20 December, 2006
by Adam HydeSo today was another limbo day. We are travelling towards Atka Butka and the plan is that we will dock there and build a ramp for off loading the gear. This has been the way of doing it in the past but last year they had some dangerous slippages in the ice while offloading and hence they looked to Neumayer to offload. We will reach there tonight or early tomorrow morning and then it will take 2-3 days to bulldoze a ramp in the ice shelf. Once this is done we will be taken by chopper off the boat and to SANAE. The decision was made today to keep us on the boat until the ramp is done as no one can work at the base until the gear arrives anyway. So it looks like it is very possible we will spend Christmas on the boat.
Meantime more beautiful icebergs glide past. The sea here is very flat, and we have departed slightly from the ice shelf. The ice in the water seems to be just forming and thin ice layers the top of the water in huge sheets. In other places the ice pack ice looks very soft and new. At times it looks like we are gliding effortlessly through a strange world of freshly picked giant cotton balls.
Tom and I just returned from trying an experiment with the wind sock (Zeppelin) that Tom and Amanda brought for the trip (thanks to Arnoud Traa for his essential advice on all things aural during the preparations for this trip). We placed two condenser mics in the Zeppelin, each facing 180 degrees away from the other. We want to try and get nice clear stereo recordings of the ship breaking some ice. I hung out a small hole on the bow so I holding the mic as close to the ice as i could as the ship broke its way through a large island of ice. I recorded a good few minutes of this and it sounded good, after dinner I will go out and record some more.
Earlier today we met as I-TASC and discussed the documentation strategies. I'm not so good at video but its best we all help each other so I contributed to the discussions on what should be recorded and the creation of the shot lists. It was interesting but I am more at home with still images and audio. I have been recording quite a bit of audio of the ship and taking a lot of photos as I intend to make some audio slide shows (I like the format of slideshows on the web and when combined with audio it can be very low bandwidth and very evocative). I have experimented with two such slideshows for the trip and they are ok. I would like to try some more abstract combinations of images and sound to see what effect it has, so i will experiment more with the format. I don't think we can upload any until we get to SANAE, so I will spend the next three days onboard preparing more.
In the meantime First Born is sitting on the couch playing PSP (since he has run out of Sopranos), Reme (our cabin-mate from Zambia) is sitting next to First discussing VLF frequencies with his friend Zama, Amanda is sleeping in her cabin, and Tom and I just came in from recording ice breaking under the ship. It feels familiar, but I would like a change of scene. I think I will work a lot over the days before we leave the ship as it will help ward off cabin fever...I am missing talking to my friends in other countries, and I miss the luxury of casual communication with them. Hi to all if you are reading this...I hope to bring back some nice stories to share next time we meet....miss ya all heaps. Have a warm drink for me ;)
20 December 2006
by Ntsikelelo Ntshingila
Woke up to a meeting at 10:00am and had an open discussion on the how are we going to work out a way in which we can have a formalised way of shooting the film or the documentary. It came to the point that we need to have a synopsis of the film. We had also a discussion on how are we going to work out our daily working schedule at the base, how much time and access do we have for website uploading and communication. The thing that we actually got into our minds is that we won't have as much free time and lounging as in the boat, so as soon as the equipment arrives we have to assemble and test and the equipment, so we can send one of our team members(Marko) a list of the equipment or things that he can bring down with so we can complete the work assigned. We took a lunch break to can get some food in our stomachs. So we decided to meet again at 2:00pm.
When we came back we had an interesting meeting where other issues were raised in our discussion on writing the synopsis and the end result was that one of our team members was not seeing any progress in these meeting and that these daily progress meetings were just a waist of time. Our team member preferred to sleep or to read a book than to attend these meetings and said that demotivation was within the group. We gave valid reasons as to why these meetings are important but we had to excuse the team member for some time until a feeling of wanting to work came again(we don't know how long is that but I hope everyone will get in shape again in a few days time). We haven't reached the 'Bukta' yet and we still sailing towards our destination. So we continued with our discussions on the synopsis and we raised some nice points on what type of shots are we suppose to get and using what kind of tapes. We brought with us 20 expensive high quality video tapes(A Grade) and we have used 11 already, so it was decided that the 9 remaining tapes should be used for very important shots or recordings but for the time being we are just going to use the 'B Grade' tapes for documentation. We finished our meeting and had a few hours before dinner. Tom and Adam went out to do more recordings and continued with more recordings after dinner....