Making films in the snow

The 48 hr Antarctic film festival recently took place so I thought I would share a few of the behind-the-scenes pictures taken during filming.  This competition has now been running for a few years and gives all the Antarctic bases something to do during the depths of winter.  Essentially the film has to contain certain objects and phrases chosen by the base whose film won the competition last year.  These were revealed on the Friday morning (a bath, an authentic sneeze, a gingerbread man, a ping pong ball and the phrase 'voulez vous couchez avec moi ce soir?') and everyone then has around 48hrs to come up with plot/script/footage/final edited 5 minute version.  All films then have to be uploaded (via a fairly rubbish internet link in our case) and then downloaded and watched by all the bases.  After that votes are cast and a winner will eventually be announced.

 

Since I'm not really a fan of appearing on camera I ensured I stayed firmly out of shot by helping sort out the special effects and props with Ella, and by appointing myself official set photographer.  Many a happy hour was spend mixing up large quantities of fake blood in various consistencies and then squirting it around in the snow with big syringes.  It seems cocoa powder is the key ingredient when making fake blood as it not only gives it a nice rich colour, but also makes it smell nice - seriously, what did people do before google was invented when they needed to know how to make fake blood?  We also created some high-tech spaceship scenes involving a ping-pong ball, LED and flour as well as a large orange facehugger from bread dough and food colouring.  No expense was spared in the making of this movie!

Basically the final version is very silly (link at the bottom of the page), but we had a lot of fun filming it and, having now viewed the films from other bases, it would seem we weren't the only ones.  So, a few pictures taken over the weekend which show off  the base and the people who live here.

A mechanic from Yorkshire with an awesome beard reading 50 Shades of Grey in the bath with flowers and candles......obviously

Three men hanging out in the bathroom making grand plans involving a waterproof GoPro camera

Complex direction going on here while Nik suffocates to death under an orange dough facehugger

Not weird at all

Joe enjoying seing blood trickle from his eye

How many people does it take to film a ping-pong ball landing in a pile of flour?

The complicated and highly organised planning stage

This scene was a highly stressful one take wonder!

Me looking terribly pleased with myself, having just made a very big mess of Sue's lab!

Something very complicated is probably being discussed here

Rod concentrating very hard on something involving a camera and a gingerbread man on a stick

A nice bit of teamwork - Joe teaching Sue how not to kill herself with the noisy fire stick thing

The problem with using actual gingerbread men, rather than just cardboard cut-outs, is that they tasted pretty good

Should you wish to see the finished film or the entries from other stations then I think they can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B6xKzE6p5KMFX0FrZXJlV3lkTDQ&usp=

Enjoy!