Wedding message for Des, Franco, Andy and Rachel

Heyup Des, Franco, Andy and Rachel. Just a wee message for your wedding days.
have fun
kirk

Flying from Rothera to Halley

This film shows a few of the folk I shall be working with at Halley as they describe waiting for our transfer flight. The Basler (DC3) which was made in 1944 arrives a bit late but then we jump on it and head across to Halley to begin a build season there.

While at Halley I will be unable to produce blogs about the build that is going on as BAS will own the copyright to all my footage plus they may wish to make use of the footage in the future. I shall produce the odd blog about normal yearly things that happen at Halley, especially when I get down to the Emperor penguins for a weekend etc. I also have a small back log of blogs to make from Rothera so if the time allows in the evening I shall put something together.

Enjoy, Have fun Kirk

Antarctica, Rothera in the slightly older days.

Here is a film I found on youtube showing a winter trip from our base here but probably in the  nighties.  Quite interesting though as they are travelling over the same area as we do. Enjoy.

Our Antarctic winter through Mike’s pictures

This film was made by Mike of our winter.  It was his entry into the 2009 Rothera Antarctic film festival.  He has some awesome shots enjoy.

Skiing in Antarctica

This past week we have just had the Rothera Antarctic film festival which I started in winter 2005 and this years 2009 was the 5th one of its kind.  We had 9 films, the one below being Riet’s entry about our winter trip.

The standard of films this year was very high as usual, Tony made one from pictures mainly facing North of base and showing how the scenary constantly changes, Matt Doc made a mocumentary about a manhauling trip he did with James done in old style which was very funny, Ian and Adam made a film about Mel’s lost soft toy which got huge amounts of laughs, and another one with two soft toy’s enjoying each others company!!,  Jonny made a film called Rockstar which included the whole base singing rockstar in different situations also a great laugh.

Mike made a film of his pictures through the winter which I will feature in my next blog.  He has some awesome shots.

I popped in my film made in Cambridge called “The Mill” which was written by Dan Smale and featuring me, Matt Brown, Dan Smale and Jo Coldron.

Then we had a film by myself and the doctor called ‘ANNE’ which is a feature length slasher/horror movie featuring 14 base members  and starring Matt Von Tersch and Danny Edmunds.  This went down very well and I will show a trailer to it soon on here.

Most of the films are in the wrong format to load up on youtube so I can only show these two.

Enjoy Riet’s film below.

Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival

Heyup all, on the 16-18 of October is the Edinburgh mountain film festival. My film called ‘Why Winter?’ is playing on the Sunday afternoon, see link for details.

http://www.edinburghmountainff.com/EMFF_sunday_aft.htm

The film is a documentary on why us 21 people here decided to winter. Everyone here at Rothera features in the film apart from myself who is behind the camera apart from the occasional accidental reflection. If you are around Edinburgh at this time then the film festival is usually a good crack with some great films.

Have fun
Kirk

EMFF 2009 trailer:

Ice diving in Antarctica

Matt Brown, Danny, Terri and myself head out to cut open a dive hole in our 45cm thick sea that we have round base.  Matt chainsaws through the ice and we pluck out some huge blocks of ice opening a gateway to the underwater world below.  Matt tells us a bit about diving under the ice while Terri describes what science herself and Melissa are heading under to carry out, which relates to climate change.

Enjoy

The sun returns to Antarctica

The sun returns to Antarctica.  Bit behind on the blogs lately due to trying to make a feature length horror movie with the doctor and a few others on base. This takes up most of my spare time.  The horror movie is mainly filmed in the dark which is getting slightly harder as the winter progresses and the nights get lighter and lighter.  It has been great to see the sun return.

This blog starts out with some great time lapse footage of us getting our sun back and putting the flag up. There is also an extract from my Documentary called ‘Why Winter?’ which played along side Werner Herzogs ‘Encounters at the end of the world’ for a week at the Antarctic film festival in Tasmania.

The song at the start of this blog was written and played by a mate Luke Slott, who this week has released his debut album you should check it out available from www.lukeslott.com. It is called “Don’t Go Back To Sleep – Music for Solo Piano Vol. 1″.

The Quest for the Golden Roll wins Best film

Our Rothera film ‘The Quest for the Golden Roll’ has almost a landslide win at the 48hr International film festival. 22 Films were entered in total.

Best film:

1st with 114 votes ‘The Quest for the Golden Roll’ Rothera, UK

2nd with 38 votes ‘A day in the life’ Bellinghausen, Russia

3rd with 30 votes ‘Hunger at Troll’ Troll, Norway

Best Acting:

1st with 70 votes ‘Mace Perfume’ Mawson, Australia

2nd with 62 votes ‘The Quest for the Golden Roll’ Rothera, UK

3rd with 25 votes ‘Wintering blues’ Maitri, India

Best Cinematography:

1st with 79 votes ‘A day in the life’ Bellinghausen, Russia

2nd with 76 votes ‘The Quest for the Golden Roll’ Rothera, UK

3rd with 46 votes ‘Hunger at Troll’ Troll, Norway

Best Screenplay:

1st with 91 votes ‘The Quest for the Golden Roll’ Rothera, UK

2nd with 32 votes ‘Friend of Faux’ McMurdo, USA

3rd with 31 votes ‘Hunger at Troll’ Troll, Norway

Best Use of elements:

1st with 83 votes ‘The Quest for the Golden Roll’ Rothera, UK

2nd with 35 votes ‘Sukiyaki’ Syowa, Japan

3rd with 31 votes ‘Wintering blues’ Maitri, India (Although 23 of these votes came from the 23 people at Maitri, lol!  Funnily enough their film had 23 votes in all the other categories too.)

Our film below:

48hr Antarctic film fest – Best script

This film which was shot at the south pole base by the Americans is a spoof of the making of the trailer for ‘Whiteout’. Watch the Whiteout trailer on youtube first to get an idea. I voted for this as having the best script. Votes at Rothera were mixed in this category too. We shall find out the results once all the votes from the continent are in on Saturday 15th August. Amazing when you think the whole continent and all the different countries are voting wouldn’t happen on many other continents. Enjoy.

The Making of the Trailer for the Major Motion Picture Whiteout Based on the Graphic Novel from David Barud on Vimeo.