This week at Mawson: 12 August 2016

Every year in Antarctica there is a 48 hour film festival, this year it was organised by Scott Station (NZ). The premise of the festival is that five randomly selected stations get to pick an item each, these are circulated and that marks the start of the competition.

There are two categories;

• Open — anyone from a station can submit to this category and the film can be shot and edited anytime this year. This one is for the serious filmmakers.
• The 48 hour film — where you have 48 hours to make a film based around five items. Usually the sillier the better and bad acting is a requirement!

This year over 18 stations were competing in the 48 hour film festival category and there had been over 14 entries in the open category.

An anxious wait ensued on Friday morning, till around 1100 we were emailed a list of the five items that needed to be in the film. These items were;

Sound: An elephant trumpeting

Object: A stethoscope

Dialogue: “May the force be with you”

Character: Mythical Creature

Action: Someone walking as if they are on a catwalk at a fashion show.

What a great selection to work with!

Over lunch, Shane (playwright/director/camera operator and producer) and a few people brainstormed and came up with the idea of a Pokémon Go chase through the station culminating in a Zoolander style walk off.

Character lists were drawn up, costumes picked and we ended up with a random assortment of Pokémon’s, a blue drag fairy, a Jedi doctor and Flash Gordon.

After smoko on Saturday, this motley crew assembled outside the red shed and for the next two hours ran around the station in onsies having a good laugh at each other.

Films had to be submitted by Sunday evening and with Shane’s amazing editing skills we managed to finish early and settle in on Saturday night for a sneaky preview in the bar. We think we are hilarious and fabulous, but we will have to wait until after final voting to see how our film translates with the tough Antarctic film community.

By Wednesday we had the final list of twenty two, 48 hour film festival and 14 open category videos ready for download. We have our fingers crossed that we might have them all downloaded and available for watching on Saturday night.

The final game of the second round and Mawson was playing Macca this week in the inter-station darts competition.

We assembled in the bar at 1500 Mawson time with a cheese platter to sustain us.

Then proceeded to beat Macca 3 games to nil, not much more to say really.

Bring on the finals :)

One of the winter jobs for the infrastructure team has been to renovate the medical suite bathroom. While this is a relatively small job, the use of asbestos in the original fit out has made the job a little bit harder and required lots of cooperation between the team. Hilly is the station carpenter and has taken a lead role in writing the asbestos management plan and designing the removal process to ensure station and individual safety.

After approval of the asbestos management plan Hilly, Josh the plumber and Shane and Sam the electrician got to work isolating and removing the old bathroom fittings and modernising the bathroom. So far the job is going well and Dr Malcolm will have his medical suite back soon!