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First feature film shot in Antarctica

Scottish director makes ad-hoc horror on the icy continent

The first fictional feature film has been shot in Antarctica.

Called 'South of Sanity', the horror movie was made by Scottish climbing instructor and documentary maker Kirk Watson while working on the icy continent for the British Antarctic Survey.

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The cast was made up of staff and fellow workers at the Survey, while the script was written by Matt Edwards, a doctor who lives near London.

The plot centres around 14 workers at the isolated station, who are picked off one-by-one by a killer.

“We filmed a couple of day scenes on a weekend and the rest was shot in the dark just to make the film darker,” Watson told the BBC.

“So our actors suffered a bit in the cold as we had people sitting outside for ages, or playing dead people lying in the snow. It became a bit tricky with the 'dead people' as they shivered, so they were carefully edited to get rid of the movement.”

The crew had to improvise in the freezing conditions, with scriptwriter Edwards also working as the film's make-up artist, using a kid's face-painting kit and a special recipe of red food colouring, flour and syrup to make fake blood.

“We had several actors with mild hypothermia during the filming. The good thing was they had lived there for a year, so were pretty used to it,” added Watson.

The film, an 18 certificate which has picked up a marketing deal from a US company, will premiere on October 31 in Aviemore, Scotland.