For all you wannabe film makers out there here’s a story that’s currently circulating in news reports that you may find motivating.
Thirty nine year old Martin Carey had no idea when he went on an Antarctic expedition that his amateur film footage of the trip would turn into a documentary short listed for the best documentary category of the International Filmmaker Festival in Margate next month.
According to reports, the nomination for the award has come after Carey’s film was selected for a screening at the Blue Ocean Film Festival in Savannah in June.
Competing for the prestigious title of best documentary are none other than Hollywood moguls George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh with their film Playground, which documents child sex trafficking in America?
Commenting on the nomination and his competitors Carey said “I was really happy to get accepted for the Savannah festival which was fantastic. To be nominated is the next step and a surprise. It was more than enough to be nominated and to find out that that I am in the same category as George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh means it just gets better and better.”
When Carey, who has completed tours in Iraq and Kosovo embarked on the 74 day Army expedition to the Antarctic’s Danco Coast he didn’t think he would be able to do much with his ninety minutes of footage.
Charging up the camera was a challenge for Carey as it wasn’t as much of a priority as keeping the Sat Nav phone charged up.
“When you don’t have a lot of battery you only shoot what you need to” said Carey.
Quite a bit of the footage also consisted of the guys swearing and joking which meant it couldn’t be used.
“I wanted to take more footage. When you are restricted you have to make sure it works. They would just make a joke or swear and it meant it could not be broadcast” he said.
Perhaps if the guys had known it would end up where it was going they might have behaved differently but then again the documentary might not have been as authentic.
“They had no idea it would end up in the cinema. I had to cut out a lot of rubbish” Carey said.
However, with just a £50 editing package for his laptop and the ninety minutes of film to edit he managed to put together Discoverer, the twenty nine minute potentially prize winning documentary.
Now that’s inspiring!
