Help Bring The MSR Documentary to Life

Fundraising to complete the Mississippi Speed Record Documentary.

If you've been following the Mississippi Speed Record team then you know what an incredible story they have! Paddling the entire 2,340+/- miles of the Mississippi River in 16 days, 20 hours, and 16 minutes to set a new Guinness World Record took an enormous amount of effort, planning, cooperation, support, and luck. You may have seen their story on social media, but we are going to show you what it was like to actually be there.

To make this record happen, the paddlers kept the boat moving 24/7 for nearly 17 days. The huge support crew kept the food, hydration, logistical support, navigational assistance, barge communication, and general flow of love going 24/7 as well. They masterfully balanced a logistical nightmare of moving two RV’s, half a dozen vehicles, supplies, and over 20 people 150 miles down the river every day. While always being at the next river access point, just in case the canoe had any issues. Not to mention the thousands of fans who followed along and showed up on shore to cheer the team on, every time a fan cheered, the boat surged just a little bit faster. The paddlers fought through hallucinations brought on by sleep deprivation, massive blisters, dangerous barge traffic, waves, and wind that would turn any normal canoeist around, and sleeping in the canoe which became more and more filled with a horrible stinky concoction that was eventually termed "human soup." Through all of that they never forgot to thank the support crew profusely for all the help they received, and at any given hour of the day or night laughter could be heard coming from the boat. (Even if it was out of pure delirium.)

Wilderness Mindset is our production company, run by Alex Maier and Amy Robin. We were with the team to film the entire journey and we're making a documentary about it. We aren't just telling the story of the four paddlers, but also the essential support crew and everyone who was involved. We came back with 172 hours of footage, 351 hours of audio recordings, and 6,214 photos!

We are honored to be working on such an inspiring project with such amazing people. They found us shortly before the trip and reached out, we happily jumped on board. We knew it was going to be the most intense and demanding production we've ever filmed. We had just two people (and our two dogs) to cover a two-and-a-half-week operation that ran 24/7.

That stretched our filmmaking, and logistical abilities a lot and it was a really fun creative challenge to take on. Keeping batteries charged, backing up footage in the middle of the Mississippi River, always trying to be in the right place at the right time even when we didn't know what was happening next, editing a trailer on the Falcon at 3 a.m., just trying not to break any equipment, these are just a few of the challenges we faced. We were constantly in motion, problem-solving, or planning for the next big event that we had to capture. We slept whenever we could find a couple of hours (or a couple minutes) of lower activity. We probably averaged 4 hours of sleep in any given 24-hour cycle, but there never was a normal circadian rhythm to our sleep schedule. No two days or even hours were the same, it was incredibly physically and mentally demanding but it was also a blast. We'll remember this as one of the most exciting shoots in our career. We came onto the crew as strangers and we left having a new river family.

Alex and Echo (Left), Amy and Minnow (right)

In fact, we're so happy to be working on this project that we aren't being paid. Our hard expenses were covered to film the trip but all of our time is being donated. Editing is underway and we estimate that it will take over 1,300 hours to edit this documentary. That's $78,000 worth of work on the editing alone. We still need to pay our bills and expenses related to post-production, which is the reason for this fundraiser. We need your help to raise the funds necessary to complete this film and share the MSR story with the world!

We plan on premiering the film on August 3rd, 2024! More details to come.

To give you an idea of the quality of our work, just check out our last project, "GREYBEARD : The Man, The Myth, The Mississippi" We were a part of the film crew and we edited that film. It just so happened to give us the perfect experience to create the Mississippi Speed Record Documentary!