Well, for a running take off you only need IGE capability (not OGE). It was definitely doable, as evidenced by the fact that he was perfectly able to hover IGE. A bit more creep (as others have already noted) and a bit more “runway” before he lost ground effect, and he would have been fine.
Of course he should have been able to set here down safely, even in the long grass. The fact is, he committed too early to the take-off. He tried to pull her out with more pitch, instead of stick back, slow down, level, land.
I don’t think the first lift-off was an attempted take off. He was simply backtracking in order to get more “runway” in front of him.
Most likely that the PIC got arm-twisted in taking an additional pax without updating his CoG, MTOW, and performance calcs. You see him settling after his first attempted lift-off, as if he was surprised by the fact that he didn’t have enough power to just climb out.
Difficult to say where the wind was blowing from. Clearly he took off downhill, which makes sense. But if that meant he had to deal with a tailwind, it would have further complicated the running take-off.