Northbound Miles
186K subscribers
Three days along the canyon rim, no resupply
Ten hours of trail a day. We cut each day to what a hiker would remember, and let the quiet parts run.
Footage in
9 h 50 m, one camera and a phone
Runtime
24:05
Turnaround
Four days
Formats
Long-form
Published
1 month ago
13:40
Average view duration, up from 8:05
2.4×
The channel's usual first-day views
Subscribers now, rolling up from the day we started
How we cut it.
Brief, changes, numbers.
The brief
Jonah walks long routes alone and films most of the day. The raw footage is beautiful and nearly ten hours a trip, and the old edits tried to keep a little of everything.
What we changed
We cut each day around one place and one feeling, then let the quiet shots run long enough to feel like being there. The colour is matched across a phone and a camera so the switch never shows.
What happened
First-day views went to 2.4 times the channel's usual, and average view duration from 8:05 to 13:40. The one-minute shot at the canyon edge is the most replayed moment on the channel.
I would have cut the compass shot to ten seconds. They left it at a minute and that's the bit people send their friends.
Jonah Reyes, Northbound Miles
2:41
The first climb through the pines, cut to his breathing
9:40
Finding north at the edge, one long held shot
17:05
The rim at last light, no music