impossible2Possible:
Inspirational Expeditions

Images on Ice

Besides blogging their adventure, the South Pole team photographed and filmed the whole thing. Vallely shot thousands of RAW images and hours of HDV footage. When he returned to base camp in Punto Arenas, Chile, he immediately began downloading and sorting the photos using Aperture.

“It was a question of organizing everything as quickly as possible,” Vallely says. “I knew that people would want to see certain shots, so I sorted them by date and then broke everything down into separate events. I hadn’t had an opportunity to use Aperture much before returning to camp, but I found it quite intuitive, and had a lot of fun.”

Aperture’s easy-to-use organizational features led to an immediate payoff. “We were suddenly inundated with media requests,” says Vallely. “I had between 1,500 and 2,000 shots to go through, and there was no way I would have been able to search through them without Aperture.”

Documenting the Impossible

The team captured nearly 30 hours of HD video as they trudged across the ice. When they returned from the record-breaking trip, they turned the footage over to sports video producers David McMahon and Lise Meloche of XCZONE.TV. The production house was one of the first in Canada to move exclusively to Final Cut Studio and has released dozens of DVDs about skiing and outdoor sports. As experienced on the slopes as they are in the studio, McMahon and Meloche have skied in two Olympic Games and 200 World Cups and collected seven medals, including four gold.

McMahon imported the team’s video via FireWire onto an external hard drive. Then he organized it all in preparation for editing the documentary. “I spend a lot of time putting the clips into bins in Final Cut,” says McMahon. “After I have it all organized, I can run it through my mind and start composing the documentary.”

The producer plans to follow the trek chronologically, interspersing footage from the trek with a narrative by Zahab, Vallely, and Weber.

The team’s footage will pose several technical challenges that McMahon plans to tackle with Final Cut Pro 6. “They were shooting in the harshest conditions you can imagine,” says McMahon. “In addition to wind noise, there are issues with color. They shot footage in the tents, which gives the light an orange cast. I’ll use the color correction tools in Final Cut to take it out.”

The built-in audio and color-correction tools in Final Cut Pro are indispensable for a project like this, McMahon notes: “Final Cut color correction is accurate and easy. The manual color and white balance controls let me match clips perfectly. The built-in tools work so well that I never need plug-ins or extras.”

With the audio filters in Final Cut Pro, removing wind noise is straightforward as well. “I can tinker around and find the right combination of filters and settings to eliminate the noise,” says McMahon. “Once I have them dialed in, I can just copy the filters and paste them into all the clips. It’s quick and easy.”

McMahon will work with Academy-award-winning director James Moll to produce the documentary, and he plans to have it ready for release within a year.

Extraordinary Acts on the Mac

The excitement and energy of kids around the world helped fuel Zahab’s team in Antarctica. Now i2P is harnessing that energy to address issues like poverty and hunger. The foundation’s new Extraordinary Acts youth ambassador program will help students with their own inspiring quests, including school-wide events, long-distance races, and organized group treks. Their extraordinary acts will help raise awareness for charity organizations like Ryan’s Well, Canada ONEXONE, Giving Water, GreenNexxus, and others.

“They’ll be able to do what I do, but on a smaller scale,” says Zahab. “Their adventures will help inspire friends, family members, and fellow students to help change the world for the better.”

Zahab and the i2P staff are creating the materials for the Extraordinary Acts program on the Mac using iLife and iWork software. They also hope to bring the same level of interactive engagement to the program that made the South Pole Quest a success. Zahab envisions a website with QuickTime videos, podcasts, and forums. “Students are more technologically advanced than ever before,” says Zahab. “The Mac enables us to stay on the cutting edge, to inspire and educate in ways we never imagined.”