actually document what I found rather than shoot a script I’d written before even going into the field, which is sadly how a lot of TV is made.

I had a laptop with the Avid editing program on it and I started editing almost as soon as I reached Australia. By living that backpacker lifestyle every day I knew what was most important to describe and I think it was really helpful that so much of the film (about half) was edited while I was still traveling.

I’m often asked if I was really alone, and I was. I would set the camera up on a tripod and point the screen towards me so I could frame myself in the shot. Or I would ask a new friend to shoot some video of me and sometimes it was good. A couple days later I would transcribe the tapes and see where the story was going and how I could shoot more efficiently and what else I needed to be doing.

When I got home to Rhode Island I locked myself in my childhood bedroom and worked pretty obsessively on the movie for three or four months. I would stop to eat and to go running because I didn’t want to re-gain the 15 pounds I lost while I was away. I listened to the same five Arctic Monkey songs on that run week after week and I still get a joggers pulse when I hear ‘Fake Tales of San Francisco.’

I was pretty flat broke when I got home and none of the major record labels had any interest in licensing music to me-or even returning my calls and e-mails. Thankfully my friend Jimmy Khoury made some great music for the movie.

In Madrid some months before I had met Matt Lavoy, a graphic designer who said he’d help with my graphics and in the end he made good on the offer to create opening titles. Even Kate, the love interest from Europe, did me a huge favor by hand-collaging the maps that are used throughout the movie.

Making a documentary is very easy compared to getting people to see it and it took ten months after I was done for it to premiere in front of 500 people at the Cleveland International Film Festival and then another long year after that for it show up on MTV.

But when I get frustrated about that I think of an afternoon in Montpellier, France around the midpoint of my trip. I was waiting for a friend to meet me for an after-dinner drink and since I was early I sat on a bench below some tall, shady trees and drew three columns in my notebook. They described three possible outcomes for my movie: success, limited success and total failure. With each column came a list of resulting rewards or obligations; different paths for my life.

And anyone who has had to come home from a very long trip would say that I should be nothing but grateful that more than two years after my return I still haven’t taken an office job or filed for bankruptcy.

I’m sitting here in a $10/night hotel in Casablanca, Morocco lucky enough to have you read my words and know about the movie I made with blind faith that someone would notice. I don’t have to look at the columns of a notebook to know how lucky I’ve been.

If you’d like to check out the full length version of ‘A Map for Saturday’ it can be found at www.amapforsaturday.com

-Brook