IN THEORY, THE TIME-LAPSE is one of the simplest shots in filmmaking: Mount the camera onto a tripod, frame the shot, press record, and wait. All a filmmaker has to do is set a watch and make sure the camera doesn't fall over. Shooting a time-lapse is like a coffee break. You could even read the paper. But at 5:30 on my third morning on Tanzania's Kilimanjaro, my handle on the process felt thinner than the air at our camp at 13,000 feet.

The only thing I do less than make films is climb mountains. Conventional wisdom would dictate that I tackle one before the other, but as a student in Serac Adventure Films' inaugural Adventure Film School, it was my task to make a ten-minute short about climbing 19,340-foot Kilimanjaro. Before the climb, I told Serac founder and Boulder, Colorado–based filmmaker Michael Brown that I didn't want to make an earnest cry-at-the-summit kind of film but rather a parody of an adventure film, with myself as a comical Bear Grylls–meets–Inspector Clou­seau character always running into trouble. Brown, 42, has made more than 50 movies and won three Emmys, and he just received a lifetime-achievement award from the International Alliance for Mountain Film. His projects tackle topics like cataract surgery in the Himalayas and autistic kids learning to surf, so when I told him of my satirical intentions, he replied soberly, "We try to take this seriously."

Naturally, our first day on Kilimanjaro, I filmed a segment in which I asked Brown in jest about his plans to summit wearing nothing but a Speedo and wool socks while on a pogo stick. He was a good sport. "I've been spoofed before," he said. The mountain was less eager to cooperate.

Our biggest challenge on Kilimanjaro, I discovered, was not the receding glaciers but the mountainwide dearth of tape stock. Brown allows his students a limited supply so they'll learn to use it wisely After three days around the mountain's gateway town of Arusha shooting action-packed B-roll of sleeping Cape buffalo, I had already burned through a lot of tape. I couldn't waste more during my time-lapse attempt, so as I filmed the pitch-black sky, waiting for the sun, I spent 40 minutes recording and rewinding. Just before sunrise, a cloud bank stalled in front of the mountain, obliterating my shot. Which turned out to be a blessing, because under the now-illuminated sky I could see that I had chosen the worst angle of Kilimanjaro. "Coppola don't climb," I muttered. I wanted to smash my $2,200 Sony HDV camcorder into expensive little pieces. I took a coffee break instead.