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Comment by foobarbecue | Hacker News Reader

FYI, many people who spent time at McMurdo around the filming of Encounters are not big fans. The interviews were intentionally set up to make people look weird. The narration implies there's something wrong with "polar people." You might find us dissapointingly normal.

A Year On Ice is a more accurate representation.

I'm in Frozen Planet, but you can't believe all the narration in that either.

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I can see that, with only a few hours of footage to portray the situation they want. Is there not something interesting or an underlying personality trait that makes the voluntary inhabitants of the frozen world different from the average person? How much time have you spent there?

7 summer seasons, about 2 months each. Most of that was in a tent up on Erebus, but about a week transitioning through McMurdo at the beginning and end of each season.

Interesting, doing field research?

Yeah, here's a taste: https://aaroncurt.is/frozenplanet.html

(Heh, a taste of fooBBQ.) Thank you for sharing. While we're here and discussing the documentaries: care to share a highlight anecdote of your time there?

Oh man, so many stories. Well, here's a fun one. There's unfortunately a big divide between the contractor-employed support staff and the "beakers" (scientists like me) and I would try and break through the barrier sometimes. Had a brief romance with someone working in waste management (a "wastie"), so maybe that's how it started. But anyway, one day I was sitting in the McMurdo cafeteria at a table with people from Fuels ("fuelies") and people from Communications ("commies" ... yeah) someone asked me what I do and I said "I work up on Erebus." A fuelie looks daggers at me and goes "Oh yeah!? Well I work on the FUCKING MOON!" and storms off.

There were a lot of people at McMurdo for whom Antarctica wasn't quite the adventure they'd hoped it would be.

Oh ok one more story. There is a road connecting McMurdo (US) and Scott Base (New Zealand). I think it's only a few miles.

So I'm sitting in the McMurdo driving training you have to take before you're allowed to take a truck out. Get to the end of the lecture. Instructor: "Any questions?" I ask, "yeah... so, New Zealanders drive on the left, and we drive on the right, right? Which side do we drive on if we go to Scott Base?"

Instructor, looking totally bored and serious: "Drive in the middle."

To this day I don't know if he was kidding.

So where did you drive? I suppose encountering another vehicle was extremely unlikely.

I'm surprised they had a training for this. Is it more of a legal thing?

Ps thanks for the insightful stories!

Some of it was legal ass-covering but also rules about vehicle heaters, wheel chocks, radios, fueling, checking out and in etc. I only walked to Scott, never ended up driving. Drove to building 71 a lot to install and service radios taking to my equipment on Erebus, and to and from the helipad.

Oh yeah and some of the trucks have treads instead of wheels (matttracks) so those take some learning.

That short clip is absolutely breathtaking. Thank you for sharing.

I remember watching this. Turns out BBC Natural History documentaries are more theater than just documentaries. If you watch the "making of" clips at the end of some of the series, you do get the sense that they may not be just captured natural footage as much as highly-scripted activities with the actions of the cameramen, crew, etc. edited out. Still fun to watch, but isn't being manipulated as a viewer disingenuous for a studio that calls itself "Natural" History? Maybe a better name would be BBC Studios Artificial History Unit.

At this point I can't really enjoy documentaries like that anymore. I keep thinking "they brought a steadicam down there?" or "where is all that light coming from?" The fourth wall is thoroughly broken.

Thanks, I'd rather watch a poorly lit Youtube video with a guy talking to his Gopro. I wonder what the equivalent of that would be for animal documentaries.

I like the old Jacques Cousteau films where there’s no fourth wall to break, the people making it are also a subject.

I don’t like the nature documentary that tries really hard to pretend the makers don’t exist. I especially don’t like how almost all of the sound is faked.

Go ahead, bring a steadycam and a key light, just don’t stage shit like a fake reality show. Id like to see what’s actually out there. Also maybe don’t take every opportunity to say how everything you’re filming is doomed.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6J1OzLHamQ8TdX5j2w3L253m...

The sentiment resonates, but on the other hand I took a lot of video in those caves and it's all unwatchable, so I have enormous appreciation for what the BBC did. It's an incredibly hard environment to film in and I was absolutely amazed by the final product. Gavin Thurston rigged up cables from ice screws in the cave walls and set up a travelling robot camera thing he designed on it. There was a huge amount of equipment and hard work; for example for the crater shots I helped them carry up an enormous crane system to the crater rim which didn't even produce any useful footage. Also, the BBC guys were so charismatic that they could talk their way around rules and into places. For example, the helicopter pilots flying in the crater did things that aren't normally allowed. So in a way it's fake, but actually when it comes to the cave visuals, their work captures the feeling of being there, which otherwise I would never really be able to share with anyone. It really is an unbelivably spectacular place and almost impossible to film.

I suppose we're a little more adventurous on average than a random sample of Americans? Big spread there, though. Everyone's different.

any people who spent time at McMurdo around the filming of Encounters are not big fans

They didn't check out any of Werner Herzogs movies before letting him in? They would have known what they were in for.

Fair point. Actually come to think of it most of the people I talked to who were IN the documentary were ok with it (and my volcanology professor went in to make 2 more movies with Herzog after meeting him during Encounters). It was others at mcmurdo that were angry about the portrayal of the town and generalizations about polar people. Maybe people just seized on it as something to argue about when bored, I dunno.

I've seen "Into the Inferno", which I assume is one of the films your professor was in (is he Oppenheimer?). Visually spectacular, but Hertzog's commentary overlay and approach made it just...odd. He's a weird dude, but very talented.

Yep. On all counts.

It sounds like you either are or were formerly posted in the Antarctic — any advice about how to get involved, and maybe get a shift working there, as a civilian with a technical background but without much in the way of a research background? Or is it just totally off the table?

Used to be pretty easy to sign up as a dishwasher or that kind of thing. If you are in interested in science, find a PI looking for grad students. Edit: I read more closely. There are technical grantee groups as well, like UNAVCO and IRIS PASSCAL. Not too hard to get a job with one of those.

Lots of ways in... Everybody I know who has really tried has made it down there.

Thanks for the pointers! Hope I can get a spot down there in a few years too.

Just curious, what’s the male:female ratio of the typical winter crew?

I've never been there in the winter.

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