48-Hour Chicken Contest

This weekend was the 48-hour Antarctic film contest, organised each year by McMurdo Research Station (USA). As the name suggests, it runs for 48 hours, from Friday evening to Sunday evening, and you have to plan, script, act/film and edit the whole film in that time. To prevent people making films in advance, there are five key things which must appear in the film for it to be entered. We met after dinner on Friday and the Base Commander read out the list of requirements:

• Character to appear - a grumpy diesel mechanic
• Line of dialogue - 'Has anybody seen my chicken?'
• Sound effect - a siren
• Prop 1 - a mop
• Prop 2 - a bottle of mouthwash

It occurred to me that there was a problem with the line, 'Has anybody seen my chicken?'. There was no chicken to not be seen. There was however, a knitter who was bored with knitting her blanket and who likes a challenge. A short search of Ravelry revealed a pattern called 'Chicken Chicken Chicken' (so good you say it thrice), and a plan was hatched. I printed the pattern, cast on before the ink was dry, and knitted for the next 5 hours straight while those around me formulated the plot, storyline and characters. I went to bed at 1am with a one-legged wingless chicken looking over me.

We reconvened at 9am, by which time I was halfway up the second leg. I went to the Bonner Lab, where filming was beginning, and knitted on set. By the time the second leg and one wing had been added, the chicken was declared fit for filming; I added the second wing and a tail as and when breaks in filming occurred and by lunch time I had a fully functioning chicken. I kept referring the bag of toy filler as 'chicken stuffing', and since chickens are usually stuffed with sage and onion, my little chicken was named Sage. Sage was lonely though, and if you have sage, you need onions; so to everyone's amusement I cast on Onion as soon as I had finished lunch, with the aim of having him finished by the end of the filming deadline.

We spent the day filming in various locations around base, and started editing footage in the evening. Sunday was mostly spent editing (I contributed by staying out of the way knitting and making tea runs) and doing a couple of reshoots. Onion was completed and I saw a first cut of the film at about midnight - I believe they finished compressing and uploading it at about 4am. 

'From Rothera With Love' by the 2010 wintering team at Rothera Station, Antarctica.