He suffered serious injuries to his spine, but his life was saved by a black seal swimming below him. As he fell toward the water, he decided that he wanted to live after all and positioned himself so he hit the water feet first. The documentary also features an interview with Kevin Hines, who survived his suicide attempt at the bridge in 2000. However, in most cases there was either no warning or no time to prevent the jump. 'All of us came to the same conclusion that we were human beings first and filmmakers second', Steel said. The crew members were trained in suicide prevention prior to filming, and had their phones programmed to call the bridge authority if they suspected someone was about to jump. Filmmakers tried in each case to intercede when they could, succeeding in preventing six jumps. In one case a woman traversed the upper railing to the lower railing only to be pulled by her collar back to safety by an unrelated photographer. The film also shows many people being saved from jumping. 'The rail is so low, a 7 year old can climb over it', director Eric Steel said. During filming, on average, one person jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge every 15 days. The first jumper caught with the telephoto lens was not behaving as filmmakers expected-crying and weeping-but, rather, was jogging, talking on his cellphone and laughing he then suddenly put his things away and leaped to his death.

In the first few months of filming, the crew captured only splashes in the water and only knew someone had jumped when the Coast Guard arrived. Steel steered clear of publicity about the project to avoid a situation where someone would 'get it into his or her head to go to the bridge and immortalize him or herself on film.' The camera crew consisted of 10 to 12 people who filmed the bridge day and night in 2004, using telephoto and wide-angle cameras.

'Most bridges where, or high places, if it's high enough that it would be a fatal fall, have put up suicide barriers precisely for this reason.' Production and film Steel said he was shocked that, despite the Golden Gate Bridge's notoriety and history, nothing had been done to prevent people from attempting suicide there. The body of the 1,000th victim, a 25-year-old who was seen jumping, remains unrecovered. The media frenzy was even more intense in 1995 as the total drew close to 1,000. Television crews covered the scene as bridge officials managed to stop 14 prospective jumpers, among them a man with a sign reading '500' pinned to his T-shirt. In the 1970s, the city's newspapers sparked 'countdowns' as the death toll closed in on 500 recorded fatalities. In his article for The New Yorker, Tad Friend wrote, 'Survivors often regret their decision in midair, if not before', supported by survivor Ken Baldwin explaining, 'I instantly realized that everything in my life that I'd thought was unfixable was totally fixable-except for having just jumped.' The four-second fall from the Golden Gate Bridge sends a person plunging 245 feet (75 m) at 75 miles per hour (121 km/h) to hit the waters of the San Francisco Bay 'with the force of a speeding truck meeting a concrete building.' Jumping off the bridge holds a 98 percent fatality rate some die instantly from internal injuries, while others drown or die of hypothermia. Its death toll has since been surpassed only by the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in China.

The Golden Gate Bridge, which first opened in May 1937, was the most popular suicide site in the world during the documentary's filming, with approximately 1,200 deaths by 2003. Main article: Suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge

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