Written by new-contact on Sep 8, 2010. Posted in Production News

Last Days of the Arctic shoots on location in Iceland and Greenland

Saga Film has shot a new documentary in Iceland and Greenland. Last Days of the Arctic is a profile of Icelandic photographer Ragnar Axelsson, who is better known in the region simply as RAX. The crew initially transported their equipment from Reykjavik in a Ford Ecoline car. Filming took place in Mulagljufur canyon, Breidamerkurglacial Lagoon and the geothermal Landmannlaugar, all in Iceland.

A lot of serious hiking and ice-climbing was involved getting to the locations, but two of the crew were experienced mountaineers. Margret Jonasdottir, a Producer with Saga Film, said: “We used crampons and ice-axes and carried the equipment in backpacks. We also had ropes and had to use all our skills in ice-climbing to lower RAX down to a crevice and an ice-cave where he photographed formations in the ice.”

The crew witnessed the volcanic eruptions in Fimmvorduhals and then in Eyjafjallajokull, the latter of which caused such havoc with European airspace. The dust can also damage electronic equipment so the crew shot these scenes using the HD mode on plastic-covered Canon 5D cameras rather than the main HD cameras they used for the rest of the shoot.

Shooting in Greenland involved a flight on a five-seat Beachcraft Kingair. The crew had already filmed in Scoresbysund in Greenland before adjusting their schedule in response to the Icelandic eruptions. They then spent a week based in Qaanaaq in Greenland, which is the second most northerly village in the world. Much of this leg of the shoot involved wilderness shooting on ice fields following a group of local hunters who only spoke Greenlandic, but the language barrier was overcome using simple hand signs.

Jonasdottir said: “The first day [on the ice] our hard drive froze so we had to use wireless sound mikes instead of recording the sound straight to the hard disc. It is also quite difficult to film out on the ice where there is just white all over and sunshine. We had polar bags for the cameras and emergency heat bags, but we did not use the heat bags. We also kept the cameras switched on all the time so we had to have triple the number of batteries we would use in a normal tour.”

An additional trip is being planned for the next few months to capture dramatic images of bad weather conditions in Greenland. The film itself will be screened in countries including Sweden, Norway, Holland, Canada and the US.