This week the Macca team film and edit their 48 hour film for this year

Macca’s 48 hour film!

The hunt was on to find the best storyline to film over 48 hours for the annual Winter International Film Festival of Antarctica. The films for this are all completed in the 48 hours over the first weekend of August each year. This year we commenced at 6pm on the Friday 31st of July (local time), and ran through to the final upload having to be completed by 6pm on the Sunday 2nd of August.

The ideas were written up on a whiteboard over a number of days, then the community voted in a secret ballot and the results were very clear immediately. Macca would be doing a love story about our Search and Rescue training dummy, Brian, meeting and falling for Resus-“Annie” our CPR training dummy.

The story was developed over the next few nights, but we needed the five things that we HAD to include in the film. These were emailed to us during Friday and so final planning was scheduled and filming commenced after dinner. Our five things were:

1. Sound: a WET SLAP, like someone being hit with a fish for example;

2. Object: a STRETCHER;

3. Famous quote: "YOU STAY A LITTLE LONGER…..BABY!!"; it's a bit modification of the lyrics "wait a little longer Baby" by Hank Thompson can be used to indicate the spirit of a true Antarctican to stay more on and on.....to get the best of this wonderland;

4. Famous character: BRUCE LEE; and

5. Action: DINE ALL TOGETHER, meaning "have a meal all together"

All this in a five minute (or less) duration film with 500Mb limit as well. With filming required across station, a number of buildings and locations that were set up to look like Brian’s depression wallow and love nest. Facial expressions and story boards were developed and printed, props made, and expeditioners that volunteered for extra roles notified in advance so we could utilise the short timeframe as efficiently as possible. Once that was all done filming commenced on Friday evening. Saturday started with a beautiful morning turning to an average afternoon and rainy night so time was of the essence. Final snippets were shot at 2pm on Sunday afternoon, once most of the editing and production had been done to fill in a few small gaps in the story. Thanks to everyone involved!

Those of you that follow Absolute Antarctica on Facebook can watch our movie there until we can get it uploaded to YouTube. We think ours turned out quite well considering the short timeframe. Voting is only open to current expeditioners in the Antarctic (sorry), and this will be done by the 18th of August.

Sealy and the team at Macca

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