Grand Canyon: Hidden Secrets
I recently viewed “Grand Canyon: Hidden Secrets” and am very impressed. This is a film that comes from Director Keith Merrill and Cinematographer Reed Smoot. They have at least 2 other titles together, “Zion Canyon” and “Yellowstone”. Interesting that all three films (and possibly more I’m not aware of) are popular attractions in the West.
The film follows their regular style of showing breathtaking visuals, intermixed with historical reenactment to tell the historical story of the location. Grand Canyon tells a lot about the men that went there and explored the canyon as they traversed the river rapids.
The best part of the film comes in the chapter called “Grand Canyon from the air” or something to that effect. I had originally thought that most of the aerial photography was from a helicopter, which may be true, but they show an ultralight flying over the canyon and its obvious that they did a large amount of the aerial photography with that. The coolest scene is as the camera view slowly descends into a beautiful, but thin, canyon with red rock walls and green vegetation at the bottom as the ultralight smoothly turns and banks to follow the sharp canyon turns.
Over all, the film has a great feel to it. Plenty of aerial photography, which I love. Perhaps not a modern view at what people do there today, definitely more of a historical emphasis, but the visuals are still breathtaking. Good luck with this one.
8 out of 10.